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.
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).