In fact even if all the world’s computers were able to work together, these numbers would still be too large. By using an analogy to drawers and pirates, James dives into this math, revealing not only how simple the idea is, but how well it works. Hello, this is James D’Angelo and welcome to the Bitcoin 101 Blackboard series. Today we are going to be looking at the amazing math of private keys.

And this is one of the main reasons why it’s absolutely impossible to hack Bitcoin. And for all you technophobes out here don’t get confused. This humongous numbers and this amazing new technology doesn’t mean it’s going to be difficult to understand. This is remarkably simple math, very easy to understand and after watching this video you’ll be able to explain this phenomenal new technology to your techie friends. We’re going to have a little bit of fun. This is the website bitaddress.

Bitcoin addresses and private keys. So, down here you have your private key and you have your Bitcoin public address. The beauty of this is you can immediately create new ones. As fast as you can click it will create new ones. But the real amazing thing that has to do with what we’re talking about today is that when you generate this number and these are really just numbers and sort of a Hex 58 format. These are numbers that you have never seen before.

In fact, you can take this number right here, pop it in the Google and there will be no search results. So, every time you generate a new address you’re generating something that the world has never seen before that second that you generate it. Unless you show it to someone it will never be seen again. So, if I erase them right away those are numbers that were just for a fleeting second here on earth and they will never be seen again. This is the power of big numbers. And so mostly today we’re going to be working with this part.

This is the private key and this is the public key. But remember all you need in Bitcoin, the only number you need in Bitcoin is your private key. Your private key can be stuffed into a simple equation and generate the public key every time. So, every time you stuff this through elliptic curve SHA256 RIPEMD it will always generate this number right here. And the beauty of that is you can’t go backwards. Those equations use clock math which has been shown forever that it’s impossible to go backwards.

So, you’ll always be able to generate this public key from this private key every time every day. So, let’s just before we go check out some new numbers the worlds has never seen before. Here is another one – here is another one. Never ever been seen before and unless someone stuffs this into the Blockchain it will never be seen again. Well, let’s take a step back and let’s talk about this. So, here is a Bitcoin private key.