Bitcoin for Nonmathematicians

Abstract

It's thoughtless to start using something you don't trust. It's difficult to start trusting something you don't understand. Bitcoin for Nonmathematicians contains answers to the following questions: how bitcoin is different from other payment systems, and why we can trust cryptocurrencies. The book compares bitcoin with its predecessors and competitors, and demonstrates the benefits of cryptocurrency over any other existing methods of payments. Bitcoin for Nonmathematicians starts from overview of the evolution of payment systems from gold and paper money to payment cards to cryptocurrencies, and ends up with explaining the fundamentals of security and privacy of crypto payments by explaining the details of cryptography behind bitcoin in layman's terms.

About the Author

Slava Gomzin is Director of Information Security at PCCI (Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation), a nonprofit research and development corporation delivering real time predictive analytics solutions. Slava is also the author of Hacking Point of Sale: Payment Application Secrets, Threats, and Solutions (Wiley, 2014), and has written many articles on payment security and technology. Prior to joining PCCI, Slava was a security and payments technologist at Hewlett-Packard, where he helped create products that are integrated into modern payment processing ecosystems. Before HP, he worked as a security architect, corporate product security officer, and R&D and application security manager at Retalix, a division of NCR Retail. As PCI ISA, he focused on security and PA-DSS, PCI DSS, and PCI P2PE compliance of POS systems, payment applications, and gateways. Slava currently holds CISSP, PCIP, ECSP, and Security+ certifications. He blogs about information security and technology at www.gomzin.com.