Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Merits 4 from 3 users
Re: Determine if a public key point y is negative or positive, odd or even?
by
odolvlobo
on 18/01/2025, 06:24:17 UTC
⭐ Merited by ABCbits (2) ,nc50lc (1) ,vapourminer (1)
Take a bitcoin public key (x, y) and its additive inverse (x, -y). How do you identify which is the positive point and which is the negative point?

The sign (or more precisely even/odd) is determined simply by the value of the least-significant bit Notice that the values of the LSBs for Y and -Y are opposites in all of your examples. That's why they are referred to as even/odd and not positive/negative.

To answer your question, there is no "positive/negative". All numbers are positive.