Learning + checking the bitcoin address creation process at each step

Question

I’m learning how hashing algorithms are used around the process of bitcoin address creation.

I’ve read lots of great examples online that, step by step, show the output of each sequential hashing stage - start to finish.

I’ve occasionally copied one of the outputs from one of the steps (from the online 'worked example') using copy (Ctrl C) and then pasted it (Ctrl V) into one of the many online hashing sites to simply confirm the next step in the process to see it for myself.

I’m doing something wrong. Convinced that my simple ‘copy and paste’ approach must be flawed as my hashed output won’t ever match the hashed output shown on the example online -never does.

I’ve checked for the hard to see white space and carriage returns but to no avail.

Any comments greatly appreciated regarding what I might be doing wrong when I’m simply double checking each stage for myself ?

Here’s two sites I’ve studied: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1_Bitcoin_addresses https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Wallet_import_format

and two sites I’ve used for checking hashing:
https://hash.online-convert.com/sha256-generator
https://md5calc.com/hash/ripemd160

Answer 1

Any program actually generating bitcoin addresses will always be hashing the bytes directly - what you see on the Wiki are simple hexadecimal strings representing those bytes.

The various hashing sites you have tried will treat those inputs as strings. For example, instead of hashing the byte 0xFF when you enter FF, they will hash the text FF, which is actually two bytes if interpreted as ASCII. You will never get a correct answer using such sites.