Foxpup
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Vile Vixen and Miss Bitcointalk 2021-2023
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March 20, 2013, 03:54:49 AM |
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I think I see the source of the misunderstanding. The public key associated with a bitcoin address is broadcast as part of the transaction when sending coins from that address, and it is unusual for a public key to be published any other way. As such, the public key of an address that has not yet been used to send coins will usually not be publicly available. However, the public key is only used to verify that coins sent from an address are legitimate; sending coins to an address does not involve that address's public key in any way, and the non-availability of an address's public key does not prevent anyone from sending coins to it.
Case in point: the donation address in my signature. Anyone can send coins to this address, and a few people already have, even though the public key has never been seen. The public key has never been seen because this address has never been used to send coins anywhere else. None of this is a problem, and ordinary users never have to care about any of it.
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