bitcoin-address-formats.md

latest-revision	original-author	created	status	title	contributors	type	description	discussions-to	category
2019-01-27T00:00:00.000Z	Ryan Shea (ryan-shea)	2019-01-01T00:00:00.000Z	Accepted	Bitcoin Address Formats	Ryan Shea (ryan-shea); Gareth James (gjradar)	article		GitHub URL	bitcoin-basics

Bitcoin Address Formats

Overview

A Bitcoin address is an identifier that represents a destination for a Bitcoin payment. They are represented by a series of alphanumeric characters. Addresses can be generated at no cost by any user.

Details

Formats (WIF = Wallet Import Format)

Private Key WIF (51 characters base58, starts with a '5'): 5KLgsTKHMLmVxetAvN8Vqa9H7FWSj1DdXYeEKMy4nyHS5YKTpuq

Private Key WIF Compressed (52 characters base58, starts with a 'K' or 'L'): L3wtyh9hAnFQpeCrnYG6HPHY6b2xYPxkDpfKn3YTjuRXgeG6XK68

Private Key Hexadecimal Format (64 characters [0-9A-F]): C8B9FC507B27D1C194B7F2EBE4941A25FA289BF790EBEFAB874F937ADE3EE403

Private Key Base64 (44 characters): yLn8UHsn0cGUt/Lr5JQaJfoom/eQ6++rh0+Tet4+5AM=

Resources

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1_Bitcoin_addresses

References

[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/List_of_address_prefixes