How does a wallet come to know of Address just by importing Private key?

I have exported my Private key to Paper Wallet. Now, when we send/receive bitcoins, we send/receive them to an "Address". So suppose I receive some bitcoins on my address. I have the private key of this address. Now I want to spend the bitcoins I received at my address. For this I need to import my private key to some wallet. Am I right?

And even though I'm importing my private key to the wallet, how will the wallet know what is my "Address"? Because I'm just importing the Private key, not address. Is address derived from private key?

I'm confused with this.

user5155835

Posted 2017-06-30T18:12:09.193

Reputation: 159

Answers

You can derive the public key from a private key
Though, you can't derive a private key from a public key
You can derive a bitcoin address from a public key
Though, You can't derive a public key from a bitcoin address

Means:

PrivateKey -> PublicKey -> Address

Jonas Schnelli

Posted 2017-06-30T18:12:09.193

Reputation: 5 465

I recommend you read BIP32, BIP38, BIP39, BIP43 and BIP44 to get an understanding of present day HD wallets (Hierarchical Deterministic). Different depth's; Mnemonic passphrase > Seed > Master prv Key > Master pub key > address. There is more to it than just this though.

dotglum

Posted 2017-06-30T18:12:09.193

Reputation: 21