Bitcoin: Difference between revisions

Any person participating in the bitcoin network has a [[wallet]] containing an arbitrary number of cryptographic [[keypair]]s. The [[public key]]s, or bitcoin ''addresses'', act as the ''receiving'' endpoints for all payments. Their corresponding private keys authorize payments from that user only. Addresses contain no information about their owner and are generally anonymous.<ref name="lwn">{{cite news |author=Nathan Willis |date=2010-11-10 |title=Bitcoin: Virtual money created by CPU cycles |publisher=[[LWN.net]] |url=http://lwn.net/Articles/414452/ }}</ref>  Addresses in human-readable form are strings of random numbers and letters around 33 characters in length, always beginning with the number 1, of the form <!-- Do not change this address.  Address chosen by consensus, it is simply SHA1("Bitcoin") in base58 with a checksum added that's off by one digit -->''175tWpb8K1S7NmH4Zx6rewF9WQrcZv245W''. Bitcoin users can own multiple addresses, and in fact can generate new ones without any practical limit, as generating a new address requires relatively little computing, simply equivalent to generating a public/private key pair, and requires no contact with any nodes of the network.  Creating single-purpose/single-use addresses helps preserve a user's anonymity.