gimme-bitcoin-address

gimme-bitcoin-address is a standalone Bitcoin address generator written in Go. It is intended to be a lightweight tool to generate one-time-use Bitcoin addresses. gimme-bitcoin-address generates an ECDSA secp256k1 keypair, writes the private key in Wallet Import Format to a text file in the directory specified by the first argument, and writes the corresponding public key in Bitcoin Address format to standard output.

gimme-bitcoin-address is MIT licensed. See the provided LICENSE file.

Donations are welcome at 15PKyTs3jJ3Nyf3i6R7D9tfGCY1ZbtqWdv :)

Feel free to report any issues, bug reports, or suggestions at github or by email at vsergeev at gmail.

Example

$ ./gimme-bitcoin-address keys/
1LVFsHMZ98WfHsGZqkcYEvkbomiHFAXEre
$ ls keys/
2013-05-08_1367987627405535424_26643.txt
$ more keys/2013-05-08_1367987627405535424_26643.txt
5J1d4qtVDX34k6CLcVdi3s8BNRZybFqQb34BtqHNwjxmS1JWb5n
$

Full Usage

$ ./gimme-bitcoin-address
Usage: ./gimme-bitcoin-address <private key directory path> [label]

Private Key Filename Format

    YYYY-MM-DD_<Unix Timestamp>_<PID>_<optional label>.txt

Version 1.0 - https://github.com/vsergeev/gimme-bitcoin-address
$

Building

$ git clone git://github.com/vsergeev/gimme-bitcoin-address.git
$ cd gimme-bitcoin-address
$ go get code.google.com/p/go.crypto/ripemd160
$ go build

Important Note

I had to implement elliptic curve operations and ECDSA key generation from scratch for Bitcoin's curve, secp256k1, because golang's crypto/elliptic only supports curves with a=-3. While I am not worried about its ability to generate validate Bitcoin keypairs, it may be vulnerable to timing attacks during the public key computation. Use at your own risk in a public facing setting (e.g. web). If you have some experience or thoughts on this matter, please let me know.