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@CoinWhisperer
Last active November 2, 2021 17:38
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A simple python program to create bitcoin burn addresses.
#! /usr/bin/env python
"""
burn-btc: create a bitcoin burn address
By James C. Stroud
This program requries base58 (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/base58/0.2.1).
Call the program with a template burn address as the only argument::
% burn-btc 1BurnBTCForFunBurnBTCForFunXXXXXXX
1BurnBTCForFunBurnBTCForFunXTmJXrC
For instructions, call the program with no arguments::
% burn-btc
usage: burn-btc TEMPLATE
TEMPLATE - 34 letters & numbers (no zeros)
the first two are coin specific
An example template is accessible using "test" as the argument::
% burn-btc test
1BurnBTCForFunBurnBTCForFunXTmJXrC
Validate bitcoin burn addresses at http://uncaptcha.net/bitcoin.php
"""
import sys
import binascii
from hashlib import sha256
from base58 import b58encode, b58decode
ABET = "123456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz"
class BurnBTCError(Exception):
pass
class AlphabetError(BurnBTCError):
pass
def hh256(s):
s = sha256(s).digest()
return binascii.hexlify(sha256(s).digest())
def b58ec(s):
unencoded = str(bytearray.fromhex(unicode(s)))
encoded = b58encode(unencoded)
return encoded
def b58dc(encoded, trim=0):
unencoded = b58decode(encoded)[:-trim]
return unencoded
def burn(s):
decoded = b58dc(s, trim=4)
decoded_hex = binascii.hexlify(decoded)
check = hh256(decoded)[:8]
coded = decoded_hex + check
return b58ec(coded)
def usage():
print "usage: burn-btc TEMPLATE"
print
print " TEMPLATE - 34 letters & numbers (no zeros)"
print " the first two are coin specific"
raise SystemExit
if __name__ == "__main__":
if len(sys.argv) != 2:
usage()
if sys.argv[1] == "test":
template = "1BurnBTCForFunBurnBTCForFunXXXXXXX"
else:
template = sys.argv[1]
for c in template:
if c not in ABET:
raise AlphabetError("Character '%s' is not valid base58." % c)
tlen = len(template)
if tlen < 34:
template = template + ((34 - tlen) * "X")
else:
template = template[:34]
print burn(template)
@nima1981
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Awesome idea, I'm thinking about using this! :)

@nima1981
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When I try to run this I get this error on my CentOS system:

ImportError: No module named base58

Sorry I'm a noob with python. Any ideas?

@nima1981
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Figured it out, evermind!

@suprnurd
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suprnurd commented Apr 2, 2020

This was exactly what I was looking for, thanks so much for sharing!

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