21wiki

Introduction to 21wiki

3 min read

21wiki is a Bitcoin knowledge base grounded in the immutable 21ideas.org source library (articles, books, and series) and fundamental Bitcoin-only materials organized into a navigable map.

About the project

21ideas.org is a Bitcoin-only education project. Over time it accumulated a large source library: books, long-form series, practical guides, and conceptual explainers across economics, protocol, history, privacy, and security.

This wiki does not replace the original materials. It is a structured map and entry point: if a topic clicks, follow the links and read the primary sources referenced by each page.

How to read

If you are just getting started

  1. Read Bitcoin — a baseline understanding of the protocol
  2. Use Glossary — definitions for common terms
  3. Read Money — why the concept of money matters
  4. Continue with Inventing Bitcoin or Sovereignty Through Mathematics — both compress the essentials into a short book

If you care about history

  1. Pre-Bitcoin: The Cypherpunk Era — where Bitcoin came from
  2. Cypherpunks — people and ideas that shaped Bitcoin
  3. Genesis Files — deep dives into every major precursor
  4. Bitcoin Timeline — key events in chronological order
  5. The Blocksize War (2015-2017) — the scaling conflict that defined Bitcoin governance in practice

If you care about economics

  1. Money — what money is and how it evolves
  2. Cantillon Effect — how inflation redistributes wealth
  3. Scarcity — why (21,000,000) matters
  4. Gradually, Then Suddenly — Parker Lewis’s essay series

If you care about philosophy and culture

  1. Philosophy Overview — philosophical foundations of Bitcoin
  2. 21 Ways — 21 frames for understanding Bitcoin
  3. Bitcoin for Dissidents — Bitcoin as an escape from coercion
  4. Bitcoin’s Seven Network Effects — why the network hardens over time

If you want to start using Bitcoin

  1. Buying Bitcoin — acquiring bitcoin
  2. Storage & Self-Custody — holding your own keys safely
  3. Lightning Tools — everyday Lightning payments
  4. Security — the threat model of self-sovereignty
  5. Privacy in Practice — coin control, CoinJoin, Tor
  6. Running a Bitcoin Node — independently verifying the rules

If you care about the technical side

  1. Proof of Work — the consensus mechanism
  2. Mining — how blocks are produced
  3. UTXOs (Unspent Transaction Outputs) — Bitcoin’s balance model
  4. SegWit (Segregated Witness) and Taproot — major protocol upgrades
  5. Bitcoin Protocol Stack — layered architecture
  6. Lightning Network — payment channels on top of the base layer

Wiki structure

wiki-en/
├── index.md                    ← directory of all pages
├── overview.md                 ← this file
├── glossary.md                 ← term definitions
├── concepts/                   ← 35 conceptual pages
├── entities/                   ← 12 people / groups
├── history/                    ← 3 history pages
├── philosophy/                 ← 1 philosophy page
├── books/                      ← 8 books
├── series/                     ← 7 article series
├── practice/                   ← 5 practical guides
└── topics/                     ← 2 topic pages

About quality

Each page includes YAML frontmatter metadata:

  • quality: "synthesized" — a topic distilled from multiple sources
  • quality: "reference" — a description of a specific source (book, series)
  • completeness: "high" / "medium" / "low" — how fully the topic is covered

Pages marked completeness: "medium" or "low" can be expanded as more sources are ingested.

In Obsidian, use:

  • Graph view — a visual map of connections between pages
  • Backlinks — what links to the current page
  • wikilinks — navigation between articles
  • Dataview (plugin) — query pages by tags and metadata

Get involved

Graph View

Backlinks