Resources
Further Reading
Curated by Luke. Adapted and expanded from the appendix in Defending Bitcoin. Updated over time.
Bitcoin foundations
Saifedean Ammous
The economic argument for Bitcoin as sound money. The book most often cited as a Bitcoiner's second read.
Andreas M. Antonopoulos
The technical deep dive. Read this if you want to understand the protocol from the bytes up.
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System ↗
Satoshi Nakamoto
The whitepaper. Nine pages that started everything. More readable than you'd expect.
Broken Money
Lyn Alden
A thorough walk through monetary history and where Bitcoin fits inside it.
The Price of Tomorrow
Jeff Booth
Technology drives deflation, and fiat systems fight it. Referenced in Chapter 2.
The Big Print
Lawrence Lepard
Monetary debasement, its consequences, and the case for hard money. Lepard's own social engineering experience appears in Chapter 6.
Bitcoin Is for Everyone
Natalie Brunell
An accessible introduction to Bitcoin and sound money for a mainstream audience.
Bitcoin: Sovereignty through Mathematics
Knut Svanholm
The first of Svanholm's Bitcoin philosophy series. What sound money means and why it matters.
Bitcoin: Independence Reimagined
Knut Svanholm
Second in the philosophy series. Bitcoin as the tool that reframes personal independence.
Bitcoin: Everything Divided by 21 Million
Knut Svanholm
Third in the philosophy series. The supply cap as the lens for everything else.
Bitcoin: The Inverse of Clown World
Knut Svanholm and Luke de Wolf
Co-authored follow-up in the Svanholm philosophy series.
21 Lessons
Gigi
A personal, philosophical account of what Bitcoin teaches once you start paying attention.
The Blocksize War
Jonathan Bier
The fullest account of the 2015 to 2017 governance crisis. Required context for Chapter 12.
Operation Choke Point 2.0 Is Underway, and Crypto Is in Its Crosshairs ↗
Nic Carter
The coordinated debanking effort documented in near real time. Referenced in Chapter 13.
Three Years of Spam
Renaud Cuny
Data-driven analysis of inscription impact on the mempool. Referenced in Chapter 11.
BIP-110: The Corrected Analysis
Renaud Cuny
A data-led reassessment of the BIP-110 proposal to reduce arbitrary data on-chain.
Programming Bitcoin
Jimmy Song
Hands-on guide to Bitcoin's internals through building the components from scratch in Python.
Grokking Bitcoin
Kalle Rosenbaum
A visual, accessible introduction to Bitcoin's technical design without requiring programming experience.
Bitcoin Development Philosophy
Kalle Rosenbaum
How Bitcoin's development culture, processes, and values shape the protocol.
Trusted Third Parties Are Security Holes
Nick Szabo
The philosophical foundation for self-custody. Referenced in Chapter 6.
Eclipse Attacks on Bitcoin's Peer-to-Peer Network
Ethan Heilman et al.
Proved eclipse attacks were feasible with modest resources. Referenced in Chapter 10.
Hijacking Bitcoin: Routing Attacks on Cryptocurrencies
Maria Apostolaki, Aviv Zohar, and Laurent Vanbever
BGP-level attacks on Bitcoin's P2P network. Referenced in Chapter 10.
A Stealthier Partitioning Attack against Bitcoin Peer-to-Peer Network (EREBUS)
Muoi Tran et al.
ISP-level partitioning of the network without route hijacking. Referenced in Chapter 10.
The Core Issue: Keeping Bitcoin Core Secure
Niklas Gögge
Inside look at Bitcoin Core's security practices. Referenced in Chapter 12.
BIP-32: Hierarchical Deterministic Wallets ↗
Pieter Wuille
The standard that makes a single seed phrase generate an entire wallet.
BIP-39: Mnemonic Code for Generating Deterministic Keys ↗
Marek Palatinus and Pavol Rusnak
The twelve- or twenty-four-word seed phrase format in near-universal use.
Eric Lombrozo, Johnson Lau, and Pieter Wuille
The soft fork that separated witness data and enabled Lightning.
BIP-324: Version 2 P2P Encrypted Transport Protocol ↗
Dhruv Mehta, Tim Ruffing, Jonas Schnelli, and Pieter Wuille
Opportunistic encryption for Bitcoin's peer-to-peer connections.
BIP-360: Pay-to-Merkle-Root
Hunter Beast
Draft proposal for post-quantum output commitments.
BIP-110: Reduced Data Soft Fork
Bitcoin Core contributors
Draft soft fork to limit arbitrary data on-chain. Referenced in Chapter 11.
Algorithms for Quantum Computation: Discrete Logarithms and Factoring
Peter Shor
The algorithm that makes quantum a future threat to Bitcoin's signature scheme.
A Fast Quantum Mechanical Algorithm for Database Search
Lov Grover
The quadratic speedup relevant to SHA-256's long-run security margin.
Bitcoin and Quantum Computing: Current Status and Future Directions
Chaincode Labs
The most comprehensive Bitcoin-specific quantum readiness assessment to date.
Securing Elliptic Curve Cryptocurrencies against Quantum Vulnerabilities
Ryan Babbush et al. (Google Quantum AI)
secp256k1-specific resource estimates and address-type exposure analysis.
The Post-Quantum Security of Bitcoin's Taproot as a Commitment Scheme
Tim Ruffing et al.
Early research on adding post-quantum options to Taproot.
Miniscript: Streamlined Bitcoin Scripting
Pieter Wuille, Andrew Poelstra, and Sanket Kanjalkar
Framework for expressing Bitcoin spending conditions. Referenced in Chapter 7.
Human Action
Ludwig von Mises
The foundational text of praxeology and Austrian economics. The intellectual framework behind much of Bitcoin's economic philosophy.
The Creature from Jekyll Island
G. Edward Griffin
The creation of the Federal Reserve. Referenced in Chapter 2.
When Money Dies
Adam Fergusson
Hyperinflation as lived experience, drawn from Weimar Germany. Referenced in Chapter 2.
The Fiat Standard
Saifedean Ammous
The companion to The Bitcoin Standard, examining fiat's consequences in detail.
Principles of Economics
Saifedean Ammous
Austrian economics from first principles, written for a modern audience.
Layered Money
Nik Bhatia
Money as a layered system, from base-layer settlement to higher-layer credit.
The Shell Money of the Slave Trade
Jan Hogendorn and Marion Johnson
Monetary inflation through shell imports. Referenced in Chapter 2.
The Golden Constant
Roy Jastram
Historical gold-to-silver ratios and long-run purchasing power. Referenced in Chapter 2.
The Island of Stone Money
Milton Friedman
Rai stones and the nature of money. Referenced in Chapter 2.
World Hyperinflations
Steve H. Hanke and Nicholas Krus
The most comprehensive hyperinflation dataset available. Referenced in Chapter 2.
Money in Mesopotamia
Marvin A. Powell
Early silver as money. Referenced in Chapter 2.
Real-time mempool visualization, fee estimation, and blockchain explorer. The best place to check transaction status and network activity.
Live map and count of reachable Bitcoin nodes. Useful for checking network health and geographic distribution.
Weekly newsletters covering Bitcoin protocol development, with clear technical summaries. The best way to stay current on what's changing in Bitcoin's software.
Open-source design resources for Bitcoin applications. Useful if you're building tools or evaluating wallet UX.
Visualizations of economic trends since the end of the gold standard. Referenced in Chapter 2.
Cybersecurity foundations
Countdown to Zero Day
Kim Zetter
Stuxnet, told as a thriller. The reference for how state-level actors weaponize cyber against industrial systems.
Sandworm
Andy Greenberg
The Russian cyberwar against Ukraine's power grid. A worked example of why critical infrastructure deserves serious defense.
This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends
Nicole Perlroth
The market for zero-day exploits. The economic context behind every advanced attack you'll read about elsewhere.
We Have a Package for You! A Comprehensive Analysis of Package Hallucinations by Code Generating LLMs
Joseph Spracklen et al.
AI-generated dependency risks for software supply chains. Referenced in Chapter 15.
Confront and Conceal
David E. Sanger
Stuxnet from the geopolitical perspective. Referenced in Chapter 4.
If It's Smart, It's Vulnerable
Mikko Hyppönen
Everything networked is hackable, from the researcher who coined Hyppönen's Law. Foreword author of this book.
Hashcash — A Denial of Service Counter-Measure
Adam Back
Proof-of-work before Bitcoin. Referenced in Chapter 1.
FIPS 204, 205, and 206 — Post-Quantum Cryptography Standards
National Institute of Standards and Technology
The first NIST post-quantum cryptography standards, finalized in 2024.
CNSA 2.0 and CSfC Post-Quantum Cryptography Guidance Addendum
National Security Agency
NSA guidance on the migration timeline for post-quantum cryptography.
TeleGeography Submarine Cable Map ↗
TeleGeography
Global undersea cable infrastructure. Context for Chapter 14's discussion of internet chokepoints.
Industrial control systems
Industrial Network Security
Eric D. Knapp and Joel Thomas Langill
The most direct ICS and OT security reference. The right next read if you want to go deeper into the industrial frameworks used in this book.
ISA/IEC 62443 Series
International Society of Automation and International Electrotechnical Commission
The ICS security framework used throughout this book.
NIST SP 800-82 Rev. 3: Guide to Operational Technology Security ↗
National Institute of Standards and Technology
US government OT security guidance. A complementary reference to IEC 62443.
A Reference Model for Computer Integrated Manufacturing (the Purdue Model)
Theodore J. Williams
The architecture model applied to Bitcoin in Chapter 5.
Five Past Midnight in Bhopal
Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro
The 1984 Bhopal disaster. Referenced in Chapter 4 for safety-critical system failures.
Solar Storm Risk to the North American Electric Grid
Lloyd's of London
Carrington-class event risk assessment. Referenced in Chapter 14.
Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack
Congressional EMP Commission
The US government's baseline EMP threat assessment. Referenced in Chapter 14.
Privacy
The Praxeology of Privacy
Max Hillebrand
Privacy framed as an economic necessity rather than a preference. Referenced in Chapter 8.
A Fistful of Bitcoins: Characterizing Payments Among Men with No Names
Sarah Meiklejohn et al.
Foundational chain analysis research. Referenced in Chapter 8.
BIP-78: A Simple Payjoin Proposal ↗
Nicolas Dorier
A practical Payjoin standard that breaks the common-input-ownership heuristic.
Ruben Somsen and Josie Baker
Reusable addresses without the privacy downsides of address reuse.
Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments
David Chaum
The origin of digital cash. Referenced in Chapters 1 and 8.
CoinJoin Proposal
Gregory Maxwell
The original CoinJoin concept, posted on bitcointalk.org in 2013. Referenced in Chapter 8.
Emboldened Offenders, Endangered Communities: Internet Shutdowns in 2024 ↗
Access Now
Global internet shutdown tracking from the #KeepItOn project. Referenced in Chapter 14.
Access Now #KeepItOn Reports ↗
Access Now
Annual tracking of internet shutdowns worldwide. Context for Chapter 14's discussion of government-imposed connectivity disruptions.
Mining
Why Miners Won't Stop Spamming
Renaud Cuny
The mining incentives behind ongoing spam. Referenced in Chapter 12.
Majority Is Not Enough: Bitcoin Mining Is Vulnerable
Ittay Eyal and Emin Gün Sirer
The selfish mining paper. Shows that 51 percent isn't the real threshold. Referenced in Chapter 9.
Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) ↗
Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance
The most cited source for Bitcoin's energy consumption and mining geography.
Podcasts
Knut Svanholm and Luke de Wolf
Long-form Bitcoin conversations. The author's own podcast.
The Saylor Series
Robert Breedlove
Collected conversations with Michael Saylor on Bitcoin, energy, history, and monetary philosophy.
Conferences
The first large-scale Bitcoin conference in the Nordics. Held annually in Helsinki.