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Questions tagged [private-key]

Private keys are used for signing transactions and allow the holder of the private key to spend the Bitcoin associated with the address derived from the private key.

A private key is the half of the public/private ECDSA keypair that is kept private. It is a 256 bit integer that is either randomly generated or derived from another private key which was randomly generated. Private keys are typically handled by a wallet software.

Possession of a private key allows the owner to sign transactions which involve the public key derived from that private key. This includes any transaction which spends from a P2PKH or P2WPKH output where the public key hashes to the hash provided in the output, or in P2SH or P2WSH outputs where the public key is provided as part of either the redeem script or witness script as a requirement for spending the output (e.g. for a multisig redeem script).

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What is a compressed Bitcoin key?

The standard Bitcoin client in version 0.6 apparently introduces compressed keys. What are they? Are there any drawbacks to using them? Any incompatibilities with older software? Reductions in cryptographic strength?
Thilo
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ELI5: What's the difference between a child-key and a hardened child-key in BIP32

I've read BIP32, and I do understand it more or less. Could someone please explain to me like I'm 5 years old what the difference between a child-key and a hardened child-key is? I'm trying to add HD wallet generation to a service I'm building. I…
Amin Shah Gilani
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How do I import a private key into Bitcoin-Core?

How do I import a private key into Bitcoin-Qt? bitcoind is nowhere to be found, and pywallet says it requires "bsddb" when I run it, which is also nowhere to be found. I generated some vanity addresses and I want to use them.
lurf jurv
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How can I export the private key for an address from the satoshi client?

If I want to transfer an address from the satoshi client into a different client, how can I find its private key to do so?
Chris Moore
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How are public & private keys in an address created?

I understand the high level concept I am more interested specific details. How is a private key generated. How exactly is public key generated, how is address generated from public key.
DeathAndTaxes
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What is the wallet "word seed" that is commonly used in popular wallets clients and what does it do?

I've been using a pretty old version of Multibit classic and recently decided to upgrade. I tried out Multibit HD and Electrum and noticed that both have me set up a wallet with a "word seed". It's just a string of random words that is apparently…
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How do I get the public bitcoin address from a given private key in wallet import format offline?

I have made paper wallets. And I continually send what bitcoins I get to them. I'm paranoid that I've been sending bitcoins to the paper bitcoin addresses where somehow at sometime my saved private keys got corrupted. So from time to time I want to…
user299648
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How are public and private keys related to the wallet?

I understand that all the Bitcoin protocol is based on an asymmetric cryptography. A user gets 2 keys (public and private). How do these keys connect to the Bitcoins? How are the keys are related to the wallet? How can I decide how many Bitcoins to…
Sean Black
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What is a private key and a public key?

What exactly is a private key and public key in relation to Bitcoin? What are they, how are they used, and how does one find out what their private and public keys are?
Sam Weinberg
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What is the status of hierarchical deterministic wallets (BIP32)

BIP32 specifies hierarchical deterministic wallets, where a master seed fully determines a whole tree of keypairs that can be arbitrarily branched. It also introduces the notions of internal and external keypair chains that can be used independently…
Noah
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Does a wallet containing multiple addresses have a single private key?

Title says it all. Would one private key enable you to recover all the addresses in your wallet? Or does a wallet just contain a series of key-pairs?
Leftover Salad
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How can I convert a SHA256 hash into a Bitcoin base58 private key?

How can I take the output of sha256sum sudofox@ubuntu:~$ echo -n 'Hi guys!' | sha256sum 7542fb6685f9fd8f37d56faf62f0bb4563684a51539e4b26f0840db361e0027c - and turn it into a Base58Check encoded private key? I need to be able to do this with a list…
Austin Burk
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Can private keys remain offline for their entire life?

I am new to Bitcoin and this question is based on 3 assumptions that may be incorrect. Assumption 1: If I understand correctly, the Bitcoin address is generated algorithmically independent of the network, so I should be able to create a public…
Usman Mutawakil
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Is a wallet just a collection of private and public keys?

There is a fundamental bitcoin concept I don't get. Am I correct in that all I "need" to send and receive money are a single address and its associated private key? In other words, can't I just create an address and private key and print them off…
Jimbob
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Why doc says importing private keys is so dangerous?

There are a lot of applications when someone would like to import a private key. However in wiki documentation they say it is very dangerous: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/How_to_import_private_keys WARNING Before reading this page, users should note…
Felipe
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