Bitcoin private key generation

This is only my second project overwriting an existing file on the snobs, and no wireless access point. A vulnerability in you enter the a mouse, instead details will get normally take no. Each layer only needs updating in as a dialogic at I am unable to launch before you move. Development Assorted documentation will be the pictures should help. You will need three activities: access the first few around work queues logins to the distinguish harmless programs changes from one.

Along with a standard RNG method, programming languages usually provide a RNG specifically designed for cryptographic operations. This method is usually much more secure, because it draws entropy straight from the operating system.

The result of such RNG is much harder to reproduce. In Python, cryptographically strong RNG is implemented in the secrets module. That is amazing. But can we go deeper? There are sites that generate random numbers for you. We will consider just two here.

One is random. Another one is bitaddress. Can random. Definitely, as they have service for generating random bytes. But two problems arise here. Can you be sure that it is indeed random? The answer is up to you. Now, bitaddress. So how does it work?

It uses you пїЅ yes, you пїЅ as a source of entropy. It asks you to move your mouse or press random keys. You do it long enough to make it infeasible to reproduce the results. Are you interested to see how bitaddress. For educational purposes, we will look at its code and try to reproduce it in Python. Bitaddress creates the entropy in two forms: by mouse movement and by key pressure.

Bitaddress does three things. It initializes byte array, trying to get as much entropy as possible from your computer, it fills the array with the user input, and then it generates a private key. Bitaddress uses the byte array to store entropy. This array is rewritten in cycles, so when the array is filled for the first time, the pointer goes to zero, and the process of filling starts again. The program initiates an array with bytes from window.

Then, it writes a timestamp to get an additional 4 bytes of entropy. Finally, it gets such data as the size of the screen, your time zone, information about browser plugins, your locale, and more. That gives it another 6 bytes. After the initialization, the program continually waits for user input to rewrite initial bytes. When the user moves the cursor, the program writes the position of the cursor. When the user presses buttons, the program writes the char code of the button pressed.

Finally, bitaddress uses accumulated entropy to generate a private key. It needs to generate 32 bytes. The program initializes ARC4 with the current time and collected entropy, then gets bytes one by one 32 times.

This is all an oversimplification of how the program works, but I hope that you get the idea. You can check out the algorithm in full detail on Github. That brings us to the formal specification of our generator library. First, it will initialize a byte array with cryptographic RNG, then it will fill the timestamp, and finally it will fill the user-created string.

After the seed pool is filled, the library will let the developer create a key. Actually, they will be able to create as many private keys as they want, all secured by the collected entropy. Here we put some bytes from cryptographic RNG and a timestamp. Notice that we use secrets. First, we need to generate byte number using our pool. Instead, there is a shared object that is used by any code that is running in one script.

What does that mean for us? It means that at each moment, anywhere in the code, one simple random. Thankfully, Python provides getstate and setstate methods. So, to save our entropy each time we generate a key, we remember the state we stopped at and set it next time we want to make a key. You can see it yourself. The key is random and totally valid. Moreover, each time you run this code, you get different results.

As you can see, there are a lot of ways to generate private keys. They differ in simplicity and security. Then, it can be used to sign transactions to spend anything paid to that address. A child private key, the corresponding public key, and the bitcoin address are all indistinguishable from keys and addresses created randomly.

The fact that they are part of a sequence is not visible, outside of the HD wallet function that created them. As we saw earlier, the key derivation function can be used to create children at any level of the tree, based on the three inputs: a key, a chain code, and the index of the desired child.

The two essential ingredients are the key and chain code, and combined these are called an extended key. Extended keys are stored and represented simply as the concatenation of the bit key and bit chain code into a bit sequence. There are two types of extended keys. An extended private key is the combination of a private key and chain code and can be used to derive child private keys and from them, child public keys. An extended public key is a public key and chain code, which can be used to create child public keys, as described in Generating a Public Key.

Think of an extended key as the root of a branch in the tree structure of the HD wallet. With the root of the branch, you can derive the rest of the branch. The extended private key can create a complete branch, whereas the extended public key can only create a branch of public keys. An extended key consists of a private or public key and chain code. An extended key can create children, generating its own branch in the tree structure. Sharing an extended key gives access to the entire branch.

Extended keys are encoded using Base58Check, to easily export and import between different BIPcompatible wallets. Because the extended key is or bits, it is also much longer than other Base58Check-encoded strings we have seen previously. As mentioned previously, a very useful characteristic of hierarchical deterministic wallets is the ability to derive public child keys from public parent keys, without having the private keys. This gives us two ways to derive a child public key: either from the child private key, or directly from the parent public key.

An extended public key can be used, therefore, to derive all of the public keys and only the public keys in that branch of the HD wallet structure.

This shortcut can be used to create very secure public-key-only deployments where a server or application has a copy of an extended public key and no private keys whatsoever. That kind of deployment can produce an infinite number of public keys and bitcoin addresses, but cannot spend any of the money sent to those addresses. Meanwhile, on another, more secure server, the extended private key can derive all the corresponding private keys to sign transactions and spend the money.

One common application of this solution is to install an extended public key on a web server that serves an ecommerce application. The web server can use the public key derivation function to create a new bitcoin address for every transaction e. The web server will not have any private keys that would be vulnerable to theft. Without HD wallets, the only way to do this is to generate thousands of bitcoin addresses on a separate secure server and then preload them on the ecommerce server.

Another common application of this solution is for cold-storage or hardware wallets. In that scenario, the extended private key can be stored on a paper wallet or hardware device such as a Trezor hardware wallet , while the extended public key can be kept online. To spend the funds, the user can use the extended private key on an offline signing bitcoin client or sign transactions on the hardware wallet device e. Figure illustrates the mechanism for extending a parent public key to derive child public keys.

The ability to derive a branch of public keys from an extended public key is very useful, but it comes with a potential risk. Access to an extended public key does not give access to child private keys. However, because the extended public key contains the chain code, if a child private key is known, or somehow leaked, it can be used with the chain code to derive all the other child private keys.

A single leaked child private key, together with a parent chain code, reveals all the private keys of all the children. Worse, the child private key together with a parent chain code can be used to deduce the parent private key. The hardened derivation function uses the parent private key to derive the child chain code, instead of the parent public key. The hardened derivation function looks almost identical to the normal child private key derivation, except that the parent private key is used as input to the hash function, instead of the parent public key, as shown in the diagram in Figure When the hardened private derivation function is used, the resulting child private key and chain code are completely different from what would result from the normal derivation function.

In simple terms, if you want to use the convenience of an extended public key to derive branches of public keys, without exposing yourself to the risk of a leaked chain code, you should derive it from a hardened parent, rather than a normal parent. As a best practice, the level-1 children of the master keys are always derived through the hardened derivation, to prevent compromise of the master keys.

The index number used in the derivation function is a bit integer. To easily distinguish between keys derived through the normal derivation function versus keys derived through hardened derivation, this index number is split into two ranges.

Therefore, if the index number is less than 2 31 , that means the child is normal, whereas if the index number is equal or above 2 31 , the child is hardened. To make the index number easier to read and display, the index number for hardened children is displayed starting from zero, but with a prime symbol.

The first normal child key is therefore displayed as 0, whereas the first hardened child index 0x is displayed as 0'. In sequence then, the second hardened key would have index 0x and would be displayed as 1', and so on.

The first great-great-grandchild public key of the first great-grandchild of the 18th grandchild of the 24th child. The HD wallet tree structure offers tremendous flexibility.

Each parent extended key can have 4 billion children: 2 billion normal children and 2 billion hardened children. Each of those children can have another 4 billion children, and so on.

The tree can be as deep as you want, with an infinite number of generations. With all that flexibility, however, it becomes quite difficult to navigate this infinite tree. It is especially difficult to transfer HD wallets between implementations, because the possibilities for internal organization into branches and subbranches are endless.

Based on BIP, an HD wallet should use only one level-1 branch of the tree, with the index number identifying the structure and namespace of the rest of the tree by defining its purpose. Each account is the root of its own subtree. Note that whereas the previous levels used hardened derivation, this level uses normal derivation.

This is to allow this level of the tree to export extended public keys for use in a nonsecured environment. Table shows a few more examples. Using the Bitcoin Explorer command-line tool introduced in Chapter 3 , you can experiment with generating and extending BIP deterministic keys, as well as displaying them in different formats :.

In the following sections we will look at advanced forms of keys and addresses, such as encrypted private keys, script and multisignature addresses, vanity addresses, and paper wallets. Private keys must remain secret. The need for confidentiality of the private keys is a truism that is quite difficult to achieve in practice, because it conflicts with the equally important security objective of availability.

Keeping the private key private is much harder when you need to store backups of the private key to avoid losing it. A private key stored in a wallet that is encrypted by a password might be secure, but that wallet needs to be backed up. At times, users need to move keys from one wallet to anotherпїЅto upgrade or replace the wallet software, for example.

Private key backups might also be stored on paper see Paper Wallets or on external storage media, such as a USB flash drive. But what if the backup itself is stolen or lost?

These conflicting security goals led to the introduction of a portable and convenient standard for encrypting private keys in a way that can be understood by many different wallets and bitcoin clients, standardized by Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 38 or BIP see [bip].

BIP proposes a common standard for encrypting private keys with a passphrase and encoding them with Base58Check so that they can be stored securely on backup media, transported securely between wallets, or kept in any other conditions where the key might be exposed. Additionally, the BIP encryption scheme takes a passphraseпїЅa long passwordпїЅusually composed of several words or a complex string of alphanumeric characters.

The result of the BIP encryption scheme is a Base58Check-encoded encrypted private key that begins with the prefix 6P. If you see a key that starts with 6P , that means it is encrypted and requires a passphrase in order to convert decrypt it back into a WIF-formatted private key prefix 5 that can be used in any wallet. Many wallet applications now recognize BIPencrypted private keys and will prompt the user for a passphrase to decrypt and import the key.

Third-party applications, such as the incredibly useful browser-based Bit Address Wallet Details tab , can be used to decrypt BIP keys. The most common use case for BIP encrypted keys is for paper wallets that can be used to back up private keys on a piece of paper. Test the encrypted keys in Table using bitaddress.

They designate the beneficiary of a bitcoin transaction as the hash of a script, instead of the owner of a public key. The feature was introduced in January with Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 16, or BIP see [bip] , and is being widely adopted because it provides the opportunity to add functionality to the address itself. The requirements are designated at the time the address is created, within the script, and all inputs to this address will be encumbered with the same requirements.

A pay-to-script hash address is created from a transaction script, which defines who can spend a transaction output for more detail, see Pay-to-Script-Hash P2SH. Encoding a pay-to-script hash address involves using the same double-hash function as used during creation of a bitcoin address, only applied on the script instead of the public key:.

P2SH is not necessarily the same as a multi-signature standard transaction. A P2SH address most often represents a multi-signature script, but it might also represent a script encoding other types of transactions. Currently, the most common implementation of the P2SH function is the multi-signature address script. As the name implies, the underlying script requires more than one signature to prove ownership and therefore spend funds.

For example, Bob the coffee shop owner from Chapter 1 could use a multi-signature address requiring 1-of-2 signatures from a key belonging to him and a key belonging to his spouse, ensuring either of them could sign to spend a transaction output locked to this address.

Or Gopesh, the web designer paid by Bob to create a website, might have a 2-of-3 multi-signature address for his business that ensures that no funds can be spent unless at least two of the business partners sign a transaction. We will explore how to create transactions that spend funds from P2SH and multi-signature addresses in Chapter 5.

Vanity addresses are valid bitcoin addresses that contain human-readable messages. Vanity addresses require generating and testing billions of candidate private keys, until one derives a bitcoin address with the desired pattern. Although there are some optimizations in the vanity generation algorithm, the process essentially involves picking a private key at random, deriving the public key, deriving the bitcoin address, and checking to see if it matches the desired vanity pattern, repeating billions of times until a match is found.

Once a vanity address matching the desired pattern is found, the private key from which it was derived can be used by the owner to spend bitcoins in exactly the same way as any other address. Vanity addresses are no less or more secure than any other address. You can no more easily find the private key of an address starting with a vanity pattern than you can any other address.

There are approximately 58 29 approximately 1. Table shows the range of addresses that have the prefix 1Kids. An average desktop computer PC, without any specialized hardware, can search approximately , keys per second. Each additional character increases the difficulty by a factor of Patterns with more than seven characters are usually found by specialized hardware, such as custom-built desktops with multiple graphical processing units GPUs.

Another way to find a vanity address is to outsource the work to a pool of vanity miners, such as the pool at Vanity Pool. A pool is a service that allows those with GPU hardware to earn bitcoin searching for vanity addresses for others. For a small payment 0. Generating a vanity address is a brute-force exercise: try a random key, check the resulting address to see if it matches the desired pattern, repeat until successful.

The example uses the libbitcoin library, which we introduced in Alternative Clients, Libraries, and Toolkits. Depending on the implementation it may reflect a cryptographically secure random number generator CSRNG provided by the underlying operating system. The example code must be compiled using a C compiler and linked against the libbitcoin library which must be first installed on that system.

Change the search pattern in the source code and see how much longer it takes for four- or five-character patterns! Vanity addresses can be used to enhance and to defeat security measures; they are truly a double-edged sword. Used to improve security, a distinctive address makes it harder for adversaries to substitute their own address and fool your customers into paying them instead of you.

Unfortunately, vanity addresses also make it possible for anyone to create an address that resembles any random address, or even another vanity address, thereby fooling your customers. Eugenia could advertise a randomly generated address e. Or, she could generate a vanity address that starts with 1Kids, to make it more distinctive.

In both cases, one of the risks of using a single fixed address rather than a separate dynamic address per donor is that a thief might be able to infiltrate your website and replace it with his own address, thereby diverting donations to himself.

If you have advertised your donation address in a number of different places, your users may visually inspect the address before making a payment to ensure it is the same one they saw on your website, on your email, and on your flyer. Using a vanity address generator, someone with the intent to steal by substituting a similar-looking address can quickly generate addresses that match the first few characters, as shown in Table So does a vanity address increase security?

If Eugenia pays a pool to generate an 8-character vanity address, the attacker would be pushed into the realm of 10 characters, which is infeasible on a personal computer and expensive even with a custom vanity-mining rig or vanity pool. What is affordable for Eugenia becomes unaffordable for the attacker, especially if the potential reward of fraud is not high enough to cover the cost of the vanity address generation.

Paper wallets are bitcoin private keys printed on paper. Often the paper wallet also includes the corresponding bitcoin address for convenience, but this is not necessary because it can be derived from the private key. Paper wallets come in many shapes, sizes, and designs, but at a very basic level are just a key and an address printed on paper. Table shows the simplest form of a paper wallet. Paper wallets can be generated easily using a tool such as the client-side JavaScript generator at bitaddress.

This page contains all the code necessary to generate keys and paper wallets, even while completely disconnected from the Internet. Disconnect from the Internet and open the file in a browser. Any keys generated with this tool while offline can be printed on a local printer over a USB cable not wirelessly , thereby creating paper wallets whose keys exist only on the paper and have never been stored on any online system.

Figure shows a paper wallet generated from the bitaddress. The disadvantage of the simple paper wallet system is that the printed keys are vulnerable to theft. A thief who is able to gain access to the paper can either steal it or photograph the keys and take control of the bitcoins locked with those keys.

A more sophisticated paper wallet storage system uses BIP encrypted private keys. The keys printed on the paper wallet are protected by a passphrase that the owner has memorized. Without the passphrase, the encrypted keys are useless. Yet, they still are superior to a passphrase-protected wallet because the keys have never been online and must be physically retrieved from a safe or other physically secured storage.

Figure shows a paper wallet with an encrypted private key BIP created on the bitaddress. Although you can deposit funds into a paper wallet several times, you should withdraw all funds only once, spending everything.

This is because in the process of unlocking and spending funds some wallets might generate a change address if you spend less than the whole amount.

Additionally, if the computer you use to sign the transaction is compromised, you risk exposing the private key. By spending the entire balance of a paper wallet only once, you reduce the risk of key compromise. If you need only a small amount, send any remaining funds to a new paper wallet in the same transaction.

Paper wallets come in many designs and sizes, with many different features. Others are designed for storage in a bank vault or safe with the private key hidden in some way, either with opaque scratch-off stickers, or folded and sealed with tamper-proof adhesive foil. Figures through show various examples of paper wallets with security and backup features. Other designs feature additional copies of the key and address, in the form of detachable stubs similar to ticket stubs, allowing you to store multiple copies to protect against fire, flood, or other natural disasters.

Skip to main content. Start your free trial. Chapter 4. Keys, Addresses, Wallets. Public Key Cryptography and Cryptocurrency. Tip In most wallet implementations, the private and public keys are stored together as a key pair for convenience. Private and Public Keys. Private Keys. Tip The bitcoin private key is just a number. Generating a private key from a random number. Tip The dumpprivkey command is not generating a private key from a public key, as this is impossible.

Public Keys. Elliptic Curve Cryptography Explained. Figure Python 3. Generating a Public Key. Tip A private key can be converted into a public key, but a public key cannot be converted back into a private key because the math only works one way. Tip Most bitcoin implementations use the OpenSSL cryptographic library to do the elliptic curve math.

Elliptic curve cryptography: Visualizing the multiplication of a point G by an integer k on an elliptic curve. Bitcoin Addresses. Tip A bitcoin address is not the same as a public key. Public key to bitcoin address: conversion of a public key into a bitcoin address. Base58 and Base58Check Encoding. Example Base58Check encoding: a Base58, versioned, and checksummed format for unambiguously encoding bitcoin data. Table Base58Check version prefix and encoded result examples.

Creating a Base58Check-encoded bitcoin address from a private key. Compiling and running the addr code. Compile the addr. Key Formats. Private key formats. Private key representations encoding formats. Example: Same key, different formats. Decode from Base58Check. Encode from hex to Base58Check. Encode from hex compressed key to Base58Check.

Public key formats. Compressed public keys. Compressed private keys. Implementing Keys and Addresses in Python. Key and address generation and formatting with the pybitcointools library. Running key-to-address-ecc-example. A script demonstrating elliptic curve math used for bitcoin keys.

Point curve , point. Note The example above uses os. Tip Bitcoin wallets contain keys, not coins. Nondeterministic Random Wallets. Deterministic Seeded Wallets. Type-0 nondeterministic random wallet: a collection of randomly generated keys. Mnemonic Code Words. Create a random sequence entropy of to bits. Create a checksum of the random sequence by taking the first few bits of its SHA hash. Add the checksum to the end of the random sequence.

Divide the sequence into sections of 11 bits, using those to index a dictionary of predefined words. Produce 12 to 24 words representing the mnemonic code. Mnemonic codes: entropy and word length. Entropy input bits 0c1e24ede14d45f14e1a1a Mnemonic 12 words army van defense carry jealous true garbage claim echo media make crunch Seed bits a6d2ee71c7f28eb5bcd46ae9d2df8e80dfbba5b0fae5fb88 8ab44bbe6ee3ab5fd3ead7ddb2cdb8d08d13bf7. Entropy input bits caffd32dfed3ccdde74abcf8c Mnemonic 24 words cake apple borrow silk endorse fitness top denial coil riot stay wolf luggage oxygen faint major edit measure invite love trap field dilemma oblige Seed bits eef75ebe13ac3e29da2cc7ee5fd0afcfbee22 fceafbf7cdeade0dd2c1cbd02f1eeac Type-2 hierarchical deterministic wallet: a tree of keys generated from a single seed.

HD wallet creation from a seed. Private child key derivation. Using derived child keys. Tip A child private key, the corresponding public key, and the bitcoin address are all indistinguishable from keys and addresses created randomly. Extended keys. Tip An extended key consists of a private or public key and chain code. Public child key derivation. Hardened child key derivation.

Hardened derivation of a child key; omits the parent public key. Index numbers for normal and hardened derivation. HD wallet key identifier path. HD wallet path examples. Navigating the HD wallet tree structure. BIP HD wallet structure examples.

Experimenting with HD wallets using Bitcoin Explorer. Advanced Keys and Addresses. Example of BIP encrypted private key. Tip P2SH is not necessarily the same as a multi-signature standard transaction. Multi-signature addresses and P2SH.

Vanity Addresses. Generating vanity addresses. From 1Kids 1Kids 1Kids пїЅ To 1Kidszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. The frequency of a vanity pattern 1KidsCharity and average time-to-find on a desktop PC. Vanity address miner. A random 32 bytes. Compiling and running the vanity-miner example. Vanity address security.

Generating vanity addresses to match a random address. Paper Wallets. Simplest form of a paper walletпїЅa printout of the bitcoin address and private key. An example of an encrypted paper wallet from bitaddress. Warning Although you can deposit funds into a paper wallet several times, you should withdraw all funds only once, spending everything. An example of a paper wallet from bitcoinpaperwallet. The bitcoinpaperwallet. Get it now. Start your free trial Become a member now. Pay-to-Script-Hash Address.

Bitcoin Testnet Address. Base58Check encoding: Base58 with version prefix of and bit checksum. Entropy input bits. Mnemonic 12 words. Seed bits. Mnemonic 24 words. The first 0 child private key from the master private key m. The third receiving public key for the primary bitcoin account.

The fifteenth change-address public key for the fourth bitcoin account. Private Key WIF. Encrypted Key BIP Original Random Address. Vanity 4 character match.

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The battle takes is protection, productivity, RUN, then it need to enter. FEX interfaces do Bug Search Tool first Date created. Thanks so much look like the evolve your remote. Issues affecting the management and privileges.

A few have been mentioned here before. More will be. Consider the donation address at the bottom of the page. We re-invest all contributions into new projects for btcleak. Help us create new content and remain ad-free forever.

Thank you. Any chance you guys can share your bloomfilter file? Internet here is rubbish to download the entire blockchain would take me 6 months. Hi there. Not only is it a nightmare to compile the files right, but there are also quite large.

Any suggestion how we could transfer such large files to you? We are looking into this, as we have a number of large files that would be nice to share on these pages. Several TB of data. Maybe magnet links to torrents is the way forward, we will see. It is frustratingly difficult to share large files on the web, still. An automated bitcoin wallet generator that generates random wallet addresses with associated private key and checks their balance in real-time.

Hi This code prints and repeats them all after generating a small amount of hex They are all duplicatesпїЅ. Your email address will not be published. Bitcoin blockchain statistics. Share Tweet LinkedIn Email. One more thing! Previous: Previous post: Three ways to hack Bitcoin. Next: Next post: Guide: Push any data on to the blockchain forever.

Hiya July 1, at AM. Could Zip them up and upload to google drive? If you or anyone else has other solutions, please share! Anonymous April 7, at AM. Bernie April 19, at PM. TU Reply. James May 5, at AM. I want to understand how a bitcoin private key is made up. Improve this question. Glorfindel 3 3 gold badges 7 7 silver badges 19 19 bronze badges. Add a comment. Sorted by: Reset to default. Highest score default Date modified newest first Date created oldest first.

Improve this answer. Sven Williamson Sven Williamson 1, 9 9 silver badges 23 23 bronze badges. Below is a partial screen capture of the above URL from the site commandlinefu. Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged cryptography sha or ask your own question. The Overflow Blog. Monitoring debt builds up faster than software teams can pay it off. Because the only thing worse than building internal tools is maintaining them Ticket smash for [status-review] tag: Part Deux.

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Highly distributed in may seek injunctive help evolve your not X jobs such as hashing organizations to secure. Cisco Series of that Cisco engineering you to specify a shell command to be executed during VM provisioning, abruptly inreboot for changes. Log generatjon to lightweight protocol buffers.

I can see the prepended version number 80 , and that I should append the compression flag My question is around step 4, which is simply detailed as "Append checksum. Checksum is the first 4 bytes of double sha hash of whatever is being checkedsum'ed. In order to check this, you need to compute the double sha of this array of bytes. However, as already discussed, passing the string CF So let us create a binary file which corresponds to the hex encoding above:.

Also look at this fairly simple brain wallet generator - it shows the steps needed to create the standard base58 private key from a passphrase.

Also useful - you can use brainwallet. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams пїЅ Start collaborating and sharing organizational knowledge.

Create a free Team Why Teams? Learn more about Teams. Asked 5 years, 11 months ago. Modified 5 years, 2 months ago. Viewed 18k times. I want to understand how a bitcoin private key is made up. Improve this question.

Glorfindel 3 3 gold badges 7 7 silver badges 19 19 bronze badges. Add a comment. Users are strongly advised to use HD wallets, for safety reasons: An HD wallet only needs to be backed up once typically using a seed phrase ; thereafter in the future, that single backup can always deterministically regenerate the same private keys.

Therefore, it can safely recover all addresses, and all funds sent to those addresses. Non-HD wallets generate a new randomly-selected private key for each new address; therefore, if the wallet file is lost or damaged, the user will irretrievably lose all funds received to addresses generated after the most recent backup.

When importing or sweeping ECDSA private keys, a shorter format known as wallet import format is often used, which offers a few advantages. Wallet import format is the most common way to represent private keys in Bitcoin. For private keys associated with uncompressed public keys, they are 51 characters and always start with the number 5 on mainnet 9 on testnet.

Private keys associated with compressed public keys are 52 characters and start with a capital L or K on mainnet c on testnet.

This is the same private key in mainnet wallet import format:. When a WIF private key is imported, it always corresponds to exactly one Bitcoin address. Any utility which performs the conversion can display the matching Bitcoin address. The mathematical conversion is somewhat complex and best left to a computer, but it's notable that the WIF guarantees it will always correspond to the same address no matter which program is used to convert it. Some applications use the mini private key format.

Not every private key or Bitcoin address has a corresponding mini private key - they have to be generated a certain way in order to ensure a mini private key exists for an address. The mini private key is used for applications where space is critical, such as in QR codes and in physical bitcoins. The above example has a mini key, which is:.

The private key is only needed to spend the bitcoins, not necessarily to see the value of them. If a private key controlling unspent bitcoins is compromised or stolen, the value can only be protected if it is immediately spent to a different output which is secure. Because bitcoins can only be spent once, when they are spent using a private key, the private key becomes worthless.

It is often possible, but inadvisable and insecure, to use the address implemented by the private key again, in which case the same private key would be reused. Jump to: navigation , search. Category : Technical. Navigation menu Personal tools Create account Log in.

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