Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Does a PUBLIC Bitcoin Burn address really exist?
by
o_e_l_e_o
on 08/06/2021, 10:40:41 UTC
Your missing the point, that address for private key all zeros, used to be an invalid address
It didn't, because a private key of zero cannot produce a public key or an address. It is invalid as per the standards of the secp256k1 curve that bitcoin uses. Again, can you tell us what address you are looking at here?

pk = k * G ( = zero )
y^2=x^3+7
secp256k1, [0,7]
This is not how elliptic curve math works. The two valid y coordinates for x=0 for bitcoin public keys are as follows:

Code:
8f537eefdfc1606a0727cd69b4a7333d38ed44e3932a7179eecb4b6fba9360dc
70ac8110203e9f95f8d832964b58ccc2c712bb1c6cd58e861134b48f456c9b53

There is also the brainwallet key from the null-string "" that generated a non-usable address.
A SHA256 of an empty string produces the result e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855, which when used as a private key gives the following completely valid and usable address - 1HZwkjkeaoZfTSaJxDw6aKkxp45agDiEzN