acknowledgments

preface.asciidoc

@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@
 
 I first stumbled upon bitcoin in mid-2011. My immediate reaction was more or less "Pfft! Nerd money!" and I ignored it for another 6 months, failing to grasp its importance. This is a reaction which I have seen repeated among many of the smartest people I know, which gives me some consolation. The second time I came across bitcoin in a mailing list discussion, I decided to read the white paper written by Satoshi Nakamoto, to study the authoritative source and see what it was all about. I still remember the moment I finished reading those 9 pages, when I realized that bitcoin was not simply a digital currency, but a network of trust that could also provide the basis for so much more than just currencies. That realization: "This isn't money, it's a de-centralized trust network," started me on a four month journey to devour every scrap of information about bitcoin I could find. I became obsessed and enthralled, spending twelve or more hours each day glued to a screen, reading, writing, coding and learning as much as I could. I emerged from this state of fugue, more than 20 lbs lighter from lack of consistent meals, determined to dedicate myself to working on bitcoin. 
 
-Two years later, after creating a number of small startups to explore various bitcoin-related services and products, I decided that it was time to write my first book. Bitcoin was the topic that had driven me into a frenzy of creativity, consumed my thoughts and was the most exciting technology I had encountered since the Internet. It was now time to share my passion about this amazing technology with a broader audience. This is the bitcoin book.
+Two years later, after creating a number of small startups to explore various bitcoin-related services and products, I decided that it was time to write my first book. Bitcoin was the topic that had driven me into a frenzy of creativity, consumed my thoughts and was the most exciting technology I had encountered since the Internet. It was now time to share my passion about this amazing technology with a broader audience. 
 
 === Intended Audience
 
@@ -101,6 +101,63 @@ Find us on Facebook: link:$$http://facebook.com/oreilly$$[]
 Follow us on Twitter: link:$$http://twitter.com/oreillymedia$$[]
 
 Watch us on YouTube: link:$$http://www.youtube.com/oreillymedia$$[]
+
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+<?hard-pagebreak?>
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+
+=== Acknowledgments
+
+This book represents the efforts and contributions of many people. I am grateful for all the help I received from friends, colleagues and even complete strangers, who joined me in this effort to write the definitive technical book on crypto-currencies and bitcoin. 
+
+The journey to becoming an author starts long before the first book, of course. I owe my love of words and books to my mother Theresa Delaney, who raised me in a house with books lining every wall, encouraged me to read books for pleasure and instilled in me a deep respect for language. My mother also bought me my first computer in 1982, despite being a self-described technophobe. My father, Menelaos Antonopoulos, a civil engineer who just published his first book at 80 years old, was the one who taught me logical and analytical thinking and a love of science and engineering. Thanks also to Jean de Vera for her early encouragement to become an author and for always believing and insisting that I had a book in me. 
+
+My first language (and schooling) was Greek, so I had to take a remedial English Writing course in my first year of university. I owe thanks to Diana Kordas, my English Writing teacher, who helped me build confidence and skills that year. As a professional, I developed my technical writing skills on the topic of data centers, writing for Network World magazine. I owe thanks to John Dix and John Gallant who gave me my first writing job as a columnist at Network World and to my editor Michael Cooney and my colleague Johna Till Johnson who edited my columns and made them fit for publication. Writing 500 words a week for four years gave me enough experience to eventually consider becoming an author. 
+
+Thanks also to those who supported me when I submitted my book proposal to O'Reilly, by providing references and reviewing the proposal. Specifically, thanks to John Gallant, Gregory Ness, Richard Stiennon, Joel Snyder, Adam B. Levine, Sandra Gittlen, John Dix, Johna Till Johnson, Roger Ver and Jon Matonis. Special thanks to Richard Kagan and Tymon Mattoszko who reviewed early versions of the proposal and Matthew Owain Taylor who copy-edited the proposal.
+
+Thanks to Cricket Liu, author of O'Reilly title "DNS and BIND" who introduced me to O'Reilly. Thanks also to Michael Loukides and Allyson MacDonald at O'Reilly who worked for months to help make this book happen. Allyson was especially patient when deadlines were missed and deliverables delayed as life intervened in our planned schedule. 
+
+The first few drafts of the first few chapters were the hardest, because bitcoin is a difficult subject to unravel. Every time I pulled on one thread of the bitcoin technology, I had to pull in the whole thing. I repeatedly got stuck and a bit despondent as I struggled to make the topic easy to understand and create a narrative around such a dense technical subject. Eventually, I decided to tell the story of bitcoin through the stories of the people using bitcoin and the whole book became a lot easier to write. I owe special thanks to Richard Kagan and Pamela Morgan who helped me unravel the story and get past the moments of writer's block, reviewing the early drafts of the book. Thanks to the developers of the San Francisco Bitcoin Developers Meetup group and Taariq Lewis, the group's co-founder, for helping to test the early material.
+
+During the development of the book, I made early drafts available on Github and invited public comments. More than a hundred comments, suggestions, corrections and contributions were submitted in response. Those contributions are explicitly acknowledged, with my thanks, in <<github_contrib>>. Special thanks to Minh T. Nguyen who volunteered to manage the Github contributions and added many significant contributions himself. Thanks also to Andrew Naugler for infographic design. 
+
+Several bitcoin developers contributed code samples, reviews, comments and encouragement. Thanks to Amir Taaki for example code snippets and many great comments, Vitalik Buterin and Richard Kiss for help with elliptic curve math and code contributions, Gavin Andresen for corrections, comments and encouragement, Michalis Kargakis for comments, contributions and btcd writeup. 
+
+Once the book was drafted, it went through several rounds of technical review. Thanks to Cricket Liu and Lorne Lantz for their thorough review, comments and support. 
+
+It is impossible to make a distinction between the bitcoin technology and the bitcoin community, and this book is as much a product of that community as it is a book on the technology. My work on this book was encouraged, cheered on, supported and rewarded by the entire bitcoin community from the very beginning until the very end. More than anything, this book has allowed me to be part of a wonderful community for two years and I can't thank you enough for accepting me in this community. There are far too many people to mention by name - people I've met at conferences, events, seminars, meetups, pizza gatherings and small private gatherings, as well as many who communicated with me by twitter, on reddit, on bitcointalk.org and on github who have had an impact on this book. Every idea, analogy, question, answer, and explanation you find in this book was at some point inspired, tested or improved through my interactions with the community. Thank you all for your support, without you this book would not have happened. I am forever grateful.
+
+[[github_contrib]]
+==== Early Release Draft (Github Contributions)
+
+Many contributors offered comments, corrections and additions to the early-release draft on Github. Thank you all for your contributions to this book. Notable contributors included the following:
+
+===== (Name - Github ID)
+
+* *Minh T. Nguyen - enderminh: Github contribution editor*
+* Ed Eykholt - edeykholt
+* Michalis Kargakis - kargakis
+* Erik Wahlström - erikwam
+* Richard Kiss - richardkiss
+* Eric Winchell - winchell
+* Sergej Kotliar - ziggamon
+* Nagaraj Hubli - nagarajhubli
+* ethers
+* Alex Waters - alexwaters
+* Mihail Russu - MihailRussu
+* Ish Ot Jr. - ishotjr
+* James Addison - jayaddison
+* Nekomata - nekomata-3
+* Simon de la Rouviere - simondlr
+* Chapman Shoop - belovachap
+* Holger Schinzel - schinzelh
+* effectsToCause - vericoin
+* Stephan Oeste - Emzy
+* Joe Bauers - joebauers
+* Jason Bisterfeldt - jbisterfeldt
+* Ed Leafe - EdLeafe
+
 ++++
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@@ -187,40 +244,3 @@ transaction::
 wallet::
 ((("wallet"))) 
 	Software that holds all your bitcoin addresses and secret keys. Use it to send, receive and store your bitcoin.
-    
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-<?hard-pagebreak?>
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-
-=== Acknowledgments
-
-==== Technical Review
-
-==== Early Release Draft (Github Contributions)
-
-Many contributors offered comments, corrections and additions to the early-release draft on Github. Thank you all for your contributions to this book. Notable contributors included the following:
-
-===== (Name - Github ID)
-
-* *Minh T. Nguyen - enderminh: Github contribution editor*
-* Ed Eykholt - edeykholt
-* Michalis Kargakis - kargakis
-* Erik Wahlström - erikwam
-* Richard Kiss - richardkiss
-* Eric Winchell - winchell
-* Sergej Kotliar - ziggamon
-* Nagaraj Hubli - nagarajhubli
-* ethers
-* Alex Waters - alexwaters
-* Mihail Russu - MihailRussu
-* Ish Ot Jr. - ishotjr
-* James Addison - jayaddison
-* Nekomata - nekomata-3
-* Simon de la Rouviere - simondlr
-* Chapman Shoop - belovachap
-* Holger Schinzel - schinzelh
-* effectsToCause - vericoin
-* Stephan Oeste - Emzy
-* Joe Bauers - joebauers
-* Jason Bisterfeldt - jbisterfeldt
-* Ed Leafe - EdLeafe