Skip to Content
Learning Bitcoin
book

Learning Bitcoin

by Richard Caetano
October 2015
Beginner to intermediate
236 pages
5h 16m
English
Packt Publishing
Content preview from Learning Bitcoin

Programming common Bitcoin operations

Let's start by introducing bitcoinjs-lib by working with private keys and public addresses. The module provides us with some useful components for working with elliptic curve keys.

To generate a new private key, we'll start Node.js from our command line and enter the following commands:

~ node
> var bitcoin = require('bitcoinjs-lib')
> var private_key = bitcoin.ECKey.makeRandom()
> console.log(private_key.toWIF())
KzgRK4nN6bcb5iQN8tLL85U5anc84uH7G9KtsZuqU23h5fN7Z6v4

From our example, you can see that we're importing the bitcoinjs library and calling ECKey.makeRandom(), which returns a random private key. We store an object that represents the key in a variable called private_key. On the third line, we print ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Grokking Bitcoin

Grokking Bitcoin

Kalle Rosenbaum
Bitcoin Essentials

Bitcoin Essentials

Albert Szmigielski
Learn Bitcoin and Blockchain

Learn Bitcoin and Blockchain

Kirankalyan Kulkarni
Bitcoin for the Befuddled

Bitcoin for the Befuddled

Conrad Barski, Chris Wilmer

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781785287305