So, we have the private key, it’s the personal code you got when you signed up. How do we generate a public key from it?

To do that, we need to take a peek at a fascinating branch of cryptography called elliptic curves. This is called Elliptic Curve Cryptography, or ECC for short.

ECC involves taking certain points on an elliptic curve and performing addition and multiplication on the points.

Bitcoin uses a specific curve called secp256k1. In the image, you see a simplified version that is easier to visualize, but follows the same mathematical rules.

We start with a specific point on this curve, called the Generator Point What is the Generator Point?.