Bitcoin Forum

Hi guys.
I recently created are couple of paper wallets on bitaddress.org.
I know that the wallet details section can provide the public BTC address associated with a given private key.
the function works perfectly when I import / checks private keys created via other wallet generators.
however, problems arise when I impot / check the details of the private keys generated by bitaddress.org itself, a different public address than the one I have been given is stated....
what is the explanation for this?
Have I missed something very obvious?

Hope you use https://bitaddress.org? That is the correct URL. I have just generated a paper wallet on bitaddress and import it on Electrum and it works perfectly.

Check the wallet details very well, there are two addresses, one is uncompressed and beside it is a compressed address, one should be the same with the one you generated, either compressed or uncompressed.

If the private key starts from 5, it is uncompressed, if the private key starts from K or L, it is compressed.

I would also add that using online wallet generators is highly unsafe (I hope that you at least downloaded the git repo and used it on an offline environment).
Even more, javascript based wallet generators are unsafe too.

However, I've done a test for OP and I've got the same result as @Charles-Tim : the private key was imported correctly into Electrum.

So, OP, please tell in more words:
1. what you do exactly (what setup you have to generating the addresses)
2. where you want to try the addresses (what wallet, what OS)
3. how you transfer the information (direct QR from the web page or paper wallet, or copy-paste maybe?) whether you do other steps too?

Any reason why you're using bitaddress.org then importing into Electrum? You could effectively generate a paper wallet via using Electrum offline or Bitcoin Core. Obviously, verifying the download of them, and then generating the private key offline.

In my opinion, there's not much use in using bitaddress if you have access to Electrum or Bitcoin Core. There's just additional risks depending on how you generated it via bitaddress.  

What other wallet generators are you using? They could be unsafe or compromised, which could effectively steal your private key, and output a completely different address. It's best to import it via Electrum/Bitcoin Core which has been verified. That way, you know you've got the correct software, and aren't trusting a unknown source.

When you open the Wallet Details tab then you enter the private key to view its details, bitaddress.org will generate both a "Bitcoin Address" and a "Bitcoin Address Compressed" which don't look alike (but generated from the same private key).
I believe this where the confusion comes from.
You only need the compressed bitcoin address on the right side. If you check it, you will find that it matches the address generated by the other wallet generator you used.

Right on, apparently I missed that the first 500 times I read the text.....

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I´m running Electrum in tails OS.
I imagine verifying the version of Electrum, that comes alongside the Tails OS, would be quite difficult ??? but I might be wrong  ::)

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I was using https://walletgenerator.net/# & https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com/
Just for the sake of the experiment though..

That's why you verify the entire Tails download, instead of all individual programs it comes with. If you can't trust your OS, verifying your programs isn't enough anyway.

Please break the URLs, let's not support those 2 known scam sites with another backlink. I've seen reports on compromised random generators for both sites (which means using them offline still means you'll lose your funds).

Big thanks for the quick response to everyone, this helped me alot  :D ;D

However I noted that walletgenerator.net and bitaddress.org compresses the same address differently...

I suppose this could be the result of different coding formats?

But I would appreciate if you could verify this?

Many thanks beforehand.

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Exactly!

Please break the URLs, let's not support those 2 known scam sites with another backlink. I've seen reports on compromised random generators for both sites (which means using them offline still means you'll lose your funds).
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Ahh, sorry didn´t know that...

Might be that one is showing you the uncompressed address and the other is showing you the compressed address. Or it could be that walletgenerator is a known scam as Loyce has pointed out and is therefore showing you a completely unrelated address which is actually controlled by the malicious owner of that website who will steal any coins you deposit to that address.

If you want another trustworthy site to verify what bitaddress is showing you, then use this one instead: https://iancoleman.io/bitcoin-key-compression/