How distributed ledger technology differs from a traditional financial transaction.
Understand the usage of the private key to sign Bitcoin transactions.
Understands how the private and public key are created for a Bitcoin wallet.
Able to identify the important elements of a Bitcoin transaction on blockchain.info.
Define the process of a Bitcoin transaction.
Define the proof of work process for Bitcoin and the rewards for miners.
Understands the motivations behind the usage of gas in Ethereum.

Presentations

Week 8 Presentation (PDF) - Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain: here.
Week 8 Presentation (video) - Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain: here.

Lab

Week 11 Lab (PDF): here.

Sample Exam Questions

The following are sample questions:

Bitcoin technology has a major problem with its proof-of-work method of gaining a consensus. What are the current drawbacks?
How does Ethereum overcome the problems of the proof-of-work method?
How does the payment of gas focus developers to create efficient coding?
Alice says that her Bitcoin ID address uses Base-64. Is this the case? If not, what format does it use?
Trent says that no way that anyone can track his transactions on Bitcoin. Is this true? If not, explain your argument.
What evidence does a miner have to give to show it has found the required hash for a block?
How many bits does a Bitcoin ID have? Outline the process of generating the ID.
Many ransomware systems use bitcoins for payments. You have been asked by an incident response team to report on the payments that resulted from the Wannacry ransomware infection. For the first part of your investigation, report on the activity on the Bitcoin addresses of 13AM4VW2dhxYgXeQepoHkHSQuy6NgaEb94, 12t9YDPgwueZ9NyMgw519p7AA8isjr6SMw and 115p7UMMngoj1pMvkpHijcRdfJNXj6LrLn. Estimate the income from the infection (based on current Bitcoin prices).
The coins received within the Silk road are shown at 1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX. When where the coins first gathered, and what is the total value of the coins seized (for the current value)?
Who owns the address of 1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v? What is the total amount of funds it has received (using the current Bitcoin valuation)?
With Ethereum, with the genesis block, what are the difficulty, the gaslimit and alloc used for?
Cryptokitties caused a slow-down in the Ethereum network. Around the time that is was at its popularity, what was the transaction rate? [Internet research required]
Alice tells you that Ethereum uses JavaScript to create a smart contract. You are worried that JavaScript doesn't seem to be a trustworthy language. What is required to make the code running on the blockchain trustworthy?
Bob generates his private key and views it. Can you explain to him what the following listing defines:

    C \> openssl ec -in priv.pem -text -noout
    read EC key
    Private-Key  (256 bit)
    priv 
        46 b9 e8 61 b6 3d 35 09 c8 8b 78 17 27 5a 30 
        d2 2d 62 c8 cd 8f a6 48 6d de e3 5e f0 d8 e0 
        49 5f
    pub 
        04 25 00 e7 f3 fb dd f2 84 29 03 f5 44 dd c8 
        74 94 ce 95 02 9a ce 4e 25 7d 54 ba 77 f2 bc 
        1f 3a 88 37 a9 46 1c 4f 1c 57 fe cc 49 97 53 
        38 1e 77 2a 12 8a 58 20 a9 24 a2 fa 05 16 2e 
        b6 62 98 7a 9f
    ASN1 OID  secp256k1

Hands-on demos

In the test, there is no need for any practical skills in setting up a Blockchain. If you are interested, though, the following provides some practical demos of using the Ethereum blockchain:

Introduction to Blockchain (Intro): here.
A "Hello World" application: here.
Contracts and addresses: here.

A few demos of some principles

Base58 (used in Bitcoins). Base58.
Bitcoin keys. Bitcoin keys.
Bitcoin details. Bitcoin details.
Elliptic Curve (Keys). Elliptic Curve (Keys). Elliptic Curve is a public key method. This page outline the generation of ECC keys in Bitcoin.
Blockchain work. Work. Determine Blockchain work.