So, if you have invested your money in Bitcoin that you can afford to buy, you are now required to keep bitcoins in either bitcoin wallet or crypto exchange. When people hear someone invested in bitcoin, they start talking about individuals getting scammed, crypto exchanges getting hacked, and people losing their hard-earned money to cyber-attacks. To avoid becoming the victim of cyber-attacks and prevent any such incident, you need to be extremely careful while storing your digital tokens and handling the private keys of a digital wallet. You can visit https://bitcoin-pro.app for more information on bitcoin trading
How can you secure the private keys of your wallet?
Every investor needs to understand the basics of bitcoin, but it isn’t required to understand all the technical stuff going behind. You need to follow one simple rule: keep your private keys a secret and store them in a safe place. The wallet’s private keys are what makes the system peer-to-peer transactions and decentralization on the bitcoin network possible. So, what are these private keys exactly? Are there any other keys that need to be secured or kept secret?
Understanding Public keys and Private keys through examples
If any crypto user wants to send you bitcoins, you need to provide them with your digital wallet address referred to as a public key. A public key is a unique key or a long number that identifies you. The public key of each wallet user is different, like an email address. Bitcoin wallets work more like a bank account or email address. You can disclose your private keys to anyone who wants to transfer your money. Now, everyone can know that you have received something like an email but can never open it or gain access to it. This is the same case with the bitcoin wallet.
As a receiver, you have private keys, and you can only open your wallet and get access to your coins, but no other person can do the same. Private keys are unique keys that only the owner has access to. If anyone knows your private keys, they can use your wallet and can steal your crypto coins. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the owner to protect their private keys carefully.
What is a private key and a public key?
A private key of the digital wallet is a secret number in the form of alphanumeric characters. Only through a private key can you send or spend your digital coins. Private Key is a 256-bit long number that is generated randomly when users create their wallets. The best thing is that you don’t have to remember the private key as it is a computer file that can be printed. If you lose private keys and don’t have a backup of them, you will lose your coins.
The public key is a 256-bit long code, similar to the private key, but as its name says public, it is made to be viewed by anyone. Bitcoin owners can share the public key with people who want to transfer funds. Private keys are created randomly with strong encryption code, making it impossible for anyone to crack the private keys.
How do these keys work?
The private key creates the public key, and the public key is responsible for creating the wallet address using cryptographic functions. Private keys are used to digitally sign the transactions, whereas public keys are used to verify and ensure ownership of private keys. For each bitcoin transaction, a unique digital signature is generated in the form of a number generated from private keys. Users can sign the transaction multiple times using a similar private key because the private key is never transmitted and is always secure, which means no one can identify your real identity.
Additionally, it is crucial to understand that bitcoin transactions are a one-way function, which means they are stored permanently and publicly on the blockchain. Moreover, bitcoin transactions are completely irreversible.
Conclusion
It is important to have a private key to prove ownership of your digital coins. Also, never leave your digital coins in an exchange, as the security of coins is not their primary priority.