Continuing the series[1] on the various ways one can learn about the technical aspects of Bitcoin, in this article we will focus on transcripts and contributing to or reading the archive of transcripts maintained by Bryan Bishop (kanzure).
In the early years of Bitcoin’s history, all communication involving Satoshi Nakamoto occurred online on mailing lists, IRC and the BitcoinTalk forum. These years are well archived by the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute[2]. There are no recordings of Satoshi speaking, presumably as they could have been used to identify him. However, once in-person meetups, conferences and meetings of core developers started to be organized, there was a danger of content from verbal presentations and discussions disappearing and being forgotten.
In the last decade[3], Bishop has transcribed over 600 transcripts racking up over a million-and-a-half words. The transcripts can be accessed here[4] and pull requests to add or edit a transcript can be submitted to this GitHub repository[5]. A small selection of highlights include a transcript[6] on choosing safe curves for elliptic curve cryptography from 2014, a transcript[7] of Greg Maxwell presenting confidential transactions from 2017 and the transcripts[8] from the Bitcoin Core developer meetings that are not filmed or otherwise recorded.
Typing at the Speed of Lightning
At the CES Summit 2019[9], Bishop explained why all talks should have transcripts. These reasons[10] include facilitating further discussion after the talk, distributing the content beyond the attendees in the room, and text being easier to parse and search than video and audio. His presentation spurred others[11] to attempt to transcribe Bishop’s talk in real time.
Bishop takes pride in publishing the transcript
