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Title: Why do all private keys generated with bitaddress have the same first character? Post by: neutrinox on October 31, 2013, 05:17:42 PM Hi!
I noticed that all the private keys bitadress.org generates begin with the number 5. Is this normal? Why is the first character not random? Title: Re: Why do all private keys generated with bitaddress have the same first character? Post by: chriswilmer on October 31, 2013, 05:20:47 PM I think it's similar to the way a random number between 1 and 1000 is much (much!) more likely to start with a 0 than a 1.
0000 0001 0002 ... 0999 1000 etc. However, I could be wrong. Maybe this is just related to the special Bitcoin Base58 encoding and there is a version byte or something. Title: Re: Why do all private keys generated with bitaddress have the same first character? Post by: Gabi on October 31, 2013, 05:23:20 PM The last line is on the right way for the answer :D
It is explained on the Wallet Details section Quote Private Key WIF It just depend on the encoding format used, the key is randomly generated ;)51 characters base58, starts with a '5' Private Key WIF Compressed 52 characters base58, starts with a 'K' or 'L' Title: Re: Why do all private keys generated with bitaddress have the same first character? Post by: Birdy on October 31, 2013, 05:25:41 PM I think it's similar to the way a random number between 1 and 1000 is much (much!) more likely to start with a 0 than a 1. 0000 0001 0002 ... 0999 1000 etc. However, I could be wrong. Maybe this is just related to the special Bitcoin Base58 encoding and there is a version byte or something. You are wrong, the first character isn't random. Afaik it shows what kind of adress this is. All Bitcoin adresses start with 1 and all private keys start with 5 (and there are probably more). Title: Re: Why do all private keys generated with bitaddress have the same first character? Post by: gweedo on October 31, 2013, 05:27:14 PM It has to do with how it is hashed and the verison bytes that are added to the front of the hash. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_Bitcoin_addresses
Title: Re: Why do all private keys generated with bitaddress have the same first character? Post by: blub on October 31, 2013, 05:33:30 PM Use armory, and enter your own private key (the random number soruce on your system could be backdoored)
get good random numbers(dice, geiger counter) Title: Re: Why do all private keys generated with bitaddress have the same first character? Post by: DeathAndTaxes on October 31, 2013, 05:35:18 PM Use armory, and enter your own private key (the random number soruce on your system could be backdoored) get good random numbers(dice, geiger counter) http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/random_number.png Title: Re: Why do all private keys generated with bitaddress have the same first character? Post by: neutrinox on October 31, 2013, 05:36:54 PM Hi thanks!
I deleted my message because I realized it's kind of off topic to this discussion. I generated a new topic instead. Sorry! |
