Learning Bitcoin from the Command-Line

NOTE: This is a draft in progress, so that I can get some feedback from early reviewers. It is not yet ready for use.

Copyright

Unless otherwise noted, the contents of this repository areCopyright ©2017 by Christopher Allen <ChristopherA@LifeWithAlacrity.com> and are licensed CC-BY.

Introduction

The best way to learn to learn deeply about bitcoin is to avoid GUIs (even bitcoin-qt), and instead learn it from the command line.

Requirements

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

Files

• 1.0: Bitcoin-Core Basics — Pending
• 2.0: Setting Up a Bitcoin-Core VPS
  • 2.1: Setting Up a Bitcoin-Core VPS by Hand
  • 2.2: Setting Up a Bitcoin-Core VPS with StackScript.md
    • Linode_Bitcoin-Core_VPS_Setup.stackscript
• 3.0: Understanding Your Bitcoin Setup
  • 3.1: Verifying Your Bitcoin Setup
  • 3.2: Knowing Your Bitcoin Setup
  • 3.3: Setting Up Your Wallet
    • Interlude: Using Command-Line Variables
  • 3.4: Receiving a Transaction
• 4.0: Creating Basic Bitcoin Transactions
  • 4.1: Sending Coins the Easy Way
  • 4.2: Creating a Raw Transaction
    • Interlude: Using JQ
  • 4.3: Creating a Raw Transaction with Named Arguments
  • 4.4: Sending Coins with Raw Transactions
  • 4.5: Sending Coins with Automated Raw Transactions
• 5.0: Empowering Bitcoin Transactions
  • 5.1 Watching for Stuck Transactions
  • 5.2: Resending a Transaction with RBF
  • 5.3: Funding a Transaction with CPFP
  • 5.4: Sending a Raw Transaction with Data
  • 5.5: Sending a Raw Transaction with a Locktime — Pending

Planned Future Work

• 6.0: Introducing Bitcoin Scripting

  • 6.1: Understanding the Foundation of Bitcoin
  • 6.2: Scripting a Pay to Public Key Hash
  • 6.3: Executing a Script
  • 6.4: Executing CLTV

• 7.0: Using Multisignatures in Transactions

  • 7.1: Creating Multisig Addresses with Bitcoin-cli
  • 7.2: Sending to Multisig Addresses
  • 7.3: Understanding the OP Basis of Multisigs
  • 7.4: Understanding the Script Basis of Multisigs
  • 7.5: Creating Multisig Scripts

• 8.0: Empowering Bitcoin Scripting

  • 8.X: Scripting a Pay to Script Hash

• 9.0: Introducing SegWit

  • 9.X Scripting a Pay to Witness

• X.0: Introducing Elements

• X.0: Individual Elements

• Appendix: Compiling Bitcoin