[graniter]

I wonder, how many of us here actually understand Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies? I know several of us probably use them, but even amongst the tech-savy, there seem to be very few who actually understand it, and even fewer of those who participate in the programming of it. I understand the descriptions of blockchains and it's advantages, but I've never looked at any code. And I realize that anyone could in theory look at the code and participate, but it's out of the reach of most programmers I think, let alone regular people. So while on the one hand it seems to be a great "power to the people" currency option, it's really still in the hands of a few.

[nolemurs]

> but it's out of the reach of most programmers

It's actually really not all that difficult. There are lots of details, and understanding it all end to end is definitely a task most people will never do, but the issue is simply one of effort and motivation, not of fundamental difficulty.

[ric2b]

The white-paper is about 10 pages long and completely approachable to programmers with some knowledge of hashing functions and public-key cryptography.

The biggest challenge is understanding how all the pieces fit together, the pieces themselves aren't any kind of ground-breaking computer science.