How do bitcoin adresses get into the Bitcoin system when they're created offline?

2

I am new to Bitcoin, and I am still trying to understand the working of bitaddress.org but get stuck a long the way.

On bitadress.org I can take the site offline and create a public and private key by moving my mouse.

Once my keys are generated I can send bitcoins to the public key. But as the site is offline how do my keys get into the bitcoin system?

user25765

Posted 2016-12-13T14:52:18.680

Reputation: 21

Answers

2

Addresses are not made known to the Bitcoin network when they are created. An address only gets "into the system" when someone sends bitcoins to said address. If you're not the sender of that transaction, the address can be communicated to the sender by any fashion, e.g. by email, postal letter, or coconut laden African swallow. ;)

Thus, after you've created your keys offline, you may tell the prospective sender of the transaction the address in any fashion and to spend the received coins, you may import the private key into whatever wallet software you prefer.

Murch

Posted 2016-12-13T14:52:18.680

Reputation: 41 609

"The adress is not made known to the network when they are created," Then what makes an adress made on bitaddress.org valid? Is it correct to say that these created adresses are based on predifined and bitcoinrestricted formulas? –user25765 2016-12-14T13:28:55.680

@Murch nailed it down. For your question about the address format, yes not all strings can be an address (but even strings that have the format of an address may not have any private key possibly associated!). You can check https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address for more details, there is even a section on offline creation of addresses.

Oliver 2016-12-14T18:41:44.013

@user25765: Private keys are randomly generated numbers (of vast size). The address is deterministically derived from that. You don't need third party validation to create a valid address. Have a look at the link Oliver posted.Murch 2016-12-14T18:50:41.750