Larry Cermak is President of The Block, where he focuses on research, data and product. He is the lead author of How Crypto Actually Works, a freely published technical book developed with coauthors and specialist reviewers.[1][2]
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Contributions
Connect the parts of a cryptocurrency system
How Crypto Actually Works spans fifteen chapters, moving from Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana to custody, market structure, MEV, governance and prediction markets. Cermak credits Igor Igamberdiev and Bohdan Pavlov as coauthors, alongside reviewers and an editor. The repository publishes a pre-first-edition text and invites corrections, making the book’s revision process visible.[2]
Explain a payment through spendable outputs
The Bitcoin chapter describes the UTXO model: a transaction consumes earlier outputs and creates new ones, including change. Spending requires a signature that satisfies an output’s conditions. It also distinguishes consensus rules, which determine valid blocks, from node relay policies. That separation helps explain why a transaction can be valid under the protocol while a node declines to relay it.[7]
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How Crypto Actually Works
github.comA technical book connecting cryptocurrency protocols, custody and market infrastructure.
Start with the Bitcoin chapter’s UTXO and transaction examples, then follow the custody chapter. The text introduces the mechanisms without requiring prior blockchain experience; inspect its pre-first-edition status and corrections process.
Lead author with Igor Igamberdiev and Bohdan Pavlov[2]Original source
Writing, research & talks
- A Comprehensive Introduction to Bitcoingithub.com
A chapter explaining outputs, signatures, consensus and transaction policy.
Lead author of the coauthored book[7]