Payment Address Deconstruction

This tutorial follows the article: Technical background of version 1 Bitcoin addresses

Full Example

0 - Having a private ECDSA key.

18e14a7b6a307f426a94f8114701e7c8e774e7f9a47e2c2035db29a206321725

1 - Take the corresponding public key generated with it (65 bytes, 1 byte 0x04, 32 bytes corresponding to X coordinate, 32 bytes corresponding to Y coordinate).

$ bx ec-to-public -u 18e14a7b6a307f426a94f8114701e7c8e774e7f9a47e2c2035db29a206321725

0450863ad64a87ae8a2fe83c1af1a8403cb53f53e486d8511dad8a04887e5b23522cd470243453a299fa9e77237716103abc11a1df38855ed6f2ee187e9c582ba6

2 - Perform SHA-256 hashing on the public key.

$ bx sha256 0450863ad64a87ae8a2fe83c1af1a8403cb53f53e486d8511dad8a04887e5b23522cd470243453a299fa9e77237716103abc11a1df38855ed6f2ee187e9c582ba6

600ffe422b4e00731a59557a5cca46cc183944191006324a447bdb2d98d4b408

3 - Perform RIPEMD-160 hashing on the result of SHA-256.

$ bx ripemd160 600ffe422b4e00731a59557a5cca46cc183944191006324a447bdb2d98d4b408

010966776006953d5567439e5e39f86a0d273bee

4 - Add version byte in front of RIPEMD-160 hash (0x00 for Main Network).

00010966776006953d5567439e5e39f86a0d273bee

5 - Perform SHA-256 hash on the extended RIPEMD-160 result.

$ bx sha256 00010966776006953d5567439e5e39f86a0d273bee

445c7a8007a93d8733188288bb320a8fe2debd2ae1b47f0f50bc10bae845c094

6 - Perform SHA-256 hash on the result of the previous SHA-256 hash.

$ bx sha256 445c7a8007a93d8733188288bb320a8fe2debd2ae1b47f0f50bc10bae845c094

d61967f63c7dd183914a4ae452c9f6ad5d462ce3d277798075b107615c1a8a30

7 - Take the first 4 bytes of the second SHA-256 hash. This is the address checksum.

d61967f6

8 - Add the 4 checksum bytes from stage 7 at the end of extended RIPEMD-160 hash from stage 4. This is the 25-byte binary Bitcoin Address.

00010966776006953d5567439e5e39f86a0d273beed61967f6

9 - Convert the result from a byte string into a base58 string using Base58Check encoding. This is the most commonly used Bitcoin Address format.

$ bx base58-encode 00010966776006953d5567439e5e39f86a0d273beed61967f6

16UwLL9Risc3QfPqBUvKofHmBQ7wMtjvM

Abbreviated Example

$ bx ec-to-public -u 18e14a7b6a307f426a94f8114701e7c8e774e7f9a47e2c2035db29a206321725 | bx sha256 | bx ripemd160 | bx address-encode

0450863ad64a87ae8a2fe83c1af1a8403cb53f53e486d8511dad8a04887e5b23522cd470243453a299fa9e77237716103abc11a1df38855ed6f2ee187e9c582ba6
600ffe422b4e00731a59557a5cca46cc183944191006324a447bdb2d98d4b408
010966776006953d5567439e5e39f86a0d273bee
16UwLL9Risc3QfPqBUvKofHmBQ7wMtjvM