With elliptic curve crypto you don’t encrypt directly with the private key (just a number) or the public key (just an x,y point). Instead we usually multiply o

With elliptic curve crypto you don’t encrypt directly with the private key (just a number) or the public key (just an x,y point). Instead we usually multiply our private key by someone else’s public key to get a point. We take that points x value, hash it and use the output as a symmetric key. The other person can take our public key and multiply it by their private key to get the same point. We end up with something like this: OurPrivate * TheirPub == secret point. (TheirPub is actually equal to TheirPrivateG, thus the secret point is really OurPrivateTheirPrivate*G)