Bitcoin wallet

For Bitcoin, money is not paid to individuals, but to a private key. This is the root cause of transaction anonymity, because no one knows who is behind those private keys.

Therefore, the first thing in a Bitcoin transaction is that you must have your own public and private keys.

You go to those online bitcoin exchanges to open an account, they will let you first generate a bitcoin wallet (wallet). This wallet is not used to store bitcoins, but to store your public and private keys. The software will generate these two keys for you and put them in the wallet.

According to the agreement, the length of the public key is 512 bits. This length is not convenient for dissemination, so the agreement also stipulates that a 160-bit fingerprint should be generated for the public key. The so-called fingerprint is a relatively short hash value that is easy to spread. 160 bits are binary, written as hexadecimal, about 26 to 35 characters, such as 1BvBMSEYstWetqTFn5Au4m4GFg7xJaNVN2. This string is called the address of the wallet, and it is unique, that is, the address of each wallet is definitely different.