Lesson 7

The limits of knowledge

Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end?
Read by Guy Swann.

Getting into Bitcoin is a humbling experience. I thought that I knew things. I thought that I was educated. I thought that I knew my computer science, at the very least. I studied it for years, so I have to know everything about digital signatures, hashes, encryption, operational security, and networks, right?

Wrong.

Learning all the fundamentals which make Bitcoin work is hard. Understanding all of them deeply is borderline impossible.

“No one has found the bottom of the Bitcoin rabbit hole.” Jameson Lopp

My list of books to read keeps expanding way quicker than I could possibly read them. The list of papers and articles to read is virtually endless. There are more podcasts on all of these topics than I could ever listen to. It truly is humbling. Further, Bitcoin is evolving and it’s almost impossible to stay up-to-date with the accelerating rate of innovation. The dust of the first layer hasn’t even settled yet, and people have already built the second layer and are working on the third.

Bitcoin taught me that I know very little about almost anything. It taught me that this rabbit hole is bottomless.

Through the Looking-Glass 🔍

Follow-up articles that expand upon ideas discussed in this lesson:

Down the Rabbit Hole