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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies by Princeton University

4.6
stars
2,970 ratings

About the Course

To really understand what is special about Bitcoin, we need to understand how it works at a technical level. We’ll address the important questions about Bitcoin, such as: How does Bitcoin work? What makes Bitcoin different? How secure are your Bitcoins? How anonymous are Bitcoin users? What determines the price of Bitcoins? Can cryptocurrencies be regulated? What might the future hold? After this course, you’ll know everything you need to be able to separate fact from fiction when reading claims about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. You’ll have the conceptual foundations you need to engineer secure software that interacts with the Bitcoin network. And you’ll be able to integrate ideas from Bitcoin in your own projects. Course Lecturers: Arvind Narayanan, Princeton University All the features of this course are available for free. It does not offer a certificate upon completion....

Top reviews

NG

Dec 22, 2017

I've gained a strong knowledge of Bitcoin's architecture but wish this course was updated to include the developments of the last two years. A few lectures on alt-coins would have been useful as well.

MB

Mar 10, 2018

Great course, a very broad and in-depth overview of concepts surrounding cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin in particular. Would be great to have an update of course; perhaps once the ICO craze is over? (-:

Filter by:

501 - 525 of 695 Reviews for Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies

By wangfy

Mar 27, 2018

good

By Megha S

Mar 20, 2018

best

By MOHD A K

Feb 15, 2018

good

By Александр К

Sep 16, 2017

nice

By Vijay I

Sep 27, 2020

NIc

By vidhya d

Sep 6, 2022

ok

By Nik P

Sep 30, 2019

a

By Marko N

Jan 14, 2018

The video lectures were perfect. I got a comprehensive insight into the facinating world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain. I also liked the assignments. I am a professional software developer/engineer. They were very challenging and really make you dig deep into the topic and get a practical feeling for the whole thing. However I didnt like the way the programming assignments were structured and the way they were explained. There is 3 assignments scattered over the course, with completely different skill levels. First assignment is very long complex and covers way too much for one assignment. If I didnt have much experience as software developer in Java it wouldve been impossible to get anything done I think. However with my background I liked the challenge. Also the assignments should have basic tests included in junit. I had to write those myself to get a descent feedback loop. There is some repo by the mentors but it lacks a lot of parts. The second assignment is way to short and simple compared to the first one. The third one is ok in length. However I think it wouldve been better to have more asignments with smaller steps but digging more into one specific topic. As I said I personally had fun doing them. Would be cool if you guys made a follow up course maybe digging deeper into the topics. THanks for doing this. Also I think there is no certificate, there should be some kind of certificate to grade the work that the strudents put in.

By Susanne

Oct 20, 2017

The videos are very informative and I learned a lot from it. The information in the later weeks is outdated. An update about legislation, altcoins and the future of Bitcoin is needed. I would have given this course 5 stars, if it wasn't for the difficult programming exercises. There is very little feedback on these exercises. If I didn't have a friend who had done the course already and knows Java very well, it would have been very difficult to pass this course. That's why I deduct 1 star. I say again, the course is excellent to get in-dept understanding of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Thank you for making this course. Too bad I can't get a certificate.

By Markos K

Jan 8, 2020

I have attended 3 video sessions in total of ~25 minutes.

I feel that the course was quite technical from the very beginning.

I believe the target audience for such a course maybe people with computer science or EE backgrounds.

Despite me being an engineer I could not understand much as the language used was quite technical with too many advanced formulas and terminologies.

Thank you very much though for the opportunity to have an initial overview. As the topic is of high interest, I will search for a course on same topic more "business-oriented".

By cypherpunk

Mar 31, 2022

Gives a very detailed introduction about the precursors and history of bitcoin. The essential parts include cryptography, consensus protocal, technical details of transactions and block chains. The only pity is that this course was carried out in 2015 or 2016 which is a little behind what's fast developing in the block chain world. Nevertheless, the course gives us fundamental knowledge about cryptocurrencies, which can be a very good start for those who want to dig deep into this future industry.

By Aleksi S

Mar 14, 2017

As an introduction to cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin in particular the lectures were top quality, and I returned a number of times to watch certain parts again. Thank you for well prepared lectures and material. The java exercises I found a bit laborous and not exactly matching with the content of the lectures; for someone with a lot of experience in java probably easier, but as I saw in the forum discussions, many java programmers had difficulty finding their way to the solution as well.

By Clément M

Jul 31, 2019

Great introductory class. It is very clear, and teacher was wise to give his opinion only in the last lecture. Even though this class took place in 2015, it already spoke about Ethereum and Ripple which are now widely used and recognized, strengthening trust in the opinion and skills of the teachers.

Programming exercices could be redone because a lot of time is passed trying to guess the logic of the code instead of having a practical understanding of blockchain technologies.

By Ernani d B M

Jun 20, 2018

I enjoyed this course. The point, is that I think this course could use a different environment, like datacamp, to receive the answers. In my situation, I have some difficulties, such as upload my class course assignment files and, if I was at datacamp, I wouldn't need to setup a java at my notebook and this is another point. I think the course could be in Python language, this is most common and we could be have an alternative languages instead only one.

By Sarthak G

Jan 31, 2018

The instructor teaches with ample examples. The pace is appropriate.

A few more illustrated examples or sample hash functions (in java) or other that we could run to check the verify functions for instance can greatly help as well.

Sure, we can do those on our own. But the best practices or some logical errors that we are unaware of may creep in and can be avoided.

By Kamil S

Feb 17, 2018

Great course for understanding bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. The assignment instructions could be more clear. It would be helpful if there was some way to debug code locally before submitting it to prevent wasting time on trivial problems. Otherwise it covers a lot of ground, and I feel I understand the topic at hand from a technical perspective very well now.

By Arkadiusz F

Mar 7, 2017

This course is a very good introduction to blockchain technology and popular in nowadays Bitcoin currency. However the main disadvantages are assigments which are hard to accomplished because there aren't any tests attached, so you cannot check on your computer whether your solution is good or not and you cannot debug your code to find an issue if it isn't ;)

By Deep P

May 29, 2022

This very knowledgeable and informative course, explained with simple examples and language, will give you good understand on Bitcoin and Cryptography. 

But I would request to creator if you don’t teach Java Programming in this course, so on what basis to take programming assessments. I believe Programming Assessment should be removed from course ASAP.

By Patrick K

Aug 11, 2017

Course has very good content and well structured. However it lacks more details on the mechanics, under the hood functioning of Blockchains.

The practical assignments are not adequate. Propose more exercises that goes up in incremental content and difficulties and allow students to get more practical insight upon how a blockchain really works.

By Matt c

Nov 26, 2017

Excellent course overall. A little out of date (hard to remain totally timely given how fast the space is moving) but the fundamentals are there. The problem sets are not the best thought through in my opinion. If you want to learn the fundamentals of blockchain technology and bitcoin, however, I heartily recommend.

By Bradley P

Apr 3, 2021

This is a good course if you are an intermediate-level investor. This course will be at a novice level if you have a computer science or cryptography background. Nevertheless, this course should be updated, as many events have happened since this course has been created. This is why I am giving 4/5 stars.

By Juan P

Jan 8, 2017

Love this course! The lectures were outstanding. I took one star off for the programming assignments. There is much wasted time required. No test framework is given that allows developing code outside of the grader. And trying to debug code by submitting to the grader is difficult and time consuming.

By Hamish M

Oct 20, 2021

Very good course. The lectures are excellent! Thank-you to the instructors: Andrew, Arvind, Ed and Joseph!

The three assignments are quite challenging, especially assignment #2. Unfortunately, there is a problem with the on-line grader for assignment #2 (see the discussion in the forums).

By Gonçalo V

Dec 19, 2017

The only reason I do not give a better grade, is that assignments should have a better documentation and also more context should be provided to the student (at least on the first assignment, where the terms used on the description and in the code weren't yet discussed in the video lessons).

By marco t

Nov 24, 2017

There is a lot of going on in this space nowadays, would be nice to add new videos to cover the latest developments.

I found myself spending more than 3 hours for each assessment. Maybe adding a video with a description of the assessment would clarify the problem we are trying to solve.