RIPEMD-160 Hash Generator
RIPEMD-160 Hash Generator — Free Online Tool
Generate a 160-bit RIPEMD-160 digest - the European alternative to SHA-1, and the second hash in every Bitcoin address. Enter your text below and press Ripemd-160.
RIPEMD-160 Hash Generator
Generate a 160-bit RIPEMD-160 digest - the European alternative to SHA-1, and the second hash in every Bitcoin address.
What RIPEMD-160 Is
RIPEMD-160 produces a 160-bit digest from a design that runs two independent parallel chains and combines them at the end - a structure deliberately different from the single chain used by MD5 and SHA-1. It came out of the European RIPE project at KU Leuven in 1996, and unlike its same-sized contemporary SHA-1, it has never been broken.
| Algorithm | RIPEMD-160 (RIPEMD family) |
|---|---|
| Digest length | 160 bits — 40 hexadecimal characters |
| Block size | 512 bits |
| Designed by | Hans Dobbertin, Antoon Bosselaers and Bart Preneel, 1996 |
| Specification | ISO/IEC 10118-3 |
| Status in 2026 | No practical break |
A worked example
Hashing the five characters hello with RIPEMD-160 gives:
Change a single character of the input and the entire digest changes, with no resemblance to the previous one. That property is called the avalanche effect, and every cryptographic hash is designed to have it.
How RIPEMD-160 Got Here
The original RIPEMD was published in 1992 and produced a 128-bit digest; Dobbertin found collisions in a reduced version in 1995. The 1996 redesign by Dobbertin, Bosselaers and Preneel produced RIPEMD-128 and RIPEMD-160, with 256- and 320-bit variants following. RIPEMD-160 found its enduring home in cryptocurrency: a Bitcoin address is derived by taking SHA-256 of the public key and then RIPEMD-160 of that result, a construction usually written RIPEMD160(SHA256(pubkey)) and known as HASH160. Ethereum exposes it as a precompiled contract. The design has been part of ISO/IEC 10118-3 since 2004.
Security Status of RIPEMD-160
There is no practical collision or preimage attack on full RIPEMD-160 after nearly thirty years. The best results reach a reduced number of rounds. The caveat is size rather than structure: a 160-bit digest gives an 80-bit collision-resistance margin under the birthday bound, which is the same margin SHA-1 had, and 80 bits is no longer a comfortable number against a well-funded attacker. New designs should prefer a 256-bit digest.
Use RIPEMD-160 for
- Bitcoin and Ethereum address derivation, where it is specified by the protocol.
- Interoperating with any system that already specifies RIPEMD-160.
- Meeting an ISO/IEC 10118-3 requirement.
- Getting a shorter identifier than SHA-256 while avoiding SHA-1 - which is exactly why Bitcoin chose it.
Do not use RIPEMD-160 for
- New long-lived signatures, where the 80-bit collision margin is thinner than current practice accepts.
- Password storage.
- Anywhere SHA-256 would do and interoperability is not constrained - SHA-256 has far broader support.
How to Use This RIPEMD-160 Generator
- Paste or type your text into the input box above, or upload a plain-text file.
- Press the Ripemd-160 button.
- The digest appears in the output box, ready to copy.
The same input always produces the same output@if($algo['status'] === 'password') — except with bcrypt, where the random salt makes every result different@endif, on this page or in any correct implementation. If a digest from another tool disagrees with this one, the cause is almost always a difference in the input: a trailing newline, a different character encoding, or invisible whitespace.
Frequently Asked Questions About RIPEMD-160
Why does Bitcoin hash twice, with SHA-256 then RIPEMD-160?
The double construction shortens the result to 160 bits, which keeps addresses compact, while the outer RIPEMD-160 means an address depends on two structurally unrelated hash functions. A break in one would not on its own expose the address, which is a deliberate hedge in a system designed to last decades.
Is RIPEMD-160 safer than SHA-1?
On current evidence, yes. Both output 160 bits, but SHA-1 has a demonstrated practical collision and RIPEMD-160 does not. Its twin-chain design has resisted the differential techniques that broke MD5 and SHA-1. That said, its 80-bit collision margin is the same, so it is not a modern replacement for SHA-256.
What is HASH160?
Shorthand in Bitcoin tooling for RIPEMD160(SHA256(x)). It is the step that turns a public key into the 20-byte value encoded in a legacy Bitcoin address.
How long is a RIPEMD-160 hash?
160 bits, written as 40 hexadecimal characters - the same length as SHA-1.
Hashing in One Minute
A hash function takes input of any length and returns a fixed-length digest. Three properties define a cryptographic hash: the same input always yields the same digest, it is infeasible to recover the input from the digest, and it is infeasible to find two inputs that produce the same digest. Hashing is one-way and keyless, which is what separates it from encryption — there is nothing to decrypt, because nothing was encrypted.
Where hashes go wrong is almost always a mismatch between the job and the tool. A checksum for detecting a corrupted download and a password hash protecting a leaked database are different problems, and an algorithm that is excellent at one can be disqualifying at the other. For the full treatment — how the algorithms work internally, salting, HMAC, rainbow tables and the rest — see the complete guide to hash generation.
The Other Algorithms in This Tool
The generator above supports every algorithm below. Each has its own page explaining what it is for.