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What is this place?

This website is a vast collection of links to bitcoin only resources (think websites, software, videos etc that are focused on bitcoin). Content is grouped into sections which you can quickly get back to by pressing the Main Menu button at the bottom of each page.

Who made this?

My name is (@6102bitcoin), I'm a pseudonymous bitcoin user and educator doing what I can to accelerate bitcoin understanding. I have done my best to ensure that this site only links to high quality resources, but in the words of Matt Odell - 'I'm merely a tool in your own quest for knowledge. My aim is to help you but I demand you do your own due diligence.'

How do I use this site?

This guide will be extended soon

What's a good bitcoin setup?

See my Bitcoin Guide for my suggested setup.
More generally:
Visit the Wallets section, pick a wallet for your device.Visit the Get-Bitcoin section, get some bitcoin (BTC) and send it to your wallet.Visit the Spend-Bitcoin section, spend some bitcoin on something to see how easy it is.

Why bitcoin only?

Max Hillebrand made a great video that explains why being bitcoin only makes sense.

Bitcoin?

Written by Greg Walker

What is bitcoin?

Bitcoin is an electronic payment system, but really it’s just a computer program.

When you run the program, it connects to other computers running the same program all over the world. This creates a massive network of computers that can communicate and share information with each other. All of this happens for one reason… to share a file, and this file is called the blockchain.

The blockchain is a file that contains transactions. Anyone can make a transaction and insert it in to a computer on the network. From here, it will be passed from computer to computer until everyone has a copy. Eventually, this transaction makes it in to the blockchain.

However, there’s a problem.

You can actually insert two conflicting transactions in to the network at the same time. For example, you can buy a pizza in one transaction, then create another transaction and use the same bitcoin to buy some beer. If you insert both of these transactions in to different ends of the network at the same time, some computers will get the pizza transaction first, and some computers will get the beer transaction first.

Who should get the bitcoin?

Both of these transactions can’t be written to the file, as that would be a “double-spend”. Still, we have a network of computers with conflicting transactions on them, and no single computer is in charge. So how can we decide?

Bitcoin solves this problem through a system called “mining”. Instead of writing all new transactions on to the blockchain (and writing double-spends on to the file), all new transactions get held in a waiting area called the “memory pool”. From here, each computer can collect the transactions from their memory pool in to a “block”, and try to add this block of transactions on to the blockchain. Whoever adds their block on to the blockchain first decides which transaction makes it.

So this is where the competition starts…

Each computer starts by putting their block (every block is different) through what’s called a “hash function”. This hash function takes in a block, and scrambles it to produce a random number from it. Unusual, I know, but this is what hash functions do. Interestingly, nobody knows what number a hash function will spit out based on the data you feed in to it – you just have to try it and find out.

Anyway, the contest here is to try and get a number from this hash function (or to be precise, a “block hash”) that is below a certain threshold number. If you can manage to get a low enough number from your block, you can add it on to the blockchain.

And that’s the competition.

For example, let’s say I have the beer transaction in my memory pool. I will construct a block, put that beer transaction inside it, then put that block through the hash function. If the number that comes out isn’t below the threshold, my attempt has failed. However, I can always make a tiny adjustment to the data inside the block (e.g. add a bit of extra data to the end of the block), and put it through the hash function again.

So “mining” basically involves hashing my block as fast as I can, trying to be the first to get a result below the threshold. If I get lucky, I will be the first computer on the network to do so. If this happens, I can send this block to all the other computers on the network, and they will add it on to their blockchain. Then, because this block contains the beer transaction, the conflicting pizza transaction gets kicked out of memory.

So by pure luck and randomness, the beer transaction is the one that makes it in to the blockchain.

The beer transaction may have entered the network slightly after the pizza transaction, but it doesn’t matter. It just so happened that a computer with the beer transaction in its memory was able to build a block and get a low enough hash for it before anyone else, so all nodes accept this block and add it to their file. Any conflicting transactions that are in memory get thrown away.

Upon receiving this new successful block, nodes will drop the current block they were working on and go back in to their memory pool to create a new one. This means that the blockchain is constantly being built, with new blocks of transactions being added on to the chain roughly every 10 minutes.

As a result, we have a system where anyone can insert transactions in to a network of computers, and these computers will all work hard to try and add them on to a shared file.

Thanks to this system of “mining” (preventing any double-spends from being written to the file), we have created an electronic payment system that runs over a network of computers, and it all runs without a cental point of control.

That’s Bitcoin.

Hardware

Wallets

On-Chain

Custodial

[1] : Blue Wallet's Lightning is Custodial by Default but users can opt to connect their app to their own Lightning Node using LNDhub. The On-Chain functionality is non-custodial.

[2] : Wallet of Satoshi is fully custodial meaning you do not have your private keys, thus you are not guaranteed full control of your funds.

[3] : Tippin.me is fully custodial meaning you do not have your private keys, thus you are not guaranteed full control of your funds.

[4] : Opennode is fully custodial meaning you do not have your private keys, thus you are not guaranteed full control of your funds. You can (and should) set reoccurring withdrawals to send any bitcoin you receive to your own wallet.

[5] : Bottle.li is fully custodial meaning you do not have your private keys, thus you are not guaranteed full control of your funds

Advanced Users

Books

These books explicitly cover bitcoin only.

More technical resources can be found in dev-tools.

Periodicals

These periodicals explicitly cover bitcoin only.

Advanced Reading

Network

Explorers

Get Bitcoin

Long gone are the days that you could mine Bitcoin using common hardware. Bitcoin mining is now dominated by specialist hardware powered by low cost electricity. This video gives a simple overview.

Store Tools

[*] : Opennode is fully custodial meaning you do not have your private keys, thus you are not guaranteed full control of your funds. You can (and should) set reoccurring withdrawals to send any bitcoin you receive to your own wallet. You are now also required to submit KYC Documentation to be an Opennode merchant.

Conferences

Contact

Have any questions? Need some help? Please do get in touch and I'll do my best to help.

@bitcoinonly_ | sixoneohtwo@protonmail.com

These requirements are a good way to filter out those companies who are actually committed to being bitcoin only vs. those jumping on the bandwagon.

It also serves a secondary purpose - to help educating those users who are not (yet) bitcoin only and begin to counteract the damage caused by previously supporting altcoins.

Note: This is a prerequisite for being evaluated for addition and meeting these requirements does not guarantee you will be added.

How do I get my project added?

Simply make an issue on the GitHub repo by following this link and clicking the Content Suggestion - Get Started button (see below image).

Replace the words in CAPITAL LETTERS and click Sumbit New Issue

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Thanks to all the sites/podcasts that have helped with growth of the site. To accelerate site growth & to support great projects some grassroots promotion has been sponsored.

If I missed your shout out please get in touch and I'll make amends.

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