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Comment by jstalin | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know of an explanation of the bitcoin protocol in plain English? I'm a non-math guy who's trying to write a legal treatise on the use of bitcoin, and I'd like to give some background on how it works to my readers. Can anyone help?

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Have you tried just the original white paper? You can understand without understanding the underlying algos. bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

I have, but it doesn't seem to discuss how mining works, for instance.

but it does, check it again: 4. Proof-of-Work

Yes. 4. Proof-of-work combined with 6. Incentive

The Security Now episode on bitcoin was quite good. Steve Gibson also provides transcriptions of all of this episodes.

http://twit.tv/sn287

You can find the transcripts on his site here: http://www.grc.com/sn/past/2011.htm , scroll down to find episode #287.

Direct links to them for your convenience:

Html transcript here: http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-287.htm

Text transcript here: http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-287.txt

Pdf transcript here: http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-287.pdf [pdf]

There's a small bit of irony when a legal student is asking for an explanation of maths in plain language. Sorry if I sound a little jaded.

Thanks. I'm not a legal student, I'm an attorney doing some research on the issue. I was just looking for some help understanding the more difficult math concepts. Sorry that I don't live up to your standards.

I think the irony was that legal documents are notoriously difficult to understand.

I wrote a explanation in lay terms on my blog a while ago:

http://snowedin.net/blog/2011/04/05/bitcoin/

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