Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Bitcoin Clarity: The Complete Beginners Guide to Understanding

Rate this book
"The best book about bitcoin I’ve read to date. It’s a damn masterpiece." —Leigh Cuen, writer, and reporter with CoinDesk

"This is truly one of the best books for readers to begin to understand something as complex as bitcoin. Really tactical and well written. Highly recommend." —Marcus, five star reviewer

Have you heard of, or stumbled upon, magically internet money? Kiara Bickers’ Bitcoin Clarity is the solution to the struggle many people face when trying to understand Bitcoin. This method focuses on mental models, visuals, and systems thinking instead of code as a way to explain Bitcoin without price hype or industry jargon. Understanding Bitcoin doesn’t come by someone telling you exactly what Bitcoin is, but by giving you a new perspective to see it from.

Whether you are an entrepreneur, an investor, a politician running for office, or a pageant mom matching big dresses to tiaras, Bitcoin Clarity will forever transform the way you look at money, what cryptocurrency is, and why you are interested in it, to begin with.

Paperback

First published September 1, 2020

Loading interface...
Loading interface...

About the author

Kiara Bickers

1 book24 followers

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
48 (40%)
4 stars
52 (43%)
3 stars
10 (8%)
2 stars
5 (4%)
1 star
4 (3%)
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
Profile Image for John.
64 reviews
January 12, 2021
We are still at the point where other than possibly Mastering Bitcoin, there really aren't any standard texts on bitcoin or cryptocurrencies. Mastering Bitcoin has been my go-to text to recommend so far but it mostly fits a very technical audience. There is a real need for a semi-technical introduction to bitcoin.

Bitcoin Clarity seems to be the best for that semi-technical introduction to bitcoin on the market that I've come across. Even without getting deep into cryptography or consensus mechanisms, there is a lot of unfamiliarity and complexity surrounding bitcoin. We should be many years past that point where people view it as just magic internet money, but deep down, that is still how many people view it. This book excels at explaining the overall mental model one needs to think about bitcoin.

I would highly recommend this book for anyone either getting started on bitcoin or just trying to make sure they actually understand it. A technical reader will probably then graduate to something more in depth in the tech, but this book is still a good first stop.

My one complaint is that the author is way too much of a bitcoin maximalist and that does not help the text. There is nothing wrong with preferring bitcoin to ethereum for example, but the general dismissiveness to altcoins is distracting and causes some lost opportunities for understanding (some things about bitcoin are much clearer in my opinion when viewed in comparison to other chains or coins. In particular, the insistence on calling bitcoin-cash bcoin which is totally non-standard outside of the bitcoin maximalists is unhelpful.

Even with that one complaint, this is an excellent intro to a topic and I am always looking for new resources about bitcoin that I can recommend to people so I'm happy to have this to add in to it.
Profile Image for Lydia Wallace.
419 reviews66 followers
January 26, 2021
Truly one of the best books for readers to begin to understand something as complex as Bitcoin. I am in my sixties and never understood what Bitcoin consisted of. This really opened my eyes and made me understand. I can talk with my young adults children about Bitcoin now, which they are already educated about. A must read. Never too late to learn something new.
Profile Image for Kirk.
27 reviews7 followers
November 24, 2019
Wow! I'm the first to review this book. I'm honored. I think Bitcoin Clarity is a great introduction to bitcoin. And because bitcoin is the granddaddy of blockchain technology as we know it today, it also serves as a great introduction to how blockchains (should) work.

Two thoughts for future readers:
* This book's main strength is tip-toeing the line between the technical and non-technical. Kiara does a fantastic job walking you to the edge of a really difficult concept. She lets you peer into that technical world from afar and explains it with examples.
* Kiara says from the start that this book is less about how bitcoin works and more about why it matters that it works. In practice, most of the book does actually talk about how bitcoin works. The philosophy underpinning bitcoin is sprinkled throughout, but you're still approaching that discussion through the lens of how the technology actually works. So if you want to know how bitcoin works, this book is actually a great primer and the writing is clear and direct.


In no particular order, my own notes from the book:
* Kiara writes that it's a flaw to compare bitcoin to a bank because banks serve functions aside from storing and sending money. I would push back against this. For a novice, comparing bitcoin to a bank is appropriate. The defining characteristic of a bank is that it has a charter (and the infrastructure to support that charter) that allows people to store money. In that sense, bitcoin is like a bank. Conversely, if you are not a bank then you cannot store money. You can serve some functions of a bank (e.g., sending, lending) but ultimately you still need to partner with a bank if you want to keep that money anywhere. So I would argue that instead of saying bitcoin is not a bank, for the sake of helping someone understand bitcoin the best way to think of it is that bitcoin expands the definition of a bank: it serves all the functions of a bank as we know it today and adds so much more value in terms of security and decentralization.
* The book discusses the centralization of mining servers. They are being consolidated among a few companies in a few countries, mainly China. I wish there was a deeper discussion on the implications of this. If the bitcoin network is trust(less) and decentralized but depends on a centralized group of miners, what are the potential risks? Are people worried about this? Is anything being done to mitigate this risk? Is the entire system of bitcoin undermined if the miners powering the network are in the hands of a few very large companies? Are we just creating the 2.0 version of the world we already have where power and money are concentrated in the hands of a few actors (people, states, companies)?
* There is a lot of discussion around the fixed supply of bitcoin (21 million) and its benefits. But to anyone familiar with the history of the gold standard, having a fixed 21 million bitcoins sounds like a harbinger of a future broken economic system. Fixing a currency to a physical and limited asset has been done before when we had the USD on the gold standard. That system created so much pressure on our economy that one of the most famous speeches in American history was about how that pressure made Americans feel like they were being "crucified on a cross of gold." The more people use bitcoin, the less bitcoin will be available, which will apply pressure to the economic system. We went off the gold standard to alleviate that pressure. How does bitcoin prevent this from happening again?
Profile Image for Jeanne Boyarsky.
Author 32 books74 followers
September 6, 2020
This book is great! It's readable by anyone although those in technology will get more out of it. The book is a great intro to Bitcoin. The diagrams and analogies make Bitcoin (and blockchain) relatable and less opaque. For example, peer to peer and private keys are covered using a non-technical approach.

If you are familiar with Bitcoin, you can skim the basics and skip ahead a bit. The ramifications of decisions in the blockchain are well explored. For example, what the impact on changes to fees are. While the book is mostly about Bitcoin, one of the examples is about Ethereum so the ecosystem is discussed two.

I learned with UTXO (unspent transaction output) is. I had trouble understanding how a chain split works. It was explained later though so then I was un-confused. I also learned what the term cypherpunk means.

I particularly liked the decision tree on page 212 for choosing what type of wallet to go with. The glossary is helpful as well including the bolded terms in the text for glossary words.

There's lots of “easter eggs” for techies like the word Kiara including her ancestors recursively in the dedication. That makes it fun to read. Also very cool that she wrote the first paper wallet generator on iOS.

Finally, I thought it was cool that Kiara brought back Bickers & Son almost eighty years later for this book.

---

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for writing this review.
Profile Image for Helen.
632 reviews6 followers
November 17, 2020
Excellent explanations (and diagrams) with lots of humor and intelligence. I knew very little about Bitcoin before reading this book, but I now have the knowledge needed to decide whether to invest in Bitcoin and how much to buy. There is a great diagram in Chapter 12 that guides the reader into deciding what the right wallet is for each person. For myself, I prefer being able to trade quickly so I'm probably going to use a Canadian exchange (like Shakepay). I would have appreciated a chapter (or six) on the practical steps to buy/sell Bitcoin. Otherwise this book exceeded my expectations and is highly recommended!

PS The paperback edition uses excellent quality paper, strong binding and feels great in your hands. A big thank-you to goodreads and the author for providing me with a free copy in exchange for my honest review.

Bitcoin is everything people don’t understand about computers, combined with everything they don’t understand about money.

Bitcoin is not just a currency, it’s a network, and a network is only as valuable as the number of people using it.

All currencies are faith-based. Some have more faithful believers than others.
Profile Image for Jon Hodl.
1 review
October 8, 2020
Bitcoin clarity is one of the absolute best bitcoin books available.

Kiara does a great job or explaining some of the more complex terms in incredibly simple terms while also eliminating a lot of the noise that confuses newer readers.

As you continue further through this book, you will absolutely gain more clarity on some of the more complex principles and concepts of bitcoin. Here are just a few things that Kiara does a phenomenal job of explaining.

- Assets and liabilities.
- Nodes and transaction propagation
- Mining difficulty
- Consensus
- Markets
- Order, Chaos, and Randomness
- Knowns and Unknowns

...and a whole bunch of other things that will increase your understanding of not just bitcoin itself but dealing with human problems.

I can't really do this book justice in a short review. If you want to learn more about bitcoin in an easy to understand format, this book is a must read.
Profile Image for Kim.
1,405 reviews
January 15, 2021
Couldn't get into this book. Wish I could have. This was a free book I won off of Library Thing.
Profile Image for Craig.
60 reviews20 followers
September 23, 2020
[Disclaimer: The author provided me with a free copy.]

Although The Little Bitcoin Book is a great intro read for non-technical outsiders, and I’ve received positive feedback about it from at least a couple people I gifted it to, it’s going to be a little too simplified for a large segment of the curious-but-uninitiated readership, leaving many wanting concerning the technicals—of which the book contains basically zero. TLBB is maybe what you’d want to hand to people who freeze in a look of panic at the mere mention of Bitcoin, those whose technical background leaves you doubtful that you’d be able to explain Bitcoin to them even if you had a month to do it.

Kiara Bickers’s Bitcoin Clarity is geared toward a readership a technical step or two above TLBB’s. This is what you’d hand to someone you feel you could explain Bitcoin to if you just had a whiteboard and an hour or two to babble at them. And if you’re the one doing the learning, Bitcoin Clarity goes over what you need to know in a sensible way that saves you the torment of being babbled at by some over-hyped enthusiast.

Filled with clarifying diagrams and everyday analogies, the book inhabits a nice niche with appeal both to those who’d simply like to make enough sense of Bitcoin to be able to follow conversations and news stories as well as those looking for a stepping stone to more technical books and online materials. After fleshing out the hows of Bitcoin the book shifts to fit this knowledge within the whys of sound money. An unusual organizing feature that I’d like to see spread to other books is the combined glossary/index.

Although The Little Bitcoin Book is less technically advanced it’ll still provide a good complementary read as it touches (briefly) on a broader range of topics such as human rights and leaves the reader with a better grasp of Bitcoin’s worldwide appeal. But Bitcoin Clarity is the book I wish I’d had to start with. “For the first time in our lives, we are entering a world where consumers can shop around for the type of currency they want to use.”
1 review
December 2, 2020
As a member of the Bitcoin ecosystem since 2014, I have studied everything from Princeton's Cryptocurrency course, The Internet of Money by Andreas, and the book of Satoshi to name just a few.

So when I got Bitcoin Clarity I wanted to know what stood it apart. I could see there was a new layer and understanding that the book was built on that many have missed since the epic 2017 bull run and instead of focusing on just price appreciation there are actual explanations and evidence to back it up.

The reference point Bitcoin Clarity makes from explaining how bitcoin works, why it works and so much more allow this read to refresh the way you think about Bitcoin going into 2021 and beyond.
Profile Image for KathyNV.
311 reviews5 followers
January 27, 2021
Wow! Not sure I really understand bitcoin fully but I sure know way more than I ever did before! This is a must read especially if you have or are thinking of investing in bitcoin. Thank you so much to Kiara Bickers for the opportunity to read a comprehensive and down to earth explanation of one of the hottest and least understood investments around!
Profile Image for Tom Handy.
23 reviews
November 15, 2020
Excellent book written by Kiara. The book is well written and explains a lot of the history of Bitcoin without the technical jargon to confuse you. I'm not a techie and understood the book. This is one book you need to buy to understand Bitcoin better.
50 reviews
November 3, 2020
As a pure stock trader, Bicker's book thoroughly dove into all the basics of Bitcoin and its valuation. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to get started or just curious about Bitcoin.
Profile Image for Jenn.
663 reviews
December 11, 2020
I won a copy of this book.

The only thing I knew about Bitcoin prior to this book is: It is an online currency, there are people who "mine" bitcoins, there are a finite number available, and my husband has been complaining about the price of computer components going up.

I don't completely understand Bitcoin now, but I have a better understanding of it. I'm not going to try to explain it better here, Kiara Bickers does a good enough job for me. Bickers clears up some of the questions I had while giving a really nice explanation of how the whole system works.
879 reviews10 followers
October 21, 2021
Bitcoin Clarity (2019) by Kiara Bickers. This is the best book I have ever reading that tries to explain Bitcoin, it’s history, how it works and how it works for you. But it is the only book of this nature I have read and I still don’t understand Bitcoin. For this I blame the student, not the teacher. I have loaned this book to others and they tell me it is brilliant. I will stand but their judgement.
213 reviews27 followers
October 23, 2020
Very good book for someone like me who is interested but mstified by cryptocurrency. Plenty of info.
Profile Image for Stacy Blomquist.
220 reviews2 followers
February 12, 2021
Laura Bickers clearly understands Bitcoin, she does an excellent job of explaining the cryptocurrency. She utilizes numerous diagrams and illustrations, which are very helpful. "Bitcoin is everything people don't know about computers, combined with everything they don't understand about money." In many ways, she clarifies how Bitcoin works, defining all sorts of difficult terms. For someone wanting to educate themselves about Bitcoin, her book is an excellent resource. My only complaint is that she could have used a better proofreader. On page 198: "Good businesses put every dollar back into the business to grow, so that no one an compete. One (should be once) they've won, they then figure out how to monetize that business." On page 204: "My hope is that this chapter of the book can catch some [of] the young people considering going to college right now and stop them."
659 reviews25 followers
January 17, 2023
Nothing about this was clear. Basically, you must thoroughly understand Bitcoin to start, and she will clarify how she sees it. This was too technical to be comprehensive. It felt like the author googled a bunch of terms associated with Bitcoin and guessed how they were a part of Bitcoin. To make it seem believable, they made horrible attempts to make them relatable to real life situations. The visual aids only made things worse. I managed to know less about Bitcoin than when I started. I started at zero. Yes, my knowledge of Bitcoin is now negative thanks to this book.

#GoodreadsGiveaway
432 reviews5 followers
November 26, 2020
Disclaimer: I received this book as part of GoodReads' First Reads program.

Bitcoin clarity is a high level introduction to the world of digital currency, specifically Botcoin. It goes over the history, the various components and the various jobs involved. It reads a bit like a textbook, but a very readable textbook, and I would recommend it to anyone who has any interest in Bitcoin at all, whether to invest, or, like me, to gain some understanding of what it's all about.
Profile Image for Anas Alrowaili.
150 reviews1 follower
July 29, 2022
The book provide what the title says.

Loved the book the explanation and how the author is not trying to sell you the idea of buying or investing in bitcoin rather educate you so you can make the decision yourself

Cheers to the author!
1,383 reviews36 followers
November 8, 2020
This book tells the ready all they need to know about Bitcoin. I found it very informative.
49 reviews1 follower
April 24, 2021
I didn't know much about Bitcoin before but this book helped to clear things up a bit. I don't know if I could explain it to others, but Kiara Bickers does a great job of that.
159 reviews2 followers
Want to read
May 5, 2021
Great I won the giveaway, can't wait to start reading
Profile Image for Gerard O'Neill.
Author 4 books26 followers
May 25, 2023
An excellent source of information. If you want to learn about bitcoin, and the blockchain, you won't regret picking up this book.
Profile Image for Roman Zadorozhnii.
157 reviews28 followers
July 12, 2021
“Bitcoin is everything people don’t know about computers, combined with everything they don’t understand about money”

“Bitcoin is a protocol for transferring value securely over the insecure internet”

“Bitcoin is only as valuable as we all agree it is; it’s our collective recognition that gives its value”
444 reviews2 followers
April 2, 2021
This book is as you can guess about Bitcoin. At times it technical and other times not so much. You get into blockchain ec so its a lot to take in. I did find the graphics helpful. At times I thought I got it but then there are other moments where I was confused again. It is an informative book that’s for sure but I think I’ll just stick to my dollars.

By the way I loved the cover art for the book.

https://theworldisabookandiamitsreade...
Profile Image for Erin.
243 reviews16 followers
October 15, 2023
I feel bad giving this one star as I know nothing about bitcoin, except that I have a wallet but never had an actual bitcoin of any type.

I wanted to learn more, but the author lost me on page 2, tried to make it through chapter one but no way. Did not finish book, not even chapter one.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.