Sometimes it’s good to go back to basics. Crypto field is getting too large to follow it all by any single person. In the early years it was easy to have an overview of the most significant ventures but those days are long gone. There’s simply too much happening.
Blockchain for dummies (2nd edition) is a good intro for the basics and general overview. It explains the essential structures and concepts in an easily digestible format. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Waves, Factom and EOS are used as special cases that each have their own chapter.
The book works as a hands-on guide that allows you to actually do things as well. Some of the examples are simple and easy for everyone to follow and others require a bit more prior IT knowledge.
Industry impacts section provides examples in various industries and recent developments that are emerging within private and public sector initiatives.
If your main concern is to understand the basics of Blockchain this is the book for you.
Ethereum for dummies focuses purely on the Ethereum and its ecosystem. You can even build your own simple smart contract following the step-by-step instructions and screen captures.
The detailed format of actually doing concrete exercises helps to keep the narrative in enough detailed level to provide useful information. Sometimes the devil is in the details and this may be missed in more theoretical treatments.
Cryptocurrency Investing for dummies dedicates almost half of the book to explaining the Blockchain concepts and how to acquire some tokens in your wallet. The other half is divided between regular trading and hedging strategies and giving some considerations for acting in a volatile new environment. If you expect to find some good analysis and evaluation of different cryptocurrencies or practical insights how to find the ones to trade out of thousands of cryptos this book may not be for you. Maybe that’s why the title says investing and not trading.
Overall I liked the Blockchain for dummies the most but each book has their own audience and niche. I’m too biased to give them a fair treatment since my days of discovering the wonders of Blockchain and cryptos for the first time are way behind me. The last time I had some more profound excitement of the field may have been when helping Tim Swanson to write his book in 2013-2014.
