On the Bitcoin network, possession of bitcoins and transfer of value via transactions is reliant upon private keys, public keys, and addresses. In Chapter 6, Public Key Cryptography, we have already covered these concepts, and here we will see that how private and public keys are used in the Bitcoin network.
Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is used to generate public and private key pairs in the Bitcoin network.
Private keys are required to be kept safe and normally resides only on the owner's side. Private keys are used to digitally sign the transactions proving the ownership of the bitcoins.
Private keys are fundamentally 256-bit numbers randomly chosen in the range specified by the secp256k1
ECDSA curve recommendation. Any randomly chosen 256-bit number from 0x1
to 0xFFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFE BAAE DCE6 AF48 A03B BFD2 5E8C D036 4140
is a valid private key.
Private keys are usually encoded using Wallet Import Format (WIF) in order...