Day 1 Syllabus

1.1 Fundamentals of money and currency

1.2 The Bitcoin whitepaper
1.3 Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and Bitcoin compared
1.4 Bitcoin and blockchain: characteristics
1.5 Components of blockchain technology
1.6 Consensus Algorithms: Basics
1.7 Consensus Algorithms: Advanced

Day 2 Syllabus

2.1 The power of hashing algorithms

2.2 How a blockchain works
2.3 Cryptocurrency wallets
2.5 Custody, responsibility, and control for digital assets

Day 3 Syllabus
3.1 Blockchain, benefits and value
3.2 Domain-specific applications: Best-use cases
3.3 Industry-specific applications
3.4 Identifying and overcoming blockchain limitations
3.5 Blockchain types

Day 4 Syllabus
4.1 Blockchain risk and challenges
4.2 Blockchain processes and controls
4.4 Blockchain accounting treatment

Module 1:
Fundamentals of money/currency
Three fundamental properties:
- S - A store of value, meaning people can save and use the value later
- U - A unit of account, a common base for pricing and comparison
- M - A medium of exchange, a way for people to use a common currency for buying and selling
from one another
Money also has several important attributes:
- P - Portable, something easily carried from one place to another
- D - Divisible, something easily divisible into smaller units
- F - Fungible, one unit is interchangeable with or the same as any other unit
- D - Durable, ability to last a long time before needing to be replaced

A brief currency timeline BCCPPB

- Barter
- Commodities (precious metal, salt, etc.)
- Coins (the original fiat currency)
 - Paper (another fiat currency)
- Plastic (credit and debit cards)
- Cryptocurrency (i.e., Bitcoin: cryptographically secured) More on Day 3 Module

Pre-cryptocurrency history
- 1980s, there is some form of digital cash (P2P) but none of the eliminated third party financial
institutions (inefficiency, resource limit, control)
- The projects failed for various reasons but mainly because of their reliance on third parties
- The lack of trust in third parties is what motivated the cypherpunk movement and these
innovations.

Cryptographers developed these precursors and many of the elements of those projects were
incorporated in to bitcoin
Example:
- David Chaum’s DigiCash
- Wei Dai’s B-money
- Adam Back’s Hash Cash
The Bitcoin blockchain solved the third-party problem by cryptographically linking blocks of
transactions together and creating an incentive mechanism that rewarded participants who supplied
the computing power to link blocks in a manner making it unfeasible to change the ledger (miners)

The bitcoin white paper started it all

- Blockchain technology was first implemented with Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency. The creator
of Bitcoin and blockchain technology was an unknown person who goes by the pseudonym
Satoshi Nakamoto. In a white paper, the creator of Bitcoin describes the value of the blockchain
as follows:
- “Using digital signatures, hashing, and proof of work to avoid double spending and fraud, the
Bitcoin blockchain enables its participants to confidentiality transfer value using math for
validation and verification instead of a trusted third party.”
- Bitcoin is related to Big Data Analytics in the sense that we are using social media to gather
data.

Blockchain, cryptocurrency, and Bitcoin

The first implementation of a blockchain was invented in conjunction with Bitcoin in 2009. Bitcoin is
a cryptocurrency, a type of digital currency that Is secured against fraud and theft by means of
mathematical encryption algorithms.
- Cryptocurrency derives its name from the use of cryptography to secure blockchains without a
third party and without having to trust the participants.
- Cryptocurrency is a new type of money that anyone in the world can receive, send and earn by
voluntarily participating in the respective network.
- Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency and the first use case of blockchain technology used as a
medium of exchange to store and transfer value
 NOT all blockchains are the same. A common error is to equate all blockchain technologies to the
Bitcoin blockchain. Newer, next-generation blockchains not associated with Bitcoin do not
necessarily share all the attributes of the Bitcoin blockchain.

However, there would be no blockchain technology of any sort without Bitcoin. The better you
understand Bitcoin the better you will understand how other cryptocurrencies and blockchains
work.

Birth of Bitcoin and the Blockchain

- October 31st 2008: Bitcoin design whitepaper titled “Bitcoin: A P2P Electronic Cash System” is
published through a cryptography mailing list by Satoshi Nakamoto.
- January 3rd 2009: Genesis block is mined (this is block number one of the blockchain).
- January 9th 2009: Version 0.1 is released
- January 12th 2009: First Bitcoin transaction sent from Satoshi Nakamoto to Hal Finney.

Fixed Supply of Bitcoin

Deflation
- 21,000,000 million
- Needs ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) tool used to mine Bitcoin
- Mining is technically solving mathematical expressions
- Correct answer = Nonce

Inflation
- Price of goods and services increase

Bitcoin and blockchain characteristics

- Symbol is BTC
- Each coin has 100,000,000 units, or 8 decimal places
- 17,000,000 BTC in circulation as of April 2018.
Bitcoin, gold, and the fundamentals of money SUM
- Bitcoin is an excellent medium of exchange and store of value
o Bitcoin has been called digital gold (it far surpassed the value of an ounce of gold in
2017).
- Bitcoin is a poor unit of account because of price volatility.
o It would not work as a reportable currency and it would skew financial statement
comparisons.
- Gold is an excellent store of value, a moderate unit of account, and a poor medium of
exchange.

Bitcoin, gold, and the attributes of money PDF-D

- Bitcoin is highly durable, portable, divisible and fungible
o One bitcoin is 100,000,000 units and millions in value can be transported with one piece
of data, the private key.
- Gold is highly durable and fungible. Gold is not easily portable nor divisible
- Gold has 5,000 plus year history and Bitcoin is less than 10 years old:
o Bitcoin durability is still being proven everyday
o Gold is a rare metal that doesn’t oxidize