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From what I understand about Bitcoin, a wallet is really just a pair of public/private keys.

So, if someone needs to send me Bitcoins, all I need to do is just generate a pair or public/private keys using OpenSSL or some other tool, and send the public key to that person, without actually downloading a Bitcoin client (which will download a 12 GB block chain), or saving a wallet.dat.

Am I correct?

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    Take a look at bitaddress.org. Actually generating usable bitcoin addresses is somewhat complicated
    – aland
    Dec 17, 2013 at 11:58
  • Is bitaddress.org a reputable site?
    – sashoalm
    Dec 17, 2013 at 12:35
  • Judging from [source code](github.com/pointbiz/bitaddress.org], it generates address with JavaScript on your PC, so the server can not get your private key anyway.
    – aland
    Dec 17, 2013 at 12:45

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You are almost correct ;-)

You can create a public/private key using OpenSSL (in fact, some wallets use OpenSSL libaries to generate the keys). However, the bitcoin address is not your public key but a function of such public key. The exact function is defined here https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_Bitcoin_addresses

So, once you generate your pair of keys and compute the bitcoin address from your public key, you can receive bitcoins in such bitcoin address.

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  • Thanks for the answer. Are there reputable tools available that are lightweight (say less than 100kb download) and can create a wallet? I've heard that the official bitcoin client tries to download 12 GB of data.
    – sashoalm
    Dec 17, 2013 at 12:36
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    Try the github repository for the bitaddress.org code. Whilst the fact that it is a javascript program to be executed by a browser may not evoke great trust, the code is public, well-publicized, widely used, and reasonably readable.
    – user6049
    Dec 17, 2013 at 12:47
  • You can try the python source github.com/richardkiss/pycoin where some basic functions are implemented. For instance, the function public_pair_to_bitcoin_address is clearly defined. I'm not aware of its reputation, but python is really easy to follow and you can check the part of the code you want to use.
    – jordi
    Dec 17, 2013 at 14:28
  • @sashoalm: vanitygen can also be used conveniently for this purpose. Note that while you can receive Bitcoins this way, in order to spend them again, you will have to install a wallet client.
    – Nate Eldredge
    Dec 17, 2013 at 18:25
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    This is the clearest example I've seen of this - gist.github.com/colindean/5239812
    – matja
    Dec 17, 2013 at 22:14

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