The control of your private key is fundamental to Bitcoin’s self-sovereignty. In some way, without this, you’re giving away control of your funds to someone else. “Not your keys, not your coins” As the saying goes. Bitcoin is a bit counter-intuitive for people unfamiliar with its technical underpinnings. “where” What is your Bitcoin? When people hear the word wallet, they automatically think “the place where I keep my money.” Your bitcoin wallet Doesn’t really exist “hold” It is not your Bitcoin. Your Bitcoin is simply data that has been added to the blockchain by the participants of the network. You are proposing an update of the data on the blockchain when you spend bitcoin. The protocol relies on a private-key to make sure that only you and you alone can authorise an update that spends bitcoins.
What are your private keys, then? It’s just a very large number. Extremely big. This is a binary private key:
1110001011011001011110111100000101000100000010001001111010111011010101110111001111111111101010111010010111010011101001110010100110111101000110000111110101111001101001011110011011101000001101101101110001101000110001111010001001001111011010101011001101101010
The random numbers are 256 random 1s or 0s. This random number secures your Bitcoin. This random number might not appear to be much, but it’s what guarantees the security of your wallet. As many Bitcoin private keys are possible as there are visible atoms. This is the number of numbers that a computer must count to create and catalog all possible private keys. Your keys are secure as long as the method used to create the keys is truly randomly generated.
The hexadecimal version of a key is shown below (binary uses only two digits for encoding a number: 1 and 0, while hexadecimal has 16 digits: 0-9, A-F).
E2D97BC144089EBB5773FFABA5D3A729BD187D79A5E6E836DC68C7A24F6AB36A
Here is a picture of a private key in the uncompressed wallet import format (WIF).
5KYC9aMMSDWGJciYRtwY3mNpeTn91BLagdjzJ4k4RQmdhQvE98G
WIF was the format that everyone used in the early Bitcoin days to exchange their private keys. You could only generate one private key and then generate the public key. It is possible to generate a public-key by multiplying very large numbers, but it is more complicated than that. The following are some examples of how to use Large curve that loops around itself.
Bitcoin graph curve Secp256k1The point is called the “generator point.” This generator point may be referred to as the “base point” Secp256k1 curve. This is a crucial part of the process to generate keys and sign with them. The generator point for Bitcoin’s Curve is:
G = 02 79BE667E 59F2815B 59F281798 029BFCDB 55A06295 58A06295 CE870B07
Multiply the generator point by your private key to get the public key. That’s it. Now, you have a point in the graph that has a mathematical relation to the secret key you created.
This is a public key that shows both x and the y points.
04C0E410A572C880D1A2106AFE1C6EA2F67830ABCC8BBDF24729F7BF3AFEA06158F0C04D7335D051A92442330A50B8C37CE0EC5AFC4FFEAB41732DA5108261FFED
It is quite common for people to “compress” Public keys are only used in the unlikely event that you need to interact with them. They store just the x coordinate and a byte to tell you if the y coordinates is negative or positive. It’s a lot shorter:
04C0E410A572C880D1A2106AFE1C6EA2F67830ABCC8BBDF24729F7BF3AFEA06158F0C04D7335D051A92442330A50B8C37CE0EC5AFC4FFEAB41732DA5108261FFED
The process of signing a transaction is essentially a simple multiplication. The signature is created by multiplying the hash value of the transaction with a random number, the nonce, and your private keys. The algorithm can be run to verify the message is signed by the correct private key, without the need to reveal the key. This is the only way to guarantee that you are the only one who can spend your Bitcoin. It’s essentially a multiplication of large numbers.
You may find this confusing if you haven’t read about these concepts. Binary? Hexadecimal? Graph points How do you backup a WIF.
These formats are not familiar to most users since they have been developed in a more intuitive way. You probably have more experience using seed phrases or word seeds.
BIP 39 Mnemonic seeds
The problem of how to interact with your private key was addressed by creating mnemonic seeds or seed phrases.
As we have discussed, private keys are essentially just a random series of 1s or 0s. Imagine trying this to ensure that you did not transcribing an error:
1110001011011001011110111100000101000100000010001001111010111011010101110111001111111111101010111010010111010011101001110010100110111101000110000111110101111001101001011110011011101000001101101101110001101000110001111010001001001111011010101011001101101010
It would only take a single mistake to make a copy of one digit in order for your backup keys to be rendered useless. Here’s where mnemonic seed come in handy. 256 consecutive 0s and 1s is not the best way to handle sensitive data. If you enter this number incorrectly, your account will be locked.
Truck renew donkey fury remind laptop reform detail split grievance because fat
It’s much easier, isn’t it? Only 12 words. How does that work? workFrom a random string of 1s and 0, how do you get a meaningful set of words? It’s an encoding scheme just like binary and hexadecimal.
Each of the 12 words that make up this mnemonic are binary numbers in an encoding scheme Mapping specific strings of 1s or 0s into words. The WIF private key was a number encoded with a particular encoding scheme. In that case, base58, which uses all the numbers and letters of the alphabet, except for O and l and 0 and 1. This was done to avoid transcription errors by mistaking a 0 or 1 for a letter. next level by using only this set of characters (qpzry9x8gf2tvdw0s3jn54khce6mua7l).
Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 39, or BIP 39, introduced a standardized encoding system whereby each word of a specially-crafted dictionary was alphabetically translated to a number ranging from 00000000001 up to 11111111111. The demonstration seed above maps into:
truck: 11101001001
renew: 10110110001
fury: 01011110011
donkey: 01000001001
remind: 10110101110
laptop: 01111101000
reform: 10110100010
detail: 00111100010
split: 11010010001
grief: 01100110100
because: 00010011110
fat: 01010011011
The binary code looks like this:
11101001001 10110110001 01011110011 01000001001 10110101110 01111101000 10110100010 00111100010 11010010001 01100110100 00010011110 0101001 1011
Each word is mapped to an 11-digit binary string, which makes it easier to interact with private keys. The wallet divides the random number you enter for your private key into 11 digit binary chunks and maps these to the BIP 39 Mnemonic Dictionary. You can still read the large number but it is now in English. Your brain is used to reading this format, rather than a long string of 1s and 0, so this will be easier. ереданим This reduces your chances of making a mistake and losing Bitcoin.
In the raw binary code of the above word seed, you may have noticed four digits (1011). ownThe last “word” This is a checksum to ensure that a seed phrase is valid. It is used as a checksum for a valid seed phrase. There aren’t sufficient digits when you generate your random numbers to translate it to exactly 12 (or 24 words). The wallet hashes the digits that you have generated, and adds the first few numbers of the hash at the end to your random number. You now have enough digits for the final word.
This last word allows for a safety test on copies of your seeds. Checksums will not match if your mnemonic is entered incorrectly into a wallet. Every 12 or 24 word seed contains multiple valid checksums, but your wallet will let you know if it doesn’t match. It is a mathematically sound way of ensuring that backups are accurate, without the need to transcribing binary numbers and backing them up.
This list was carefully selected to ensure that no two words in the total of 2048 had the same four initial letters. This was done in order to decrease the possibility of people making transcription mistakes by confusing similar words, and ending up with an inaccurate backup of their private key.
Translation of these words into a Set Multiple private/public key generation is very simple. The mnemonic is hashed with SHA512 to produce 512 1s and 0. Half of the output is used for a real private key. And the other half, along with an index number or existing private/public key is input to SHA512 to generate a key pair. This can be repeated as many times as necessary to create new private/public key pairs that are all recoverable from the mnemonic phrase.
It allows you to manage your private keys easily. safelyThe goal is to make the least amount of mistakes that could cost you money. All of this was done with math! Hopefully, now you have a good understanding of why people say that Bitcoin is money ‘secured by math.’
“This article is not financial advice.”
“Always do your own research before making any type of investment.”
Source: bitcoinmagazine.com
