What Are Digital Signatures?

Bitcoin has a certain love for autographs, or digital signatures to be more precise. The bitcoin platform requires people looking to send any amount of bitcoin to prove that they own the private key for the coins being sent. And that's where digital signatures come in; they allow you to prove that you own the key without disclosing it.

It's like a signature on a check, but far more secure and next to impossible to forge.

So, let's say you send 10 bitcoins. As soon as you click send your transactions will be digitally mixed up and scrambled to create a unique digital signature. Each time you conduct a transaction an entirely new code will be created, which makes it that much harder to forge. Once created miners will verify that the message is valid by using your public key.

You can think of digital signatures as a sort of mediator, or even a guide stone that helps miners validate the transaction. These signatures also help ensure that transactions are valid, thus protecting buyers, sellers, and the Bitcoin community as a whole.  

The article was contributed to Cointelegraph by Ofir Beigel from 99Bitcoins.