It a previous series of posts, we figured out how to derive a Bitcoin public address from a private key. What should we do with this new knowledge? Let’s generate a bunch of addresses! Specifically, we’ll create a “vanity” address generator.

In previous posts, we figured out how to compute a Bitcoin address from a private key and we tested our code with an example from the Bitcoin wiki. In this post we try to convert a private key from a real wallet (MultiBit) to its corresponding address.

In previous posts, we looked at computing a Bitcoin public key from a private key, and computing a Bitcoin address from a public key. However, these posts dealt with keys and addresses in hexadecimal (hex) form, which is not the representation familiar to most Bitcoin users. Bitcoin addresses more commonly are encoded as Base58Check strings, which we explore in this post.

In a previous post, we derived a Bitcoin public key from a private key. This post explores how to convert that public key into a (hexadecimal) Bitcoin address. I’ll be using the Racket language to help me.

I’ve been wondering how Bitcoin addresses are generated. This post and the ones following will explore, step by step, how to transform a Bitcoin private key to a public address.

I know that Bitcoin public and private keys are Elliptic Curve DSA (ECDSA) key pairs, and I’ve seen the Q = dG explanation on a few sites, but they leave out some details. I want to experiment for myself, so this post describes how to derive a public key from a private key with runnable code.

Today, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Chief Security Officer of Blockchain.info, started a fundraiser for Dorian Nakamoto, the guy who’s being harassed by the media due to Newsweek’s recent article about Satoshi Nakamoto. To prove that the message is not fake, Andreas signed the message with his public key. Since I’ve recently been playing with digital signatures, this seemed like a great chance to explore some more. Let’s try to to verify the message.

Security is really important when handling bitcoins. Hashes and signatures can help by verifying that you’re downloading what you think you’re downloading.

In this post, I briefly explain hashes and signatures, and then check the hash and signature of the MultiBit wallet program, essentially following the MultiBit tutorial on hashes and signatures. All examples are run in Windows 7 (64-bit).