BITRUST MASTERING BITCOIN

BITRUST MASTERING BITCOIN

Ai genrated image of the topic i learned reading mastering bitcoin

Starting this pathway, I had one objective in mind, which was to understand Bitcoin and to be able to explain the concept in non-technical terms if the need arises to explain it to a non-technical person. In doing so, I also get to understand it better if I can relate the technical concept to things around me.

A self-learning pathway at my own pace, even though it requires me to push myself to complete 2 chapters per week, ended working out well in my favor and helped me finish the book on time. This pathway ended up being exactly what I needed to fully understand the tech and the idea behind Bitcoin.

I learned about Bitcoin as a whole, Bitcoin Script, and ran a node on my machine. I got a lot of satisfaction from running bitcoind -printtoconsole and seeing the node work after hours of configuration. I also performed a transaction in a Sparrow wallet on testnet4. Doing this made me understand Chapter 6 of the book even more because I saw the theories in action. I saw my testnet UTXO at a different address, and I also created a segwit, taproot, and multisig wallet. Doing this made most of the concepts stick well in my head. I was also able to connect my Sparrow wallet to my local node.

The challenging concept for me was understanding what CompactSize is and how it is used in a transaction hex. This led me to build a tx-decoder (a robust educational tool designed to demystify the binary structure of Bitcoin transactions) after a series of learning about CompactSize from different platforms and resources. Another challenging part is the key derivative, which I planned to fully understand by checking out a wallet-based project, or building a wallet (for learning purposes), so that I will be able to understand it better

When I think about Bitcoin before I had the knowledge I have now, I used to think of it as a scam or something too big for me to get into, never even imagining it was all a code. That's in the past now, not anymore.

With the level of knowledge and understanding I have now, I realize Bitcoin is the future of financial freedom. The beauty of it is that each user is the one in control of their funds/tokens, not some central authority or government. So, as a person, I can send and receive any amount of Bitcoin at any time without restrictions. The part that makes me love the tool behind it is that it is programmable money, and as a developer, I can also contribute to its growth.

I am currently exploring contributing to the Bitcoin open-source project. I have already made 2 contributions to rust-bitcoin and rust-payjoin, one contribution to each. I am currently looking to contribute to these 2 projects and other Bitcoin projects as well. I am also exploring being part of the Bitrust fellowship program, which will give me proper guidance and help me more in my open-source contribution journey. I would love to be among the selected fellows for Bitrust and want to contribute more to Bitcoin technology full-time. For now, I will continue learning and building around Bitcoin, and when I come back to this in a year, I should be able to see my name, yunusabdul38 (GitHub username), in multiple Bitcoin OS projects and even be able to contribute to the ecosystem beyond PRs.

Special Thanks to the Bitrust team for making this pathway and other pathways accessible to everyone. I achieved most of my goals during this pathway, and I know I will still come back to the book more often now to better understand some concepts while contributing to the Bitcoin OS project. Making these contributions to rust-bitcoin and rust-payjoin wouldn’t have been possible without you guys 🙏