Mastering Bitcoin, 2nd Edition

Chapter 5. Wallets

The word “wallet” is used to describe a few different things in bitcoin.

At a high level, a wallet is an application that serves as the primary user interface. The wallet controls access to a user’s money, managing keys and addresses, tracking the balance, and creating and signing transactions.

More narrowly, from a programmer’s perspective, the word “wallet” refers to the data structure used to store and manage a user’s keys.

In this chapter we will look at the second meaning, where wallets are containers for private keys, usually implemented as structured files or simple databases.

Wallet Technology Overview

In this section we summarize the various technologies used to construct user-friendly, secure, and flexible bitcoin wallets.

A common misconception about bitcoin is that bitcoin wallets contain bitcoin. In fact, the wallet contains only keys. The “coins” are recorded in the blockchain on the bitcoin network. Users control the coins on the network by signing transactions with the keys in their wallets. In a sense, a bitcoin wallet is a keychain.

Tip

Bitcoin wallets contain keys, not coins. Each user has a wallet containing keys. Wallets are really keychains containing pairs of private/public keys (see “Private and Public Keys”). Users sign transactions with the keys, thereby proving they own the transaction outputs (their coins). The coins are stored on the blockchain in the form of transaction outputs (often noted as vout or txout).

There are two primary ...