How do I Create a Bitcoin HD Wallet in Python?
If you have ever wanted to create a Hierarchical Deterministic Bitcoin wallet through the usage of the Python programming language, here is everything you need to know about doing so with ease.
Specifically, within this guide, we will be going over the creation of a Bitcoin HD (Hierarchical Deterministic) wallet through the usage of the Python programming language.
BIPs stand for Bitcoin Improvement Proposals. Looking at them from a technical standpoint, Hierarchical Deterministic Wallets are a tree structure where each node has an extended private and public key, and any one of them can have any number of children.
A master key could regenerate ten accounts in 10 different currencies, each having a high number of addresses.
HD wallets were introduced by the Bitcoin community at BIP 32 and later improved by BIP 44. and can allow for an entire suite of crypto-wallets to be generated from a single seed phrase.
Key Points:
- Python is one of the most popular and most-used programming languages used to build websites and software and conduct data analysis.
- An HD wallet tree is represented by derivation paths to the first address node, where each number in that path represents a certain level.
- Hierarchical Deterministic Wallets (HD wallets) were introduced in BIP 32 and later improved by BIP 44.
- A Hierarchical Deterministic wallet is a public or private key tree all starting from a root node (master node), and we are going to go over everything you need to know about creating one.
Here's a Step-by-Step Guide to creating a Hierarchical Deterministic Wallet.
Prior to beginning this process, there are a few things that you need to know and have.
You will need to have a basic level of understanding of how the Python programming language works, as well as access to a Python library known as bitcoinlib.
- Step 1: Download Python and get the bitcoinlib library
You will first need to install Python’s latest version from the official website.
Simply click on “Download Python” to begin the overall process.
Next, you will need to install the python library called bitcoinlib to create and manage bitcoin wallets. To do so, you can run the following command:
- Step 2: Set up the Bitcoin HD Wallet Using Python
Through the usage of Hierarchical Deterministic wallets, users are given the opportunity to generate a suite of crypto wallets for a variety of different cryptocurrency networks through the usage of a single seed. Today, we are specifically focusing on Bitcoin and how you can create a simple Hierarchical Deterministic wallet for it.
Create your first Bitcoin HD wallet by using the following commands:
Within the script, the following steps will be performed:
- The bitcoinlib library will be imported.
- We will create a new wallet.
- We will generate a Hierarchical Deterministic key.
- We will be creating a new address.
With that in mind, next, we will need to run the program.
To do so, we can save it in a file with the .py extension.
Example: hd_wallet1.py.
Then, we can run it using the following command:
- Step 3: Creating a Bitcoin HD Wallet with Mnemonics
Furthermore, we can create an HD wallet using Mnemonics. This is a very popular method as the commands are easy to remember.
Here is an example script that you can use:
Within this script, we are essentially performing numerous steps, including:
- Importing the relevant classes from bitcoinlib
- Generating a random mnemonic
- Creating a new wallet
- Generating keys
- Getting a Bitcoin public address
As with the above method of completing this task, we can save this as a .py file name hd_wallet.py and run it with the same command:
Conclusion
Hopefully, now you have a higher level of understanding when it comes to the creation of a Hierarchical Deterministic Bitcoin wallet through the usage of the Python programming language.
Remember that you can learn a lot more about the bitcoinlib library
Furthermore, you can also hold multiple unique currencies within the same H wallet through the utilization of many coinType nodes instead of just one.