Thanks for this. As someone new to bitcoin, this helped explained things a bit for me, but also leaves me with many more questions.<p>Sorry if this is a stupid question, but can someone explain the part explaining b?<p><pre><code> y2 = x3 + ax + b
For a = 0 and b = 7 (the version used by bitcoin)
</code></pre>
Can someone please explain why b is set to 7? Is there some other articles that explain this in a little more depth?<p>I'm finding references to Secp256k1 (SEC 2: Recommended Elliptic Curve Domain Parameters), but am struggling to understand it.