Awesome Learning

excellent course

amazing course

good learning

great course

Excellent!

helpful

amazing

good

Good

The course is a good introduction to cryptocurrency technologies. Most of its material is still relevant today, despite the fact that it was recorded in 2014. I gave only 4 stars because of the auto-grader. Testing the code on a local computer is tedious with few resources available for guidance. There was also a bug in the grader at Assignment 2, which hasn't been fixed for some time.

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.

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

A​lthough far more technical than I anticipated, the course material was good and presented well. HOWEVER, in 2022,, it is very dated material, given it is seven (7) years old!! I stuck with it because the material was good - but I also anticipated (hoped) that there would be an update toward the end of the course - there was not.

I am not a programmer, and never intended to attempt the 3 programming assignments (an option indicated in the Professor's notes). However, I suspect anyone inclined toward programming would find this to be even more dated material. Perhaps a still relevant foundation, but needs an update to current!!

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.

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.

Not a big fan of this course. I wanted to learn about the different types of currencies and their usage, but these guys go way too deep into the code structure, even making the 1st assignment code based. Just because I am interested in cars, doesn't mean I necessarily have to know how to build one. I merely need to know some base facts, it's safety, handling, fuel economy, size etc. Their approach is way more mundane and impractical for daily needs of working with Cryptocurrencies, going way too deep into early theory and applications.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Very outdated.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