Bitcoin Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for Bitcoin crypto-currency enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Bitcoin used Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm. (see here). I'm wondering what standard is actually used for this Algorithm: which curve? which prime? Can anybody give me a reference? (Wiki gives this, is this the standard that the ECDSA in Bitcoin?) Anywhere I can find an update on this?
Edit: A bunch of curves are given in page 87 of this. Is bitcoin using one of these?
I just found the answer from https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_specification#Signatures:
For ECDSA the secp256k1 curve from http://www.secg.org/collateral/sec2_final.pdf is used.
i.e. the curve is
y^2 = x^3 - 7
and the prime
p = 2^256 - 2^32 - 2^9 - 2^8 - 2^7 - 2^6 - 2^4 - 1.
See here for more information.
