Learning Bitcoin from the Command Line is a tutorial for working with Bitcoin (and Lightning) that teaches direct interaction with the servers themselves, as the most robust and secure way to begin cryptocurrency work.
NOTE: This is a draft in progress, so that I can get some feedback from early reviewers. It is not yet ready for use.
This tutorial assumes that you have some minimal background of how to use the command line interface. If not, there are many tutorials available, and I have one for Mac users at https://github.com/ChristopherA/intro-mac-command-line.
Status: Finished. Updated for 0.20.
Status: Finished. Updated for 0.20.
- 3.0: Understanding Your Bitcoin Setup
- 4.0: Sending Bitcoin Transactions
- 5.0: Controlling Bitcoin Transactions
- 6.0: Expanding Bitcoin Transactions with Multisigs
- 7.0: Expanding Bitcoin Transactions with PSBTs
- 8.0: Expanding Bitcoin Transactions in Other Ways
Status: Finished. Updated for 0.20 and btcdeb.
- 9.0: Introducing Bitcoin Scripts
- 10.0: Embedding Bitcoin Scripts in P2SH Transactions
- 11.0: Empowering Timelock with Bitcoin Scripts
- 12.0: Expanding Bitcoin Scripts
- 13.0: Designing Real Bitcoin Scripts
Status: Finished.
Status: Finished.
- 15.0: Talking to Bitcoind with C
- 16.0: Programming Bitcoin with Libwally
- 17.0: Talking to Bitcoind with Other Languages
Status: Finished.
Status: Finished.
Learning Bitcoin from the Command Line is currently under active development and its writing in progress. Current chapters are functional, but need to be updated to more modern versions of Bitcoin-Core. Additional chapters also need to be written to fill out our intended scope.
The empty chapters above show some of our current plans for future work. Other plans, mainly drawn from old issues, can be found in TODO.md
Obviously, this work in progress should not be used for production tasks until it is completed and has had further testing and auditing.
Unless otherwise noted (either in this /README.md or in the file's header comments) the contents of this repository are Copyright © 2020 by Blockchain Commons, LLC, and are licensed under CC-BY.
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| Name | Role | Github | GPG Fingerprint | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Christopher Allen | Lead Author | @ChristopherA | <ChristopherA@LifeWithAlacrity.com> | FDFE 14A5 4ECB 30FC 5D22 74EF F8D3 6C91 3574 05ED |
| Shannon Appelcline | Lead Author | @shannona | <shannon.appelcline@gmail.com> | 7EC6 B928 606F 27AD |
Additional contributions are listed below:
| Role | Names |
|---|---|
| Contributors: | gg2001 (Go, Node.js sections), gorazdko (Rust section), Javier Vargas (C, Java, Lightning, Tor sections), jodobear (Appendix: Compiling Bitcoin, Python section) |
| Reviewers: | Glen Willem @gwillem |
| Sponsors: | Blockstream Corporation |
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We do ask that you offer us good faith and use best efforts not to leak information or harm any user, their data, or our developer community. Please give us a reasonable amount of time to fix the issue before you publish it. Do not defraud our users or us in the process of discovery. We promise not to bring legal action against researchers who point out a problem provided they do their best to follow the these guidelines.
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| Name | Fingerprint |
|---|---|
| Christopher Allen | FDFE 14A5 4ECB 30FC 5D22 74EF F8D3 6C91 3574 05ED |
You can import a key by running the following command with that individual’s fingerprint: gpg --recv-keys "<fingerprint>" Ensure that you put quotes around fingerprints that contain spaces.