Bitcoin Forum

what is private key and how this key work ?

What is a Privet key? it like a password that is provided by your wallet so save it at your note or memo.


Is there any problem behind this privet key of yours? Please write more for us to help you.

The private key is (the name already tells it) the key with which you have access to an address. Every bitcoin address has a private key linked to it, so when you give away your private key, the person who you gave it to has access to that address. That's the reason why you should protect it at every cost.

Most of the time, you won't see the private key though, since it is stored in a wallet.

private key is the unique  long password to avoid  any body can try to login your account or somebody try to crack your account  if you have private key it means your wallet is safe..

This is the base concept behind asymmetrical cryptography (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography).
You can share your public key with anyone, so that one can encrypt a message that only you can read (owner of the private key derived from the public key).

When it comes to bitcoin (or more generally to cryptocurrencies), your private key allows you to spend the coins you received on your public address (wallet address). (More info here : https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1_Bitcoin_addresses)

No. You both have no idea what you are writing about. Please stop spamming nonsense just to increase your post count.

Your private key is everything! Do not give away control of this. In Bitcoin when you send a transaction you are doing so with a public and private key. Public key is like your email address and private key is like your password.

Yes the private key very important, always store it in a save place and make some backups of it so you can't loose it

private key same as password. but you can not  change it or you can not reset it

The private key is like your password so you should not give this key to anyone because someone who holds the key is the one who holds the coin number in your wallet.  :o

It would help for everyone to get a handle on what encryption is all about, it's history, why we need it and how we got where were we are today.  Everyone uses it.   Buy from any entity over the WEB with a credit card and you are using it.

A good book which will help people get a better idea of how all this fits together is.

"The Code Book"  The science of secrecy from ancient Egypt to to quantum cryptography.

Author Simon Singh.  The chapter on public/private key pair encryption (asymmetric cryptography) is very good and easy to understand.

The way Bitcoin was designed, it is built on the blockchain which is often described as an open ledger. The public keys are on the public ledger for anyone to see how many Bitcoins are in an address, and all information about transactions including where they go and how much and what comes in and how much and where it leaves. What it doesn't tell you is who those addresses belong to and how to access them.

This is the reason for the private key. It's the only was to access an account. Anyone that has it can move Bitcoins off the address. It unlocks that address, hence the name "key".

its like your password for email.
if someone know the password of your email, he can acces your email, so if someone know your private key, someone can acces to your bitcoin address too

Private key is the most important thing for you . If you somehow lost your Myetherwallet private key you will lost your all of your coins that were stored in myetherwallet . So keep your private key in a safe place  :) :) :) :) :)

Modern encryption is accomplished using 2 keys which are bound by the relationship of the product of very large prime numbers.

So a private key would be made up of 7 and 11, both primes.  Multiply them together and we get 77.

I tell the world to use the number 77 with some special functions to encrypt messages they want to send me.  The number 77 becomes public and I tell the whole world about it.

I then use the numbers 7 and 11 to decrypt them with another set of math functions.  I must never tell people about 7 and 11.  These numbers are short and only an example.

Now replace 7 and 11 with huge prime numbers.  

What is important is that we use the product of the 2 primes to encrypt and the individual primes to decrypt and the 2 prime numbers we choose must be kept secret.

A private key unlocks the public key to decrypt data. This gives the user control over ones funds as access to the private key is what's needed to control it.

In cryptography, a private key  is a variable that is used with an algorithm to encrypt and decrypt code.

Ok, let us assume both were wrong in explaining what question was asked. It should have been your responsibility as a high ranked memeber of this forum to put them through and help out the OP rather than castigating them for spamming.

Do some reading.   The answer is out there, it's public.   Do a search for "RSA" the company which brought public/private key pair encryption to the market place.

There are 2 things to learn.   asymmetric encryption/decryption and digital signatures with use this encryption.

One more time,  a private key is created by multiplying two prime numbers together, the product of the multiplication becomes the public key.

7 prime number 1
11 prime number 2

7 * 11 = 77

77 is the public key

7 and 11 make up the private key.

77, the public key is used in math function to encrypt messages
7 and 11 remain private and only used by the person who wished to decrypt the messages.

I won't go into the math, it' not important and people can look it up if they want proof.

Next we can use this process of encryption and decryption to create digital signatures used by the bitcoin system to verify the true identity of a person who claims to have ownership of a receiving transaction.  When you contact amazon.com to buy something, how do you really know it was amazon that sent you the web page before you give up your credit card number.   Your computer uses encryption to verify the digital signature sent by amazon.  I won't go into the details.  Want proof, google "how do digital signatures work".

If we use prime numbers with thousands of digits  to generate public keys all the computing power on earth could not factor out the individual primes used to make that public key in billions of years.  The NSA the largest code breaking entity in history is powerless against this encryption.

Private key serve as your password in your wallet. Don't share it nor give it to others.

How does one go about finding the private key that belongs to his/her hardware wallet?

private key is your secret password aside to your existing one, and its very important to keep because without this private key you wont able to open/control/manage your crypto wallet. and keep it on you mind that you cant share this private key to anyone/anybody to avoid you to get hacked. private key works to retrieve, open, access your crypto wallet.

from name it is like your house door key you must safe it to safe your house


so get paper and write it then safe it

if internet drop or war III start will help you

Read the bitcoin wiki, or the intro videos for example in any wallet site or bitcoin.com

You are confusing the "wallet" with "address". They are not the same thing.

Here is a simplified explanation of the major terms:

Bitcoins are sent to and from an address.
A private key allows you to send bitcoins from an address.
A wallet is a container that holds private keys (and their associated addresses).
A seed is used by a wallet to generate private keys.
A password is used to encrypt a wallet so that only you can use the private keys that it contains.