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How does one create a brain wallet from a seed using SHA256? Is this possible?

Could you please explain using the example seed "coinbase is awesome" (no apostrophes)? What is the resulting address?

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  • Just to be clear. PSA: Any private key generated from a publicly shared seed, or any seed as generic as this is unsafe to store funds on. It's almost certain that the funds will be misappropriated.
    – Murch ♦
    May 28, 2017 at 22:36
  • This is what Coinbase asks on their employment application, did you get the job?
    – ShadowGod
    Dec 13, 2017 at 5:15

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A bitcoin generator can generate an address.

i.e. https://brainwalletx.github.io/ enter image description here

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A brain wallet is simply the SHA256 hash of an arbitrary string, this is a Bitcoin private key in hexadecimal format. The 64 character hex string is then encoded to a Base58 Private Key, more commonly known as WIF(Wallet Import Format). Basically you can create a key from any data, even an mp3.

Bitaddress.org has been around since 2011, and let's you create brain wallets.

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BIP39-based Brainwallets kick ass over any older brain wallet technologies such as that encapulsulated by https://brainwalletx.github.io/. The rationale is because of the 2000 rounds of additional sha512 hardening of the brain wallet passphrase. This adds a computational coast for those trying to brute force discover the keys associated with low entropy brain wallets. Additionally, importing BIP 39 seed words, which are cryptocurrency agnostic, has now become much more broadly supported by HD wallets than importing specific wallet input format (WIF) private keys for specific coins.

  1. Unsafe test vector for a 12 BIP 39 Seed Word Brain Wallet:

    % echo -n "This is a very low entropy brain wallet seed that needs dhc&%hFF{]" | bx base16-encode | bx sha256 | cut -c 1-32 | bx mnemonic-new

    nothing flock unusual sibling physical world combine story atom above keep display

  2. Unsafe test vector for a 18 BIP 39 Seed Word Brain Wallet:

    % echo -n "This is a very low entropy brain wallet seed that needs dhc&%hFF{]" | bx base16-encode | bx sha256 | cut -c 1-48 | bx mnemonic-new

    nothing flock unusual sibling physical world combine story atom above keep disorder web spoil awake mom bring brother

  3. Unsafe test vector for a 24 BIP 39 Seed Word Brain Wallet:

    % echo -n "This is a very low entropy brain wallet seed that needs dhc&%hFF{]" | bx base16-encode | bx sha256 | cut -c 1-64 | bx mnemonic-new

    nothing flock unusual sibling physical world combine story atom above keep disorder web spoil awake mom bring broccoli cancel unveil bullet bird common frown

See bx for additional details, and be sure to take advantage of user defined BIP 39 passphrases to harden the brain wallet even further, see the mnemonic-to-seed bx command.

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