Students begin by understanding the fundamentals of value, money, and financial systems, including their evolution, weaknesses, and Bitcoin's role as a response to systemic failures.
- Value, History of Money and The Role of Money in History.
- Types of monetary systems: raw materials, ledger-based, fiduciary, etc.
- Schools of Economics from Smith to New Institutionalists.
- The flaws of the traditional financial system: inflation, monetary censorship, and authoritarianism.
- Bitcoin as a solution to financial oppression and the control of money.
- The evolution of digital money: From credit to crypto-cash.
- [The Internet of Money, a collection of talks by Andreas M. Antonopoulos](Original Talks)
- Schools of Economic Thought)
- Ferguson, N. (2008). The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World. Penguin Press.
- Graeber, D. (2011). Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Melville House.
- Mishkin, F. S. (2018). The Economics of Money, Banking, and Financial Markets (12th ed.). Pearson.
- Rothbard, M. N. (2008). What Has Government Done to Our Money? Ludwig von Mises Institute.
- Hayek, F. A. (1976). "Denationalisation of Money: The Argument Refined." Hobart Paper Special 70.
- Selgin, G. (2015). "Synthetic Commodity Money." Journal of Financial Stability, 17, 92-99.
- White, L. H. (1999). The Theory of Monetary Institutions. Blackwell Publishers.
Introducing cryptographic principles that underpin Bitcoin’s security, ensuring students understand key mathematical concepts.
- Fundamentals of cryptography
- Hash functions and hash pointers (with graphics)
- The role of ledgers and timestamping
- Merkle trees and data integrity
- Digital signatures and their role in Bitcoin
- Elliptic curve ECDSA & secp256k1 (and Schnorr signatures?)
- Public-key cryptography: How public and private keys work
- Principle: "Not your keys, not your coins"
- Katz, J., & Lindell, Y. (2020). Introduction to Modern Cryptography (3rd ed.). CRC Press.
- Boneh, D., & Shoup, V. (2020). A Graduate Course in Applied Cryptography. Stanford University.
- Menezes, A. J., Van Oorschot, P. C., & Vanstone, S. A. (2018). Handbook of Applied Cryptography. CRC Press.
- Merkle, R. C. (1987). "A Digital Signature Based on a Conventional Encryption Function."
- Johnson, D., Menezes, A., & Vanstone, S. (2001). "The Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA)."
- Haber, S., & Stornetta, W. S. (1991). "How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document."
Exploring the origins of Bitcoin, how it builds on previous cryptographic ideas, and why Satoshi Nakamoto's solution was unique.
- Bitcoin's Academic Pedigree
- Bitcoin Philosophy and Cypherpunks
- Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? The significance of the Bitcoin Whitepaper
- Nakamoto, S. (2008). "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System."
- Narayanan, A., & Clark, J. (2017). "Bitcoin's Academic Pedigree." Communications of the ACM, 60(12), 36–45.
- May, T. C. (1992). "The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto."
- Chaum, D. (1983). "Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments."
- Back, A. (2002). "Hashcash - A Denial of Service Counter-Measure."
- Szabo, N. (1998). "Secure Property Titles with Owner Authority."
Bitcoin’s ability to remove intermediaries is a core part of its value proposition—this class explores how decentralization achieves that goal.
- Identity in Bitcoin: Pseudonymity vs. anonymity
- Centralization vs. decentralization in financial systems
- The public transaction ledger: How the blockchain works
- Exploring Bitcoin transactions using blockchain explorers
- Barabási, A. L. (2016). Network Science. Cambridge University Press.
- Baran, P. (1964). "On Distributed Communications Networks."
- Reid, F., & Harrigan, M. (2013). "An Analysis of Anonymity in the Bitcoin System."
- Meiklejohn, S., et al. (2013). "A Fistful of Bitcoins."
- Ron, D., & Shamir, A. (2013). "Quantitative Analysis of the Full Bitcoin Transaction Graph."
- Distributed consensus and the Byzantine Generals Problem
- The Bitcoin consensus algorithm (simplified)
- Sybil attacks and their mitigation
- Double-spending and Bitcoin's solution
- The problem of trust in digital transactions
- Narayanan, A., et al. (2016). Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies. Princeton University Press.
- Antonopoulos, A. M. (2017). Mastering Bitcoin (2nd ed.). O’Reilly.
- Lamport, L., Shostak, R., & Pease, M. (1982). "The Byzantine Generals Problem."
- Douceur, J. R. (2002). "The Sybil Attack."
- Karame, G. O., et al. (2012). "Double-Spending Fast Payments in Bitcoin."
- Dan Boneh: Blockchain Primitives: Cryptography and Consensus
Explores Bitcoin’s potential for financial empowerment, especially in underbanked regions.
- Democracies and Human Rights
- Bitcoin and Financial Inclusion: The unbanked populations
- International remittances and high-inflation economies
- Case Studies: Venezuela, Argentina, Nigeria
- Ammous, S. (2018). The Bitcoin Standard. Wiley.
- Casey, M., & Vigna, P. (2018). The Truth Machine. St. Martin's Press.
- Auer, R., & Tercero-Lucas, D. (2022). "Distrust or Speculation?"
- Bergara, M., & Ponce, J. (2018). "Bitcoin Adoption in Latin America: The Case Study of Argentina."
- Hanke, S. H., & Kwok, S. H. (2009). "On the Measurement of Zimbabwe's Hyperinflation."
Concludes the course with an overview of security risks and how to recognize scams in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
- Beyond Bitcoin: Ethereum, ICOs, and scams
- Types of scams:
- Ponzi & pyramid schemes
- Fake investment platforms
- Phishing & wallet threats
- Impersonation & social engineering
- Red flags in ICOs
- Bitcoin: Money as Language and the Multi-Currency Future
- Moore, T., & Christin, N. (2013). "Beware the Middleman."
- Vasek, M., & Moore, T. (2015). "There's No Free Lunch."
- Bartoletti, M., et al. (2017). "Dissecting Ponzi Schemes on Ethereum."
- Zetzsche, D. A., et al. (2017). "The ICO Gold Rush."
- FATF (2021). "Risk-Based Approach to Virtual Assets."
- Houben, R., & Snyers, A. (2018). "Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain: Legal Context."
Students demonstrate their understanding by applying course concepts in a research paper, case study, or practical project.
- Weekly Quizzes & Assignments (20%) – Theoretical reinforcement.
- Midterm Exam (20%) – Focused on cryptography and decentralization.
- Socratic Seminars (20%) – Peer evaluations.
- Final Project (40%) – Research paper, scam investigation, or technical build.