Should I learn the tech behind crypto even if I don't want to own any?

Yes. Read the original bitcoin paper; its a really interesting read and won't take long.

I can't say what % of cryptocurrency tech you'll learn, but it's enough to make sense of a lot of the information out there.

I found it useful -- for a rough idea what's _not_ a possible application for these technologies as much as what is.

I'm going to be that guy that shills his own stuff. I wrote Programming Bitcoin published by O'Reilly. It has specifics and exercises on all the building blocks that make up the Bitcoin blockchain. You'll learn Finite Fields, Elliptic Curves, ECDSA, Transactions and more. It'll be worth your time since it's a gentle introduction to a lot of cryptographic concepts.

I wouldn't waste time on Web3 or DeFi, though.

I found it very interesting, and it’s a very interesting application of cryptography (and, though far less appreciated) economics and game theory which really motivated the learning for me.

Start with Bitcoin, it has a good white paper, is the simplest, and is proven at scale. You’ll want to be careful chasing hype, even if you aren’t buying any. It can lead you down a dozen different highly complex proposals for the next big thing which haven’t been proven and often just monetize buzzwords.

Applications beyond is a bit of a misnomer. If the tech is built from blockchain as its backbone or exploits its benefits there is inherently an economic factor serving as a deterrent for tampering, so even if your application is not specifically money, it may take advantage of a system (blockchain) whose fundamental property relies on being scarce and transferable.

I wish more people who did invest in crypto took your approach, then invested after.

Take a look at this list of academics, all working in or around crypto, producing research that materially solves real problems in computing, not just in blockchain or crypto.

https://iohk.io/en/team/#team=research

Then realise that eschewing it all because you don't like crypto is probably one of the most closed minded and regressive decisions you could make.

IMO yes, since big banks and governments are looking at replacing cash with digital coins. These coins are going to use blockchain tech, most likely. At the beginning adoption will be regulated, banks will push back but I expect innovators to push banks away (we don’t need banks for gov controlled eMoney, every citizen will have an account to the Fed, ECB, etc).

So I believe it’s a pretty valuable skill. The other side of the coin is current reality: it’s still a solution looking for a problem to solve :-)

Working with encryption more broadly will equip you to understand the fundamentals that underpin the web3/crypto world: hashes, asymmetric crypto, signatures, signature chains, etc. And this knowledge also has many uses, of course, outside the web3 realm.

If you're working with Node, tweetnacl.js (https://github.com/dchest/tweetnacl-js) gives you secure defaults and a nice API to start learning and building with. Otherwise, look for a nacl/libsodium library in your language of choice.

Once you're familiar with this stuff, blockchains/cryptocurrency/web3 lose a lot of their mystery. They're essentially all just different takes on using key management and signature chains to verify identities and maintain immutable action logs.

Blockchain is an interesting computer science achievement in secure distributed systems. It's worth learning about as an intellectual curiosity for sure.

Imho it’s awesome to learn. I don’t personally like crypto, but the idea of a blockchain is somewhat genius.

Satoshi’s paper https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf is _very_ easy to read.

> I do not want to buy or own cryptocoins. Web3 does not look interesting to me at this point.

> Should I still learn about blockchains?

Yes.

Have a try for yourself and just learn whatever you want to and do not listen to any extreme anti-crypto or crypto-maximalist telling you either not to learn it completely or look at only their 'holy' and 'true' blockchain project.

The undeniable fact is; it is always going to be around and there always blockchain projects (NOT silly meme token projects) always emerging in the background, especially in payments and the internet itself.

Frankly most crypto tech can be understood in an hour or two of focused reading. Understanding how it works greatly demystifies the malarkey out there and lowers your cognitive load when interacting with crypto nonsense. For this reason alone, and since the news is replete with crypto nonsense, it’s worth spending an hour or two. If you already have a basic knowledge of computer science and perhaps distributed systems you’ve got all you need.

They are networks worth understanding. Though the signal is flooded with noise, and there are many scams to every sincere effort, the evolution of strategies to adapt to the many issues we face are interesting, and will become increasingly more important.

I assume that if you don't bother now, you'll eventually feel compelled to. I would definitely recommend understanding how Bitcoin works before investing in any cryptocurrency.

Yes. A lot of the tech is very interesting, despite all the hype and fluff.

Yes because then you'll understand 99.9% of the industry is fraudulent. If you don't get there yet then keep studying

Make decision by considering blockchain as data structure of distributed resilient auto-clearing accounting system. I don't think learning that would make you more "technologist" if such system doesn't serve you any purpose, cryptography and data structure rather make one "technologist" in general.

There's some interesting research going on. As of right now it's not really from a software/coding POV that it's interesting, but the mathematics being used and the implications: zero-knowledge proofs are a pretty hot area and have applications for both privacy and data compression. And there is some P2P networks and front ends stuff to be done too, but those are more well-trodden parts of the puzzle. Implementing a cutting edge example of the tech would be similar to working in graphics programming or digital audio; lots of first-principles stuff implemented from papers.

Personally, I just observe the research at some distance and hold tokens. The software side of things is churning immensely as everyone comes up with their own protocol concepts, so there's definitely work to be done.

Yes, people like to hate but many are silently working on some variation of it

Azure cloud already has a beta blockchain of some kind, saw it as an option while configuration a database https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/services/azure-confidentia...

More probable than not than in some years all it systems will have some sort of crypto ledger

The financial industry will keep an eye on it, and will definitely implement it internally and B2B

There are very small project tutorials, that implement small blockchain in your favourite language. But there are also small machine learning tutorials that are also interesting

A Merkle tree is not a bad data structure to have in your toolbox. That's learning the tech behind source control as much as learning the tech behind crypto I guess.

Depends. How well do you understand the internet? I know nothing about how networking works, yet I use it everyday. In 20 years, we'll all probably be making blockchain transactions on a daily basis, either directly or indirectly. Just like I'm creating packets, and I don't really know what that means I just hear networking people say it.

You should study crypto, blockchain, tokens and NFTs as an example of the type of fraud that is the signature of mania.

There needs to be investigation on the circumstances that make groups irrational. What exactly is the causality in the cycle of pandemic, mania, recession, war? We need a model for this.

If you're interested, watch a youtube video or two about it (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4). You don't need to get super deep or spend too much time on it.

No.

Are you curious about the tech? If yes, what more reason do you need? If no - why proceed?

I’ve been searching for Rust development jobs and most things I find are related to web3, which im not interested to get involved in. I guess I’ll keep looking.

If it's not interesting learn something else. Not everyone wants to work on payment systems or swap / stake web pages.

Why would you learn about something you don't find interesting?