What Are Public and Private Keys? How Do They Work?
Photo: UseTheBitcoin
Key Takeaways Public keys work like an account number for receiving funds, while private keys are the signature that authorizes spending them. A wallet derives the public key from the private key in a fraction of a second, but reversing that process is mathematically impossible. Wallet compromises, not smart contract bugs, drove $444.5 million of the $1.31 billion lost industrywide, as of H1 2026. A public key and a private key are the two halves of the code pair that let you own crypto without a bank in the middle.
Source: UseTheBitcoin
