Michael Nielsen has a nice intro the protocol, for those looking for another source:<p><a href="http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/how-the-bitcoin-protocol-actually-works/" rel="nofollow">http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/how-the-bitcoin-protocol-a...</a><p>(he has other articles I would recommend taking a look at, too --- check them out if you're interested! )
Here's the link to the actual PDF: <a href="https://d28rh4a8wq0iu5.cloudfront.net/bitcointech/readings/princeton_bitcoin_book.pdf?a=1" rel="nofollow">https://d28rh4a8wq0iu5.cloudfront.net/bitcointech/readings/p...</a>
I read this book when I took CS251 last fall. It is an accessible, mostly nontechnical overview of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. For those interested in reading the book and learning more about cryptocurrencies, I recommend going through the CS251 reading list which includes this book.<p><a href="https://crypto.stanford.edu/cs251/syllabus.html" rel="nofollow">https://crypto.stanford.edu/cs251/syllabus.html</a>
One of the author of this book already had a MOOC about Bitcoin on Coursera.<p>Link : <a href="https://www.coursera.org/course/bitcointech" rel="nofollow">https://www.coursera.org/course/bitcointech</a>
Despite being a little outdated and justifiably overly focused on the computer-science aspects, this is a huge improvement in bringing academia up to speed on cryptoeconomics.
I found the book(& course notes) to be interesting but non-technical & little verbose. For those wanting to read technical subject matter I'd recommend the bitcoin developer reference & bitcoin developer guide at bitcoin.org
Since nobody has mentioned it yet, Andreas Antonopoulos' book, "Mastering Bitcoin," is quite good.<p>You can build the ePub from source:<p><a href="https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook</a><p>Or get it from oreilly:<p><a href="http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920032281.do" rel="nofollow">http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920032281.do</a>
>> Princeton University Press is publishing the official, polished, and professionally done version of this book. It will be out in summer 2016.<p>Is this really freely available? I'd much rather see Princeton release this book to the public domain.