Identification is becoming more important in our daily lives. Not even passwords or PIN-codes are considered enough anymore. Fingerprints, FaceID, iris scanners… you can protect yourself in many ways. Also in the crypto world, where you do not normally have to reveal your identity, some sort of proof that you are the owner of your funds may be important.

Let’s say that you send coins to someone, and that person wants to verify that it is actually you who have sent the coins. That person will probably not approve you just showing them your public address that you sent the coins from. That is because a public address is available to everybody (hence the name public) and anybody can see the balance and transaction history of any public address and show it to anybody else. Therefore, it is not a reliable source to prove that someone is the owner of coins. It is only your private keys that are real proof that you own and control your funds.