From my humble understanding of bitcoins, it uses public key system. My question: How can I collect public keys or certificates that were used in bitcoins on the Internet? For example, I have previously collected public keys used in the 305.x certificates. But, now I need public keys known to be used for bitcoins. Is there any way?
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The entire set of Bitcoin transactions ever performed is actually available online. Any Bitcoin client will, when it first starts up, download the entire transaction log. So that's one way to do it. Just use either a client library, or run a client and parse what it downloads.
If you're happy to collect it manually, just go to Blockchain.info, and you can browse all transactions there.
larsga
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do you know which library exactly that will help in this? I see lots of libraries. – user2192774 Mar 13 '14 at 17:51
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I checked the website: https://blockchain.info/ It shows me what is so-called "public address" not the public-key. How can collect bitcoins public keys? – user2192774 Mar 13 '14 at 19:14
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Bitcoin addresses and public keys are [the same thing](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1_Bitcoin_addresses). If you want to transfer money to an 'address' you use your private key to make the transaction from your address. Anyone can then check that only you could have made the transaction from that address, because only you have the corresponding private key. So the Bitcoin address and public key being the same thing is a central part of the entire Bitcoin design. (As for tools I imagine the Python bitcointools would do nicely.) – larsga Mar 14 '14 at 17:20