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1 sat \ 2 replies \ @82e78180a1 29 Aug 2023 \ on: Need help recovering wallet from 2010 bitcoin
A bitcoin private key is 256 bits long, that's 32 bytes, which when represented in hexadecimal would yield 64 characters.
However I'm puzzled by the extra 2 or even the other question marks. Are they spread all over the sequence of characters? or are they kept at one side?
Oh and both Armory and Multibit were started in 2011, so this is almost certainly from bitcoin core.
Ok thanks, I wasn't sure when those were created. It definitely remember the user interface when I look at images Bitcoin Core from then.
It definitely has all the characteristics of hexadecimal. They question marks are sort of spread around the first half of the characters and aren't in the beginning or end. I'm sure I could read everything clearly when I wrote it down so I put the question marks there intentionally. All characters used in hexadecimal are located in the string of characters, so I didn't intentionally leave a specific character or two out and just add those in place of the question marks. I stacked they string of characters in a way I couldn't tell if it was two 40 character keys or an 80 character key. If I only use the top line I have a 40 character string with no question marks, but that is an odd length.
I read this in Armory's FAQ, and opposes some other things I've seen.
"Each bitcoin (or fragment of) belongs to a cryptographic private key, which is an 80-digit number that is essentially impossible to guess. Bitcoins cannot be transferred unless the holder of the private key uses it to create a digital signature authorizing the transaction. A Bitcoin address is a string of letters that let other users know what your digital signature looks like without revealing the private key (it is related to the “public key”)." https://www.bitcoinarmory.com/faq/
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It probably means 80 decimal digits. But even then it's a bit off. As a 256 bits number would require at most 78 decimal digits.
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