Ramanujan Auditorium

An introduction to bitcoin

S. P. Suresh

Bitcoin is an exciting new digital currency, introduced in 2009, and increasingly gaining currency on the Internet. It has captured the imagination of people ranging from economists, libertarians, cryptographers, and computer scientists to speculators, pirates, and hackers. In this lecture we present the basics of Bitcoin, and give a brief overview of some of the fundamental concepts from cryptography and distributed computing that enable its implementation. We also briefly touch upon its philosophy, emphasizing its decentralized nature.