You see, normal RNG libraries are not intended for cryptography, as they are not very secure. Python even provides a cute way of generating just enough bits: import random So, how do we generate a 32-byte integer? The first thing that comes to mind is to just use an RNG library in your language of choice. The order of secp256k1 is FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFEBAAEDCE6AF48A03BBFD25E8CD0364141, which is pretty big: almost any 32-byte number will be smaller than it. Because we use ECDSA, the key should be positive and should be less than the order of the curve. There is an additional requirement for the private key. So, to put it another way, we need 32 bytes of data to feed to this curve algorithm. Now, this curve has an order of 256 bits, takes 256 bits as input, and outputs 256-bit integers. More specifically, it uses one particular curve called secp256k1. Why exactly 32 bytes? Great question! You see, to create a public key from a private one, Bitcoin uses the ECDSA, or Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm. The same private key, written in different formats. For our purposes, we will use a 64 character long hex string. It can be a binary string, Base64 string, a WIF key, mnemonic phrase, or finally, a hex string. It can be a string of 256 ones and zeros (32 * 8 = 256) or 100 dice rolls. Now, there are many ways to record these bytes.

You just want to learn more about cryptography and random number generation (RNG)įormally, a private key for Bitcoin (and many other cryptocurrencies) is a series of 32 bytes.

You want to make sure that no one knows the key.

So why generate it anyway? Here are the reasons that I have:

Mobile and desktop wallets usually also generate a private key for you, although they might have the option to create a wallet from your own private key. For example, if you use a web wallet like Coinbase or, they create and manage the private key for you.

I will provide a description of the algorithm and the code in Python. Here, I will provide an introduction to private keys and show you how you can generate your own key using various cryptographic functions. And if you really want to generate the key yourself, it makes sense to generate it in a secure way. For this reason, you should keep it secret. The person who holds the private key fully controls the coins in that wallet. In cryptocurrencies, a private key allows a user to gain access to their wallet.

Bitcoin private key address generator