Let's be honest, how many of you here actaully read the whitepaper?

[jacktheking]

Hey everyone. I'm just wondering how many of you actually have read the Bitcoin whitepaper in details. As a Hero member of Bitcointalk, I am ashamed to say that I have not read the Bitcoin whitepaper yet - not even scan through it.

I think I will spare sometime this week to read the Bitcoin whitepaper so that I can understand Bitcoin in detail - most of my knowledge (if not all) about Bitcoin come from Bitcointalk discussions.

Click here for the original whitepaper.
And here for a list of translations.

[Huge Black Woman]

Hail naw, I ain't got time for that.  I never read no whitepaper for the money in my pocket an' I ain't even read the instruction manual for my blow dryer.  I jist use it.  Buy, sell, send, you know.  It's easy as pie an' you don' have ta have any big degree ta do it.

[stark101]

Yes I want to be honest here, actually i have no time to read about whitepaper, i don't have any idea about what is whitepaper all about, the uses of it, the advantages and disadvantages of it and the importance of it. Maybe if i have enough time, i would love to read, have the information about that, get knowledge and ideas about whitepaper so for now, no idea for that.

[franky1]

i have read it. but although outdated in some of its terms, some dev's use it when they want to then go against it when the want to. thus rendering the whitepaper useless

its better to know the ethos of bitcoin

EG
"A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a
financial institution."

"but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending.We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work"

which "hubs" (LN) should not be the direction as the end goal of bitcoin. because these hubs become the next generation of 'trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending'. rather then relying on the security of PoW for each transaction.

ofcourse have it as a side feature. but not the end goal by pricing people out of using the onchain peer-to-peer PoW mechanism. or hindering the onchain peer-to-peer PoW mechanism to sway people into accepting hubs as the only utility.

[aso118]

Bitcoin has changed quite a bit since its inception.
I think ~75% of the code currently being used is different from the original one.

[Vaskiy]

Bitcoin has changed quite a bit since its inception.
I think ~75% of the code currently being used is different from the original one.

Though things has got changed since its inception, the base for the entire change is the same that's been described in the white paper. The code change is common , because change according to the move is a must to be successful.

[manbitcoinlover]

I have not read it, I didn't even know it existed. I don't care about stuff like this because its pretty formal. I prefer to understand information by asking questions and having a knowledgeable person answer them, but I might give this a look now.

[DimensionZ]

I haven't read it either. But you don't need to read it from top to bottom to understand the essentials of Bitcoin. But yeah I guess it would be a very interesting read for people with advanced knowledge about cryptography and mathematics. I should really free some time to read through it though. Maybe during the Christmas holidays  

[darklus123]

When i read that papers. I really am having a hard time to understand most of the calculations or i mean most of the context of that documents. Anyways it is good thing if we read those when we are curious but i guess some of those were obsolete because as bitcoin innovates (prior documents will be changing as well)

[vodaljepa]

F*ck the whitepaper all I care about is making money

[MingLee]

I have read the first page or so of the whitepaper and skimmed over the rest of it for the most part.

I don't have a very good education when it comes to computer science and programming, so I really don't understand all of it, but some information I was able to extract here and there.

I might try to read and identify more information more actively sometime soon when I'm on vacation, but for now I won't worry about it.

[sportis]

I believe it depends on the reason that each of us has dealt with bitcoin. I want to say that if someone decided to deal with bitcoin only to enrich then he has in little interested else except the profit. If someone  believes that blockchain is an innovative and revolutionary technology he definitely read what his creator had written about it. I belong to second category and I have read it although I am not a programmer. I wanted to understand the thoughts of Satoshi even though some things are not clear to me.

[BitHodler]

Honestly speaking, I haven't not read it either. But I don't think it will change much for me as I am a fairly simple Bitcoin user.

I use Bitcoin to send and receive transactions, as an investment tool, and as a store of value tool. These functionalities are self explanatory to me.

That being said, it doesn't harm to spend some time reading through the whitepaper. Maybe that I'll spot something that can be helpful to me that I didn't know of before.

[Xester]

I havent read it yet and I know if I will read it I cannot understand a thing. THe reason why I am not reading is because Im not interested and I am busy searching for more ways to earn than spending my time on reading the whitepaper. Im only a small time bitcoin investor, if I have a big investment then I will possibly be also interested in whitepaper but I am focused on increasing my income. But if I have time I will look and research more about whitepaper.

[Tanic]

What is whitepaper? I'm reading bitcoin news from time to time, maybe once a week. It helps me to awake my fantasy in commenting and stay me on a wave of news in bitcoin world. I think that's a good method that helps me to avoid many unnecessary information about bitcoin.

[jtipt]

To be honest I'm not much of a reader so I hadn't read it yet but since you brought it up now I read a few chunks of it, its really boring and I don't understand half of the things there. There are way better sources to learn the same things which is alot simpler to understand.

[Zadicar]

Well im honest regarding to this matter and the truth is this is the first time to read the exact details of the white paper of bitcoin on which satoshi made it. Infact main purpose is focusing on money transfers without third party involved some informations are not relevant but still thank you OP for linking the Actual white paper of bitcoin project.

[audaciousbeing]

In all sincerity I have seen the white paper but I have never thought of reading the paper not only for Bitcoin, but also for other coin because the paper is always contained of to many technical jargon that I really find too hard to understand. So I just save myself the stress of skipping through the whole thing and move on.

[FlamingFingers]

To be honest, I'm still new to bitcoin world (just 2 months old), so I didn't know what whitepaper is. I'm glad that you pointed that whitepaper out (kept seeing the word "whitepaper" here on posts but didn't know what it is). So I think I will read it carefully because I love knowing everything about bitcoin even if it has some scientifically complicated mathematics (it's not that hard, is it?) .

[BTCLovingDude]

bitcoin whitepaper was one of the first things that i have read back in the days i was a newbie in bitcoin and was getting to know it all better. it is not the most informative thing to read though!

i prefer to read the bitcoin wiki for a more detailed information about bitcoin.