This document provides an overview of Bitcoin and blockchain technology. It describes how Bitcoin was created in 2008, functioning as a transmission protocol, distributed ledger, and stored value account without the need for settlement. Transactions are recorded on a blockchain, with a new block added every 10 minutes. The blockchain records transaction hashes in blocks linked by cryptographic hashes. Analyzing Bitcoin transaction data can provide useful statistics about usage trends, price movements, and detect spam attacks.

1. (Big) Data in (Block)
Chains
Felix Crisan, BTKO.in

2. whoami

3. Bitcoin 101

4. Bitcoin genesys
● Initial paper published on 31-Oct-2008
● First block mined on 3-Jan-2009 (“Chancellor on brink of
second bailout for banks”)
● Based on previous work (b-money / Wei Dai, bit gold /
Nick Szabo, Hashcash / Adam Back)
● Created by an “entity” called Satoshi Nakamoto
● Relies 100% on hashes/PKI/ECC

5. Bitcoin is
● Transmission protocol
● Distributed ledger (and consensus protocol)
● Stored Value Account (i.e. no settlement needed)
● Currency

6. Anatomy of a Bitcoin transaction
● Version
● # of inputs + List of inputs (Unspent Transaction Outputs
- UTXOs)
● # of outputs + List of outputs
● Lock time
● Spending script
All these are reduced to a hash that uniquely identifies a
transaction

7. Blockchain
● New block every 10 minutes (avg)
● Block consists of
○ Hash of previous block
○ Merkle-tree of transactions
○ Difficulty
○ Nonce
○ List of transaction hashes

8. Why is it important?
● Pseudonimity (any and all transactions are public) - see e.
g. http://btc.blockr.io/
● Current (TS: 1445763930) stats
○ 89,296,250 TXs
○ 235,287,897 TX Inputs
○ 268,019,907 TX Outs
○ 101,372,490 Unique addresses
○ 14,761,525 Coins in circulation

9. Bitcoin Analytics Platform

10. Setup

11. Why?
● Confidence intervals (zeroconf/double spend detection)
● Compliance
● Trends
○ Detect Spam Attacks - adjust TX Fees
○ Predict movement in price - buy or sell BTC

12. Correlation

13. Stats
Dust (Spam) Attacks
BTC passes 1000$
Transactions per day
Bitstamp Heist

14. Stats (2)
USD Volume (# BTC x Average price) per day
BTC passes 1000$
Pre MtGox insolvency

15. Stats (3)
Transactions per Block
This proves that the miners are “fair”

16. Stats(4)
USD Volume vs #TX

17. Stats(5)
Market Capitalization

18. Trivia
(Current BTC price - 285.10 USD)
● Highest UTXO - 44,430,501 USD
(5d6787b87be7cd240dc4de5e7e5fc048670618bec310
22a5b8c04bcc45f9952c)
● Highest Fee - 57020 USD
(4ed20e0768124bc67dc684d57941be1482ccdaa45dad
b64be12afba8c8554537)
● Highest Balance - 46,209,810 USD
(3A1KUd5H4hBEHk4bZB4C3hGgvuXuVX7p7t)

19. Thank you!
felix@btko.in