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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies by Princeton University

4.6
stars
3,023 ratings

About the Course

To really understand what is special about Bitcoin, we need to understand how it works at a technical level. We’ll address the important questions about Bitcoin, such as: How does Bitcoin work? What makes Bitcoin different? How secure are your Bitcoins? How anonymous are Bitcoin users? What determines the price of Bitcoins? Can cryptocurrencies be regulated? What might the future hold? After this course, you’ll know everything you need to be able to separate fact from fiction when reading claims about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. You’ll have the conceptual foundations you need to engineer secure software that interacts with the Bitcoin network. And you’ll be able to integrate ideas from Bitcoin in your own projects. Course Lecturers: Arvind Narayanan, Princeton University All the features of this course are available for free. It does not offer a certificate upon completion....

Top reviews

NG

Dec 22, 2017

I've gained a strong knowledge of Bitcoin's architecture but wish this course was updated to include the developments of the last two years. A few lectures on alt-coins would have been useful as well.

MB

Mar 10, 2018

Great course, a very broad and in-depth overview of concepts surrounding cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin in particular. Would be great to have an update of course; perhaps once the ICO craze is over? (-:

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126 - 150 of 709 Reviews for Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies

By Nikhil P

•

Mar 22, 2024

good

By yash u

•

Mar 3, 2024

good

By Antranik Z

•

Sep 4, 2019

The theoretical content of the course is interesting and it gives an excellent overview of the cryptocurrency technologies through the example of bitcoin. The course also extend to alt coins and the discuss the possible challenge blockchains can help addressing beyond the purely cryptocurrency field which is interesting.

The programming assignment could however be improved. First they required a strong knowledge of java which can exclude some students. But the real issue is the lack of satisfactory explanations and guidance that sometimes make it impossible to fully resolve the practical, or even what is expected from the student.

Sometimes you can get the best mark while your code is either incorrect or not adressing the logic fully. Sometimes you run into technical limitations on the platform (memory limitation) which despite a good algorithm doesn't allow you to submit your answer. It then forces you to spend time on improving the quality of your code to save the memory used by your program (thus requiring strong java knowledge) which is time consuming and not the purpose of this course.

Overall I would advise to do the course. I would however strongly encourage Coursera/Princeton to review the assignments so that they can best help students in the understanding of the complex notions discussed in this course.

By Jonathan C

•

Feb 14, 2017

It is difficult to complain too much about a free course, but I expected more from a course carrying the name Princeton. The videos were generally well done and interesting, but did contain factual errors almost every week.

Unfortunately the instructors were absent from the forums after a couple replies the first week. The homework assignments were disorganized, provided components contained errors, the grading system had problems and the requirements were often unclear. The assignments require Java programming experience (not mentioned in course description). Most importantly, the assignments in no way reflected what was taught in the course videos. They were of course related, but were implementing parts of a bitcoin node, but in a simplified manner. The textbook PDF is good.

It would have been nice to have assignments working with real bitcoin (or testnet) transactions, sigs, verification, hashing, etc.

Anyhow, I'm enthusiastic about this subject matter, so I'm just happy the course exists, but don't expect a glossy polished course... it's a rough ride.

Here is another Bitcoin course that looks good: https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/bitcoin-decentralized-technology

By Chris N

•

Aug 14, 2022

The course was ok. I was looking for something to really explain bitcoin and the blockchain, but this went too far for my purposes. I am not a CS guy, I just wanted to understand the methods, not be able to program them. The lectures often assumed a lot of CS knowledge -- which is understandable -- but didn't really explain why one would want to do any of the 100 applications of the technical material that they talked about. At least they didn't explain it well, bc I've no idea why anyone would want to use blockchain to transfer ownership of a car or run a lottery. It seems that the "but it would be really cool" was taken for granted as an adequate reason.

By Cédric T

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Dec 18, 2022

Deep dive into bitcoin and cryptocurrencies (more bitcoin than any other). Programming skills are a must, so you need to learn basic Java. Very technical but gives a wider perspective and understanding.

By Charles O

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Oct 31, 2023

This course was one my best courses but Its taking forever to get my certificate

By dahshanm

•

Dec 15, 2022

Too much talking make the student distracted

The course info is old since 8 years

By Tammy G

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Mar 15, 2022

I only did the first module but I got to the assignment for module 1 and it had nothing to do with what we learned. You definitly have to have a good amount of programming experience in order to complete the assignments and you also need a place to code. It is not built into the course. The information is outstanding. I learned a lot in the first module about how crypto works and I do have a better understanding. I just wish the assignments were more aligned.

By Roman D

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Oct 20, 2018

The course covered a lot of things, but the programming assessments are very poor. In first the assessments the bonus task is basically not about blockchain, but rather about graphs. I would recommend adding to course more small coding assignments to get familiar with blockchain and bitcoin platform in a more practical way.

By David N

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Jan 27, 2017

Lectures were extremely good, but assignments and graders were very low quality and difficult to decipher requirements from. Professors and TAs were not active in the forums.

By Harshita S

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Sep 15, 2023

i wanted to get a certificate for my hard work however due to glitches by your side , i have not been even offered with the certificate on course completion

By KOTA L

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May 7, 2024

completed but certificate is not coming ?

By Andrew C

•

Apr 17, 2023

The discordance between the lectures and the assignments is laughable, such that you cannot complete the assignments without spending 10's of hours learning and teaching yourself material not presented in the lectures.

As an analogy:

lecture 1 might be "1+1=2".

Lecture 2 might be "2*2=4".

Lecture 3 might be "3^2 = 9"

Then assignment 1 is "Please use the information you learned in lecture to write the Bitcoin protocol in Java."

By Jasmine V

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May 28, 2021

First off, I completed my first year in university in Computer Science. I don't shy away from code. I have good experience with Python and C# mostly. But the FIRST assignment is Java code based with the most poorly explained instructions and no code material leading up to it (in my quick flick through the material as soon as I saw the Java Assignment). Poor decision for such a good course.

By Gabriel D A

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Mar 3, 2018

Difficult to understand. Teachers were too stiff and not very warm to explain. Concepts were too technical and sometimes was difficult to understand the general ideas. Assignments were not very good explained and it was difficult to understand and the errors were not very helpful.

By Ramon B

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Mar 28, 2020

It states that you do not have to be a programmer to do this course, but the first week exam is to code. I have no clue what it is stating so i must unenroll from this course. I thought i would learn about cryptocurrencies and how the technology will impact future business.

By David H

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Oct 5, 2021

Coding projects are very frustrating. I finished all three but could not get the second graded because of a a bug in the grader code that has been around for 2-3 years (check the forums). Otherwise the course was good.

By Fedor S

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Mar 31, 2017

I think that it would be a good idea to improve the grader, release more informative assignment information (take a look at the Algorithms course for example) and lecture materials in pdf format.

By SRISTI D

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Oct 14, 2020

I Passed this course with 96% but did not achieve any certificate by doing this course. I request to provide me a certificate. please provide me the course certificate for this course

By Nicolás D

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Dec 6, 2020

The calification machine is broken. So in week 4 you cant get a good grade, so this course is unfinishable. NOT WORTH IT

By Greg C R

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Mar 26, 2022

No instruction to get set up for programming assignments. Disappointing by Coursera and Princeton U.

By Deleted A

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Oct 2, 2017

Very outdated. Since 2014 the content about fees, mining, forks, etc change a lot

By Kartik J

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May 4, 2021

Wastage of time if you didn't get certificate companies want certificates too

By Amaury A

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May 13, 2020

Really messy to re-enroll despite many attempts to reach out.