What Are Public Keys And Private Encryption Keys?

If you’ve been on the internet for some time, you must have heard of the terms public and private keys. More specifically, if you’ve talked about or used cryptocurrencies, you already know a bit about the public/private key pair.

What exactly are these keys and what are they used for?

These “keys” are basically strings of alphabets and numbers, and they’re generally pretty large strings.

They can look something like this:
5048 4241 00F9 18FC CR8D HB2D EFD7 FF37 39B9 H069

They are used to send and receive messages. Whenever you use an application that’s encrypted, it’s got a public key (for the general public) and a private key (for the owner of the inbox).

How Do Private Keys and Public Keys Work?

Keys work in just the same way as the mailbox in your home. Anyone who has access to the slot of the mailbox (the public key) can drop their letter in. But to open the mailbox and retrieve a letter, you need a special key – a private key, that’s owned by you, the owner of the house.

So as long as you have the public key, you can send a message.

In terms of cryptocurrencies, you can send coins to a wallet if you have its public key. But only the owner of the wallet can actually open the wallet with their private key and see the contents.

If you share your private key with anyone, they can open your wallet and steal your coins.

To sum it up:

Public key: Open to the public. Used to encrypt the message going to the receiver.

Private key: Private to a user. Used to open the encrypted message sent to them.

Why are encryption keys so long?

You might wonder why private and public keys are such long strings of characters and numbers. It’s because when it comes to keys, size matters.

You’d want your key to be unique so it can’t be just guessed by someone. A long string of alphanumeric characters will guarantee that it doesn’t fall prey to a brute force attack.

Private keys for Bitcoin are 51 characters long and contain upper and lower alphabets along with numbers. So if a hacker tries to guess all possible combinations with a brute force attack, they’ll need at least a few millions of lifetimes.

Keep your private keys safe

Make sure you keep your private keys safe. Storing them offline is a good way to keep them protected from hackers. If you own some cryptocurrencies, it’s best to store them on a hardware wallet where they can stay secure.