NOTE: This tutorial assumes you are fairly comfortable with Bitcoin. That you use Blockchain.info and understand the dual components of private and public keys.

I find it surprising how few people actually know about and how to use the vanity pool. The what? Some pool with lots of sexy, vain people hanging around? Sorta. It’s a pool of worker bees, running lots of computation, in a pool, and getting paid equally to get it done. How bitcoin works — but the work is just to get you a Bitcoin address with your name in it. You can see mine below:

1nviousFvoZFKog7wQp8Dak1YQvUjbe4b

People were compensated something to have their little ASICs hard at work making me an awesome frickin bitcoin address.

Here’s how to do it, the steps aren’t super clear so I want to clear it up.

Open two sites in your browser. One is https://www.bitaddress.org/.

When you click on that one, you have to move your mouse around on the screen. A lot. To generate entropy. For some reason this is a bug, because we want just to click the Vanity generation link. So move your mouse a lot a lot until those percentages become links.

Shown here at 2x the speed… because it takes a while! (captured with RecordIt, sped up and exported in seconds with VLC, uploaded to YouTube)

So we’re here now:

Phew!

We’re going to need to come back to this page after we get all the little worker bees started on making you an awesome bitcoin address.

Right now, see Part 1? Click Generate.

Now you’ll see something like:

Save the PUBLIC Key into a text file with the label “Public” We are going to paste it later. It will help link up the part you do on the first site, with what you’re doing on the second. For this tutorial, that’s:

04116BF99A21B4C03433B3689F3D775C673B5ED8055C98E47FED3FF2A9D5A6F2720B656F91FBAB176BCB63950B097561164A829A5FE60B3DF1C962C78CB38D5BEC PUBLC

Save the Private Key to the same text file with the label “Private Key Part 1”. Your worker bees are going to find the second half of a full private key that creates your awesome bitcoin address. We’re going to add the two private keys together. So hold onto half #1.

F535E81AA58BBA87CA892570C488FC850F5525A22923D12637622E3BAA797220 P1P

Now go to the second URL, where we get the work started for us.

Bam, right there in public key, paste the key you labeled “Public” into that box.

Here’s the fun part. Choose any name of any desired length, starting with the number 1.

I did 1nvious. That’s a 1 there.

The longer your vanity plate — err address is, the more work and time it takes the botnet to find an address for you that has your vanity in it.

1nvious took 2.5 days I think.

Make sure you set up an email you actually use, to receive the PART2 of your private key when the work is done.

Eureka! Well, eureka part 1

Oh by the way, you gotta fork over 0.01BTC to get that address. Pay the wallet. When you get that email, come back to me.