How to collect PKs used in bitcoins

Question

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?

Answer 1

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.