Many times, it's a great read. This actually applies generally to most revolutionary papers, they are easily distinguishable from blah papers due to the fact that they are trying to tell you something, whereas the blah papers are trying to convince you they're telling you something.

I recommend checking out some Einstein papers to see what I mean. You might not get the full meaning if you don't have a physics background, but you'll see that he uses very simple, concise language. Because he wants you to understand his idea! The same is true for Satoshi. My favorite of Einsteins is just 3 pages long. Here's a link for the interested, the title is Is There a Gravitational Effect Which Is Analogous to Electrodynamic Induction. Here is the first couple paragraphs of it:

Notice how he doesn't try to dazzle you with large words.

Compare this to something like the RGB "black" paper (a silly crypto project imo) It doesn't try to tell you something, it tries to tell you that it's telling you something.

Once you've read it, I recommend rewriting it in your own words. That really locked it in for me.

It’s really not a bad read. And that’s coming from someone who is not a big reader

You just gave me a great idea. My son does Synthesis (that SpaceX learning platform created for Elon's kids- it's really cool) on Saturday mornings but it crashed today and hasn't come back online. I should print out the white paper and read it with him.

Thanks.

In what year will the first perfect recitation of the Bitcoin White Paper from memory occur? 🤔

Read it fully but understood little of it back at that time, re-reading it now is a good idea

I read it when I first got into Bitcoin, but I didn't really grasp the content. I found that books like Inventing Bitcoin and Mastering Bitcoin were more useful to me as a beginner.

Since then I've read the whitepaper a couple more times.

The reason it took me so long to get into Bitcoin was because I refused to touch it until I could read the whitepaper and feel like I understood it

Do you have a link to this white paper?

Yes

Might be time I read it again actually

I felt a bit torn but ultimately had to go with yes. I’ve read it perhaps 3 times however understanding of its content started at 0 and has really hasn’t improved much. The micro improvement is noticeable though. As I read and learn other things about how bitcoin works I like to go re-read it and see if my ability to absorb it has improved or not. I suppose I’m still waiting for my own suddenly then gradually moment.

Page 8 of the white paper explains why 6-confs are generally considered secure. If you redo the math with a single miner owning 33% of hashrate (like foundry does right now), you would need closer to 20 confs to achieve the same security assurances as 6-confs provided back then