This week we kicked off the first live cohort of the Mastering Bitcoin program, bringing together participants, faculty, and the Btrust team for the start of a deep dive into how Bitcoin actually works. Over the course of the week, participants explored the foundations of Bitcoin through the opening chapters of Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas M. Antonopoulos. The discussions started with understanding Bitcoin not just as digital money, but as a system made up of several technologies working together. The group unpacked how Bitcoin enables value to move across the internet without relying on centralized intermediaries, and how the network itself is built around open protocols that anyone can run and verify. From there, conversations moved into the mechanics of how the system operates. The group unpacked key components of the Bitcoin ecosystem, including wallets, cryptographic keys, transactions, the peer-to-peer network, and miners. To make these ideas more concrete, participants also walked through the lifecycle of a Bitcoin transaction, from creation in a wallet, to broadcast across the network, validation by nodes, and eventual inclusion in the blockchain. Over the next few weeks, participants will continue building their understanding step by step, moving from these first principles toward the deeper technical layers of the protocol.