Earlier this year we made our online course on Bitcoin publicly available — 11 video lectures and draft chapters of our textbook-in-progress, including exercises. The response has been very positive: numerous students have sent us thanks, comments, feedback, and a few error corrections. We’ve heard that our materials are being used in courses at a few universities. Some students have even translated the chapters to other languages.
Coursera. I’m very happy to announce that the course is now available as a Princeton University online course on Coursera. The first iteration starts next Friday, September 4. The Coursera version offers embedded quizzes to test your understanding; you’ll also be part of a community of students to discuss the lectures with (about 10,000 15,000 have already signed up). We’ve also fixed all the errors we found thanks to the video editing skillz of the Princeton Broadcast Center folks. Sign up now, it’s free!
We’re closely watching ongoing developments in the cryptocurrency world such as Ethereum. Whenever a body of scientific knowledge develops around a new area, we will record additional lectures. The Coursera class already includes one additional lecture: it’s on the history of cryptocurrencies by Jeremy Clark. Jeremy is the ideal person to give this lecture for many reasons, including the fact that he worked with David Chaum for many years.
Jeremy Clark lecturing on the history of cryptocurrencies
Textbook. We’re finishing the draft of the textbook; Chapter 8 was released today and the rest will be coming out in the next few weeks. The textbook closely follows the structure of the lectures, but the textual format has allowed us to refine and polish the explanations, making them much clearer in many places, in my opinion.
I’m excited to announce that we’ll be publishing the textbook with Princeton University Press. The draft chapters will continue to be available free of charge, but you should buy the book — it will be peer reviewed, professionally edited and typeset, and the graphics will be re-done professionally.
Finally, if you’re an educator interested in teaching Bitcoin, write to us and we’ll be happy to share with you some educational materials that aren’t yet public.
Thoroughly enjoyed the first 2 lectures on coursera — really like the way it speaks to the intuition behind various design choices. Thanks a lot for making the effort to do this. Much appreciated.
How can I contact you? Fb profile?
You can email me at