How to Get a Custom Bitcoin Address
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I once found a program that was capable of creating Bitcoin addresses with specific words in them, but can't find it now. Is there a trusted program, in the Ubuntu repositories for example, that can generate these 'vanity' addresses? I guess you mean Vanitygen: Vanitygen accepts as input a pattern, or list of patterns to search for, and produces a list of addresses and private keys.
Vanitygen's search is probabilistic, and the amount of time required to find a given pattern depends on how complex the pattern is, the speed of your computer, and whether you get lucky. You can generate a vanity address using various generators, such as Vanitygen for example.
This option how to get a custom bitcoin address you have a computer with decent GPU, as creating a long vanity address requires a lot of computation. If you don't have a particularly good piece of hardware and would still like to own a lengthy address, recently split-key vanity address mining became a bit popular. You can use online websites, such as my Vanity Poolto request a vanity address to be mined for you for a fee. If you want to understand how this option is possible and risk-free, you can find the discussion of this problem on the Vanity Pool Bitcoin Talk topic.
The vanity address site below was hacked in December,but the site owner only recently posted an update admitting the hack: More than 4 Bitcoins total have been stolen to date, as you can see from Blockchain records note the number of vanity addresses dumping coins, and you'll see that probability alone is proof, supported by all of the users who lost their BTC: The site owner has taken down how to get a custom bitcoin address site, but for how long is up in the air.
As Stack Exchange keeps long archives, I wanted to make sure this warning stuck here for all to see, but did not want to edit the original response. You can also use https: Is secure as they never know the private key - see help on site for how this is possible! If you're tired of the random, cryptic addresses generated by regular bitcoin clients, you can use vanitygen to create a more personalized address.
Alternatively, vanitygen can be used to generate random addresses offline. The example below illustrates a session of vanitygen. Both can be built from source, and both are included in the How to get a custom bitcoin address binary package. Also included is oclvanityminer, the vanity address mining client.
Oclvanityminer can be used to automatically claim bounties on sites such as ThePiachu's Vanity Pool. Solution is to change line in oclengine. If you have any problems with the binaries, join the relevant BitCoinTalk discussion. The important options to know are -i and -r which cause the search to be case-insensitive and use regex, repsectively. In its simplest format, you issue a command like:. Which tells vanity gen to look for an address with the exact prefix "1david. Using the -i option drastically decreases generation time.
The -r option allows the specification of a regex value instead of the default pattern option. If, for example, I demanded that my address contain all lowercase letters but I don't care if the "D" in "David" is uppercase or not, I could use vanitygen. One downside to specifying a regex prefix is that you will not be given any estimated time or probability data since such how to get a custom bitcoin address are not as trivial as matching a simple prefix.
The more specific your matching criteria and the longer the pattern the longer it will take to generate your address es. If you want to create an impressive vanity address, it might be easier to outsource it. As they use split-key address generation, you are sure that you are the only owner of the private key.
The problem is if someone else manages to generate the same vanity address with the same private key, then that person will have access to your bitcoins. So I personally prefer giving out the "ugly" addresses as it would be unlikely someone else will have the private key to that one. By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of how to get a custom bitcoin address. Questions Tags Users Badges Unanswered. Bitcoin Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for Bitcoin crypto-currency enthusiasts.
Join them; it only takes a minute: Here's how it works: Anybody can ask a question Anybody can answer The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. How can I generate a vanity Bitcoin address? It's really not very clear what you're asking for. A hash function, such as SHA or MD5 takes a variable length input and returns a fixed length output.
The output is completely determined by the input, so for a particular input you can't "beautify" its hash. Well, I do not know. I found once sites that claimed that you can make "personal" bitcoin hashes. Perhaps, I have mixed out things here. Perhaps, it was about personal hash generation, it should be possible!? But you cannot beautify an already-done hash? You must mean Vanity Addresses, right? Still, I'm not sure how to get a custom bitcoin address question you are asking.
OK, that makes sense. Vanitygen generates random Bitcoin addresses over and over until it finds one that contains the word you're looking for. I once wrote a program to do the same kind of how to get a custom bitcoin address, and to keep all addresses that started with dictionary words. I found this while how to get a custom bitcoin address.
It lets you select the prefix of your git commit hash when submitting a change: Vanitygen is a command-line vanity bitcoin address generator. Guest 4 3.
I don't recommend using an online website to generate private keys. Sure, the current code could do everything client side, but they or their hosting provider, or your ISP, You could save the site locally, and use that, if how to get a custom bitcoin address trust the code, though. Hello nibor and welcome to the StackExchange.
I assume you are the owner of that website. In that case, please edit your answer to indicate that you are affiliated with that website as per SE's FAQ - bitcoin. I don't recommend this method. Currently the site does what it says. ECKey falseand verify the private key never was transmitted afterward form action. Get the source from GitHub. Proper syntax for VanityGen is: The private key may be stored in a safe location or imported into a bitcoin client to spend any balance received on the address.
In its simplest format, you issue a command like: The openSSL libraries aren't linked properly even after Xcode is installed. You can fix this by running brew install openssl then running brew link openssl --force but you're still going to have errors.
Using brew, run the following commands: It's very unlikely that any randomly generated addresses will ever be the same. And you don't need to have the same private key as someone else to spend their coins.
I'd like to second Chris's comment. The chance of someone getting the same address as you is 0 for all intents and purposes. All the vanity generator does is generate a lot of addresses randomly looking for one that matches a pattern. The "ugly" addresses are no more random than vanity addresses. They both have equally insignificant chance of matching someone else's keys.
I think the point the OP was trying to make is that you are effectively reducing the amount of entropy in they key when you generate vanity addresses. The take-home from the comments is that you aren't reducing it by an amount that currently matters. DavidPerry you aren't reducing the entropy at all. Vanitygen tries random keys and throws away the ones which don't match your pattern.
It has no less entropy than simply trying a single random key and using that one. The private key is still a random bit number how to get a custom bitcoin address both cases. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name. Stack Overflow for Teams is Now Available. Bitcoin Stack Exchange works best with JavaScript enabled.
