hi guys, here peter from the netherlands
simple question, I hope:
in blockchain.info, wat is the PRIVATE key and wat is the PUBLIC key
in other words, how does private key and public key look like?
thanks in advance, have a healthy 2016
Generally with a blockchain.info wallet you won't see the public or private keys for your bitcoins unless you make special effort to find them. If you create a backup of your wallet, they will be stored in that backup.
The private key is a number randomly chosen by the software between 1 and 115792089237316195423570985008687907852837564279074904382605163141518161494336
(when represented in base 10).
That number can be represented in any of various forms such as binary, hexadecimal, octal, decimal, base58, or Wallet Import Format (also known as base58check or WIF). The most common format you'll probably find it in will be WIF (Wallet Import Format) which will start with either a "5", "K", or "L" and consist of an additional 50 (if it starts with a "5") or 51 (if it starts with a "K" or "L") letters and numbers.
The public key is the X and Y coordinates of a point on the secp256k1 curve. As such it is 2
very large numbers. It may also be represented in "compressed" form where the X value is given along with an indication of whether the Y value is odd or even. From there the Y value can be computed when needed.
The public key can also be represented in any of various forms such as binary, hexadecimal, octal, decimal, or base58. To most common form you are likely to see it in is hexadecimal (where upper or lower case don't matter and the only valid letters are A, B, C, D, E, and F) which will start with 04 (or 0x04) followed by 128 letters and numbers for uncompressed or either 02 or 03 (or 0x02 or 0x03) followed by 62 letters and numbers for compressed.
