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Sikh Bitcoin · Beginner · Lesson 1 of 21

Bitcoin without jargon

Start with sats, shared rules and the habit of checking evidence. No purchase or wallet needed.

About 8 minutes with practice. You only need something to take notes with. No real wallet details or payments are part of this lesson.

Course contents · Lesson 1 of 21
  1. Bitcoin without jargon
  2. Keys, custody and keeping control
  3. Payments for humans, including Lightning
  4. Money, prices and units
  5. Follow a payment from request to receipt
  6. Addresses, networks and QR codes
  7. Confirmations and patience
  8. Fees buy scarce block space
  9. Backups before dependence
  10. Scams, urgency and trusted routes
  11. Privacy is a practice
  12. Custody is a relationship
  13. Reading a Lightning invoice
  14. Exchanges and access to bitcoin
  15. Volatility and practical planning
  16. A fair invoice for creative work
  17. Donations with accountable purpose
  18. Proof of work and honest energy questions
  19. Bitcoin and Litecoin: related ideas, separate networks
  20. Read Bitcoin news with a source trail
  21. Capstone: welcome a newcomer safely

What you will learn

  • Convert a small amount between BTC and sats.
  • Explain the different jobs of signatures, nodes and proof of work.
  • Recognize what a payment record cannot prove.

A small unit is a useful place to start

Bitcoin lets people send value over a shared network. BTC is a unit used to express the amount. One BTC equals 100,000,000 satoshis, usually shortened to sats. You do not need to use a whole BTC: 1,000 sats is 0.00001000 BTC, and 100,000 sats is 0.00100000 BTC.

Write the unit every time. Imagine a poster has an illustrative price of 25,000 sats. That is 0.00025000 BTC. The conversion tells you the quantity, not what it is worth in your local currency or whether the poster is fairly priced.

Read the source: Bitcoin developer guide · Payment processing and units

Who checks the rules?

A digital signature authorizes spending. Nodes running Bitcoin software check transactions and blocks against the rules they enforce. Miners compete to find proof of work for new blocks. Proof of work makes producing blocks costly and checking that work comparatively easy.

These roles fit together: a miner cannot make an invalid transaction acceptable to a node simply by doing more work. The system is designed to let participants verify a shared payment history without one central bookkeeper.

Read the source: Satoshi Nakamoto · Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System

Verification has limits

A payment record is evidence that value moved under the network’s rules. It does not tell you whether a seller delivered a painting, a meal was safe or a community organizer kept a promise. Those questions need people, clear agreements and evidence from the world.

At Satnam Satoshi, proof of service means a proposed process of human review. It is separate from Bitcoin’s proof of work. A meal claim is not mining, and generating a report does not create bitcoin or an automatic reward.

A standard for our own work

Our use of “Nakamoto standard” describes a project commitment: make rules understandable, make evidence checkable and reduce unnecessary dependence on one provider. It is not a new technical standard or an endorsement by Bitcoin’s creators.

Start with questions: What is the claim? Where is the source? What can I verify myself? What still depends on somebody else? You can use those questions before you hold any bitcoin.

Try a conversion on paper

A sample contribution is described as 0.00050000 BTC. How many sats is that? What extra information would you need before deciding whether any real payment is appropriate?

Reveal the worked answer

It is 50,000 sats: multiply the BTC amount by 100,000,000. You would still need the purpose, recipient, agreed terms and fees. The example is a unit exercise, not a request to pay.

Check your understanding

Choose an answer in your head or on paper, then reveal the explanation. Retry whenever you like. Answers are not submitted or scored; completion marks are your own learning notes.

1. How many sats are in 0.001 BTC?

  • A. 100
  • B. 100,000
  • C. 1,000,000
Reveal answer 1

B. 100,000 sats. Keeping the unit beside the number helps prevent mistakes.

2. Can more mining work make an invalid transaction valid to a node?

  • A. Yes, if enough energy is used
  • B. No, the node still applies its validation rules
Reveal answer 2

B. Proof of work does not remove the rules a node uses to validate a transaction.

3. Does a Bitcoin payment prove that a community meal happened?

  • A. Yes
  • B. No
Reveal answer 3

B. Payment evidence and evidence of real-world service are different. A service claim still needs accountable human review.

Take this with you

Count carefully, check the rules and ask what the evidence actually establishes.

Your learning, at your pace

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