Address

A Bitcoin address is a short string that represents a destination for a payment. It encodes a hash of a public key (or a script), formatted to be easy to copy, paste, and scan.

You'll see several address formats coexisting on the network:

• Legacy / P2PKH - starts with 1. The original format. Still works; uses more block space than newer types.
• P2SH - starts with 3. Pay-to-Script-Hash, often used for multisig or older SegWit-wrapped addresses.
• Native SegWit / Bech32 - starts with bc1q. Introduced by BIP-173. Cheaper fees, better error detection.
• Taproot / Bech32m - starts with bc1p. Introduced with BIP-341. Best privacy, smallest signatures, supports advanced scripts that look identical to single-sig.

All formats represent the same underlying concept: "to spend BTC sent here, you must produce a valid script and signature(s) that satisfy the locking conditions encoded in this address." Different formats just specify different locking script structures and different on-chain footprints.

A few things addresses are not:

• Not your identity. An address is a destination, not an account. A wallet typically generates many addresses to receive on.
• Not anonymous. The chain is fully public. If an address has been linked to you (by an exchange KYC, a public donation, a re-used address), every transaction touching it can be linked back. See Fungibility.
• Not permanent. Most wallets generate a fresh address for each incoming payment. Reusing addresses leaks privacy by concentrating activity in one observable bucket.

Share addresses casually for receiving. Generate new ones often. Treat the on-chain history of any address as a public ledger entry, because that's exactly what it is.