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Board Development & Technical Discussion
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Bitcoin private key BASE58 problem
by
sky59sky59
on 24/11/2021, 10:53:24 UTC
⭐ Merited by o_e_l_e_o (4) ,BlackHatCoiner (1) ,hosseinimr93 (1) ,ETFbitcoin (1)
I try to learn something but I do not understand following:

It is said that bitcoin private keys from any generator are provided in BASE58 format

on this page I found many examples for private keys:  https://bitkeys.work/

It should be that bitcoin uses secp256k1 ECC  ?  So private key is 32 bytes?

here are some decoded private keys into hex from abovementioned page:

L52sDjGxf8Y5NHy5BjTpQHQUjHDjrqErHyTomskefFXrKPdjf7Di                                                        base58
80e91ed90e9a784499a4e37580de2f5d6b622ba96ff1f735f1992ce787575a44d9010c3e5e49               hex

L2HBA8KcR57PYoGCbZmKUNvmhu7SsrupYj172fQAGkgY75sGUjHQ
8096f833ea1ee11688ad8718e37b3ea81e76911eabed36bbeadb42b6e08b669ee4013cd4ac07

KwXvqELPvZUFgFZ5RhWWLQJQrPvEbk6WKktBk5smCqBeLc17uEvQ
80095f3f838b21709382525317062ada9231188e60304eaaf3d287ed7e7a8c825a01252f78ad

WTF, why private key is not 32 bytes long after decoding base58?  But it has got 6 bytes more?
Also 80 at the beginning seems to be very suspicious....

Any clarification will put me back to a sound sleep during the night...