Keys and digital wallets

When a bitcoin address is created, a pair of public and private keys are generated as well. The public key is made known to the public, and the address owner keeps the private key. To spend coins associated with the address, the owner provides a digital signature that's generated with the private key and sends a transaction request to the network. In other words, you have to pose both the address and the private key to spend the corresponding coins.

If an owner loses the address and the private key, the person then permanently loses the coins. Hence, it is important to save the information at a secured place. Digital wallets are available for assisting users in managing public/private keys and addresses. You can use a wallet to do the following:

• Generate addresses and their corresponding public/private keys
• Save and organize information such as keys, addresses, coins owned, and so on
• Send a transaction request to the bitcoin network

A private key is a 256-bit long hash, and a public key is 512-bit long.

They can be converted into shorter lengths in hexadecimal representation. The following screenshot is a pair of sample public/private keys, along with an address:

A private key can also be expressed in a string of 51 characters starting with a 5 and a public key in a string of 72 characters. Here are some examples:

private key:
5Jd54v5mVLvyRsjDGTFbTZFGvwLosYKayRosbLYMxZFBLfEpXnp;
public key: BFCDB2DCE28D959F2815B16F81798483ADA7726A3C4655DA4FBFC0E1108A8FD17B448A68