You’re joining over 150,000 other learners currently enrolled in the course. I’m excited to have you in the class and look forward to exploring Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and blockchains with you.
This course includes three programming assignments, in addition to lectures and quizzes. Doing these assignments will enhance your understanding of the material, but you can get a lot out of the course even if you don’t have a programming background. The coursesite treats assignments as mandatory, but you should consider them as optional. Either way, the course doesn’t offer a certificate for passing, per Princeton University policy.
We encourage you to use the textbook, Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies, as a complement to this course. The textbook chapters closely follow the lectures, but feature additional detail and/or alternative explanations of many tricky concepts. A free draft is available also, but the published version is more polished, professionally edited, and peer reviewed.
I recommend taking a few minutes to explore the course site and reviewing the material we’ll cover each week. Click Discussions to see forums where you can discuss the course material with fellow students taking the class. Feel free to introduce yourself to everyone in the Meet and Greet forum.
If you have questions about course content, please post them in the forums to get help from others in the course community. For technical problems with the Coursera platform, visit the Learner Help Center.
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Good luck as you get started, and I hope you enjoy the course!
Arvind Narayanan