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Bitcoin Address Generation on

Python
Burakcan Ekici Follow

Mar 11, 2020 · 3 min read

B
itcoin is a digital currency created in January 2009. It follows the
ideas set out in a whitepaper by the mysterious and pseudonymous
developer Satoshi Nakamoto. A bitcoin address is a unique identifier that
serves as a virtual location where the cryptocurrency can be sent or hold.
Transactions provide to transfer assets between Bitcoin wallets that keep
private key and bitcoin addresses. The private key ensures that the
transaction comes from the owner of the wallet. Generating bitcoin address
as offline is possible. This code explains how you can generate a bitcoin
address step by step. As you see at the figure below, there are some
operations while bitcoin address is generated.

Let’s start to examine how can we generate bitcoin address;

Step 1: Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm is used to generate

Private Key because Public Key Cryptography provides bitcoin’s
signature principle.

ecdsaPrivateKey = ecdsa.SigningKey.generate(curve=ecdsa.SECP256k1)
print("ECDSA Private Key: ", ecdsaPrivateKey.to_string().hex())

Step 2: Due to Public Key Cryptography, we need Public Key that

depends on a Private Key. So we generate it with the Elliptic Curve
Digital Signature Algorithm too.

ecdsaPublicKey = '04' +
ecdsaPrivateKey.get_verifying_key().to_string().hex()
print("ECDSA Public Key: ", ecdsaPublicKey)

Step 3: We apply SHA256 to ECDSA Public Key that is created in Step 2.

hash256FromECDSAPublicKey =
hashlib.sha256(binascii.unhexlify(ecdsaPublicKey)).hexdigest()
print("SHA256(ECDSA Public Key): ", hash256FromECDSAPublicKey)

Step 4: We apply RIDEMP160 to value that is created in Step 3 and get

value as 20 bytes.

ridemp160FromHash256 = hashlib.new('ripemd160',
binascii.unhexlify(hash256FromECDSAPublicKey))
print("RIDEMP160(SHA256(ECDSA Public Key)): ",
ridemp160FromHash256.hexdigest())

Step 5: We prepend 00 as Network Byte to value that is created in Step 4.

prependNetworkByte = '00' + ridemp160FromHash256.hexdigest()

print("Prepend Network Byte to RIDEMP160(SHA256(ECDSA Public Key)):
", prependNetworkByte)

Step 6: We apply double SHA256 to the value that is created in Step 5 to

Checksum.

hash = prependNetworkByte
for x in range(1,3):
hash = hashlib.sha256(binascii.unhexlify(hash)).hexdigest()
print("\t|___>SHA256 #", x, " : ", hash)

Step 7: We get 4 bytes of value that is created in Step 6 as Checksum.

cheksum = hash[:8]
print("Checksum(first 4 bytes): ", cheksum)

Step 8: We append Checksum value that is created inStep 7 to value that

is created at Step #5.

appendChecksum = prependNetworkByte + cheksum

print("Append Checksum to RIDEMP160(SHA256(ECDSA Public Key)): ",
appendChecksum)

Step 9: We applied Base58 Encoding to value that is created in Step 8.

After Base58 Encoding, we get the value that is Bitcoin Address. (In
Python, b58encode result should decode to utf-8 for showing)

bitcoinAddress = base58.b58encode(binascii.unhexlify(appendChecksum))
print("Bitcoin Address: ", bitcoinAddress.decode('utf8'))

Finally, the result is comprised and the source code is available here;

ECDSA Private Key:

58d31714300fcf58434422014defce57d53f4cc3b76314d34dee729dcb7fc07e
------------------------------------------------------
ECDSA Public Key:
0478e410b429fcc6b9d46d30526fdb6d1fa292f38ce02bd2c6c569a4d0c06ab7b0bf2
c7444f95064b5b4e9ed2ef2eb96425a3e9873315cbeb6a2e3b22e7978d304
------------------------------------------------------
SHA256(ECDSA Public Key):
558f16eb2e93084f763b20a0005734ff32f134ef53990da26273166bb7afc28c
------------------------------------------------------
RIDEMP160(SHA256(ECDSA Public Key)):
daa4e87dcb30d406d24f76bcc2afe2ef550c9068
------------------------------------------------------
Prepend Network Byte to RIDEMP160(SHA256(ECDSA Public Key)):
00daa4e87dcb30d406d24f76bcc2afe2ef550c9068
------------------------------------------------------
|___>SHA256 #1 :
1d7d571d176f378eabd73b1e3ac0fb5a688855d41ae5ee8956afb9c13b5c7027
|___>SHA256 #2 :
b0a511fb05bcf1872be44d98dad592c9641fe47ee7f48f1ecee18b6805bd4ba4
------------------------------------------------------
Checksum(first 4 bytes):
b0a511fb
------------------------------------------------------
Append Checksum to RIDEMP160(SHA256(ECDSA Public Key)):
00daa4e87dcb30d406d24f76bcc2afe2ef550c9068b0a511fb
------------------------------------------------------
Bitcoin Address: 1Lw5rqh94dWzArQ9tDY6Ucswxo3Ums7VWi

Also Read: An ultimate guide to Bitcoin Paper Wallet

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Blockchain Bitcoin Bitcoin Addresses Python

13

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Burakcan Ekici Follow

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