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Title: Proving you own a bitcoin address Post by: anu on August 20, 2012, 09:30:17 AM From my understanding, if you have some coins on a virgin Bitcoin address, the public key is a secret. Until you transfer money from that address, at which point the public key is known to the network.
So owning the public key of a virgin address should constitute proof that you also own the private key? Title: Re: Proving you own a bitcoin address Post by: JoelKatz on August 20, 2012, 09:34:23 AM Say you show me the public key to an account to prove to me it's yours. Now I can show that public key to anyone to prove it's mine. But it's not mine. So this can't be right.
Title: Re: Proving you own a bitcoin address Post by: drakahn on August 20, 2012, 09:37:13 AM You could sign a message with the address
Title: Re: Proving you own a bitcoin address Post by: FreeMoney on August 20, 2012, 09:44:55 AM You should sign the message with the private key. Virgin, not, doesn't matter.
Title: Re: Proving you own a bitcoin address Post by: Stephen Gornick on August 20, 2012, 09:48:29 AM You should sign the message with the private key. Virgin, not, doesn't matter. And if the OP wasn't aware, this feature is built into the Bitoin-qt client. Title: Re: Proving you own a bitcoin address Post by: anu on August 20, 2012, 10:07:53 AM You should sign the message with the private key. Virgin, not, doesn't matter. And if the OP wasn't aware, this feature is built into the Bitoin-qt client. Ah, the signmessage and verifymessage command. Excellent. Many thanks! Title: Re: Proving you own a bitcoin address Post by: niko on August 21, 2012, 06:04:21 AM From my understanding, if you have some coins on a virgin Bitcoin address, the public key is a secret. Until you transfer money from that address, at which point the public key is known to the network. So owning the public key of a virgin address should constitute proof that you also own the private key? How can you have any coins on a virgin address? How did they get there? Title: Re: Proving you own a bitcoin address Post by: JoelKatz on August 21, 2012, 06:26:07 AM How can you have any coins on a virgin address? How did they get there? Someone sent them to you, of course. But since you've never spent any of them, your public key has never been disclosed.Title: Re: Proving you own a bitcoin address Post by: niko on August 21, 2012, 06:46:10 AM How can you have any coins on a virgin address? How did they get there? Someone sent them to you, of course. But since you've never spent any of them, your public key has never been disclosed.Sorry, but I still don't get it. Isn't the receiving address in the blockchain? Title: Re: Proving you own a bitcoin address Post by: JoelKatz on August 21, 2012, 07:08:37 AM Sorry, but I still don't get it. Isn't the receiving address in the blockchain? Yes, but we're talking about the public key. That's only placed in the blockchain when it's used to claim a transaction output. If you've never spent any coins, your public key will normally not be in the blockchain no matter how many coins have been sent to you. All that's known is your address (a hash of the public key). |