Bitcoin recently hit its ten-year anniversary, and its community of developers and users continue to drive innovation and help maintain Bitcoin’s position as the best-known and largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
Bitcoin first appeared in the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto’s whitepaper, published in October 2008. Nakamoto proposed Bitcoin as a cryptographically secured, decentralized online currency. As he put it:
What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.
Bitcoin was designed as a secure online store of value and digital payment system, and it’s since blossomed in other directions — for example, as an investment on a par with stocks.
When SFOX first started out, one of our top priorities was to engineer a platform that facilitates trading across multiple BTC exchanges. The process of building that platform—a platform which has executed over 37 million trades (and counting) for individuals and institutions since its completion—awakened us to the fractured nature of Bitcoin’s ecosystems and brought home just how challenging it can be to put all the pieces together.
That’s why we’ve assembled this guide to the people, information, and sources you need to grasp Bitcoin’s technical and ideological underpinnings and stay informed as the cryptocurrency grows and changes.
📖 Table of Contents
👩💻 People: The developers who helped create Bitcoin and/or are driving the conversation around Bitcoin forward.🗞 News: We've provided a list of the best Bitcoin-specific and general cryptocurrency news outlets to keep track of everything from new innovations in Bitcoin to daily price trends.💡 Data sources: If you’re looking for statistics, charts, and figures on Bitcoin and BTC, these sites can help.⛪ Communities: Whether you want to share your thoughts about BTC or hear what others are saying, we provide a list of subreddits, social media pages, and more where you can dive in and immerse yourself.⛏ Miners: When you mine BTC, you're getting paid to help validate transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. Here, we've collected a list of mining pools where — for a fee — you can start mining BTC yourself.👜 Wallets: Online or offline? Just BTC, or other cryptocurrencies? We've assembled a list of Bitcoin wallets by type so you can pick the best storage solution for your coins.
👩💻 People
- Satoshi Nakamoto is the unknown person, persons, or organization behind the invention of Bitcoin. He released the first version of the Bitcoin blockchain in early 2009, but his participation quickly tapered off and messages from 2011 indicate that he has “moved on to other things.” The mystery surrounding his identity has led to intense speculation over the years about who he really is.
- Gavin Andresen was a lead developer for Bitcoin who moved over to BCH in 2017.
- Hal Finney was a software engineer who worked with Nakamoto on the original Bitcoin code and was the recipient of the first-ever bitcoin transaction. Finney passed away in 2014 from ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
- Nick Szabo invented Bit Gold, a precursor to Bitcoin, and smart contracts, which later became a core component of Ethereum.
- Adam Back invented Hashcash, a protocol cited in the Bitcoin whitepaper as the inspiration behind Bitcoin’s proof-of-work algorithm.
- Jeff Garzik was an early contributor to the Bitcoin code and later became a lead developer at BitPay, a Bitcoin wallet and Visa credit card.
- Wladimir van der Laan is a Bitcoin developer and top contributor to the GitHub repository. He became lead maintainer for Bitcoin after Andresen stepped down in 2014.
- Pieter Wuille is the Bitcoin developer behind the controversial SegWit update, a code change that moved transaction signatures outside the base transaction block (making it possible to pack more transactions into individual blocks without violating block size limits).
- Matt Corallo works full-time on Bitcoin projects at Chaincode Labs. His focus is on sidechains and other scaling technology.
- Cory Fields is part of MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative. He discovered and revealed a critical vulnerability in Bitcoin Cash that could have crippled the currency if bad actors had identified it first.
- Marco Falke was named Testing and QA Administrator in 2014.
- Peter Todd is one of Bitcoin’s primary developers and also works as a cryptography consultant.
- Jameson Lopp is a software engineer and creator of Statoshi, a tool that analyzes Bitcoin nodes and produces real-time statistics.
- Jimmy Song is a Bitcoin developer and teaches classes in Blockchain programming.
- Jonas Schnelli is the Bitcoin developer who created libbtc, a Bitcoin code library.
- John Newbery is a Bitcoin developer and works at Chaincode Labs.
- The GitHub Bitcoin repository includes a list of contributors to Bitcoin’s code since 2009.
🗞 News
- CoinDesk publishes articles on cryptocurrency and blockchain and also provides price charts and other tools for cryptocurrency investors.
- Bitcoin News is a continually updating news feed for Bitcoin-related articles.
- Cointelegraph provides news stories about Bitcoin as well as reviews and analyses of blockchains, cryptocurrencies, and events.
- Brave New Coin features news, data, and charts for various cryptocurrencies.
- Bitcoin Magazine was one of the first print magazines to specialize in Bitcoin.
- CCN is an online cryptocurrency news desk.
- The Daily Hodl covers BTC, Ethereum, Ripple, and other cryptocurrencies.
- The Block is a news organization focused on simplified blockchain coverage that’s easily accessible to all.
💡 Data Sources
- Messari.io has charts, articles, and a daily newsletter.
- Cryptocompare posts charts, guides, and reviews on numerous cryptoassets.
- Bitinfocharts has charts and other data for Bitcoin as well as other cryptoassets.
- Coinmarketcap offers charts, rankings, and tools for a range of cryptoassets.
- The SFOX Volatility Report reports and analyzes the volatility and correlations between gold, the S&P 500, and all cryptoassets enabled on the SFOX trading platform, including BTC. Issued monthly.
- Kaiko provides both historical and real-time cryptocurrency market data, for a fee.
- Blockonomi has charts, guides, and news on several cryptoassets.
- Blockfolio is an app that tracks cryptocurrency portfolios.
- Intercontinental Exchange has a cryptocurrency feed with both historical and real-time data, for a fee.
- VanEck’s MVIS Digital Assets Indices provide a family of investable benchmarks for the crypto sector.
⛪ Communities
- Bitcoin.com’s Slack channel: You’ll need approval from Bitcoin.com to join, but if you can get access, this Slack channel is a great place to get the latest BTC news.
- /r/Bitcoin: The main Bitcoin subreddit, with the latest news, investing tips, and one million subscribers; heavily Bitcoin-maximalist.
- /r/BitcoinMarkets: For Bitcoin traders and trading advice, including technical analysis. Much of the conversation is in the form of ‘daily discussion’ threads. 130,000 subscribers.
- /r/btc: Another Bitcoin subreddit, originally created by subscribers unhappy with the policies of the /Bitcoin subreddit; also includes substantial discussion of Bitcoin Cash.
- /r/cryptocurrency: A subreddit for cryptocurrency in general.
- t.me/bitcoinchannel: Telegram’s general news channel for Bitcoin, with almost 10,000 members; it includes trending articles and current events.
- t.me/BitcoinETFAlert: If you’re interested in the latest news on Bitcoin ETFs, this Telegram channel is the place to be. 1,700 members.
- Bitcoin Communities: Bitcoin.org’s lists of forums, social networks, and events.
⛏ Miners
- BTC is a pool based in China that mines 19.2% of BTC blocks, according to Blockchain.com.
- AntPool is a pool based in China that mines roughly 14.1% of BTC blocks.
- Slush Pool is the oldest existing Bitcoin mining pool and mines roughly 11.3% of BTC blocks.
- ViaBTC is a pool based in China that mines roughly 11.1% of BTC blocks.
- BTC.top is a pool based in China that mines roughly 8.5% of BTC blocks.
👜 Wallets
Hardware wallets
Hardware wallets continue to be the most secure long-term storage option, though it’s still necessary to take basic security precautions.
- Trezor is a wallet with advanced software features, such as integrating transaction information with Dropbox.
- Ledger is a wallet that supports 712 different cryptocurrencies.
- KeepKey is a wallet with bank-grade security and numerous currency options.
Software and web wallets
- SFOX provides an institutional and professional wallet for BTC and other leading cryptocurrencies, featuring multi-user functionality, 2FA/U2F support, and unified reporting.
- Blockchain is one of the most popular wallets in the world for Bitcoin and Ethereum.
- Coinbase is a major wallet with over 10 million customers and 32 supported countries.
- Exodus has a user-friendly interface and includes portfolio tracking tools.
- StrongCoin has been available since 2011, making it the longest-running Bitcoin wallet.
- Electrum is a software wallet that runs on Windows, Mac, or Linux. It indexes the blockchain rather than downloading the whole thing, making it much faster to operate.
- Copay is an open-source tool that allows you to store multiple, distinct bitcoin wallets.
- Mycelium is a mobile-device wallet that’s compatible with both Android and iPhone.
- Edge is a client-side encrypted wallet app for iOS and Android, which provides buying, selling, and exchanging of multiple cryptoassets, including BTC.
Wallet generators
- WalletGenerator.net is an open-source, client-side wallet generator for 158 coins.
- Bitcoinpaperwallet.org lets you print out a tamper-resistant bitcoin wallet.
Did we miss a Bitcoin resource?
If there’s a Bitcoin resource not listed here that you find useful, please let us know so that we can add it. Leave a comment with a Twitter handle or link, and together we’ll make this the ultimate guide to Bitcoin.
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