How to view other versions of a private key?

achow101

staff

Activity: 3458

Merit: 6793

Just writing some code

Quote from: Gwapo on April 20, 2016, 01:42:11 PM

Thanks for your information.
I have found a decoder - http://lenschulwitz.com/base58

Just entered the resulting hex format into bitaddress' wallet details and received the WIF key. Btw, that key starts with "L" instead of "5". Does that mean they are still generating older versions of bitcoin wallets before encoding it to base58?

No, it does not. WIF private keys can start with 5, K, or L. The K and L indicate that the key is compressed, the 5 means it is uncompressed.

Gwapo

full member

Activity: 234

Merit: 100

Thanks for your information.
I have found a decoder - http://lenschulwitz.com/base58

Just entered the resulting hex format into bitaddress' wallet details and received the WIF key. Btw, that key starts with "L" instead of "5". Does that mean they are still generating older versions of bitcoin wallets before encoding it to base58?

DannyHamilton

legendary

Activity: 3472

Merit: 4801

Quote from: deepceleron on April 20, 2016, 01:36:09 AM

The displayed private key is probably raw hex.

I haven't looked at blockchain.info's new wallet service in a couple of days, but unless they've changed it very recently it's probably raw base58:

Quote from: DannyHamilton on April 19, 2016, 12:06:09 PM

- snip -
Blockchain.info ~~in their infinite wisdom~~ has abandoned the more traditional representations of bitcoin private keys (such as WIF and HEX) and instead decided to display private keys as a base58 value with no version, checksum, or compression indicators. I'm sure someone over there probably thought it would be a good idea, but I don't know why.

Therefore it seems that anyone running the latest blockchain.info web interface doesn't have access to the more traditional and multisystem-compatible formats. I'm sure there will soon be several converters written to help people with this problem.

Of course "soon" will depend on how soon someone with the technical knowledge feels motivated to do so, and also depends on whether or not blockchain.info decides to abandon this folly and provide more traditional private key representations.

deepceleron

legendary

Activity: 1512

Merit: 1036

The displayed private key is probably raw hex. What you are looking for is wallet import format, which uses Bitcoin's base58 encoding plus a checksum:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Wallet_import_format

You can view a key in different formats after downloading the bitaddress html w scripts that run on your computer: https://github.com/pointbiz/bitaddress.org

Gwapo

full member

Activity: 234

Merit: 100

I have started using Blockchain.info's new wallet service and after creating an account, I generated an address which has its private key starting from "C".

Now how can I view that key in a normal form; i,e: starting from "5"?

P.S. I tried bitaddress.org and it was showing a completely different address after I typed in that key on "view address details". This was because it overlooked that key as a passphrase not private key.

Topic: How to view other versions of a private key? (Read 617 times)