Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Some BTC addresses start with a "3"
by
micheline
on 11/02/2015, 14:09:00 UTC
I've learned something new today.

Thanks to the thread starter for asking this question.

Address starting with 3 is a multisignature address, a address requiring 2-of-3 signatures to be able to be spent. It is an address associated with more than one ECDSA private key. It is usually used as cold storage as it is harder for one to steal 2 private keys compared to 1. It can also be a protection against malware as you could keep the keys on separate computers. Keeping one of the three keys safety is also a good practice, if one of the keys is lost, the bitcoin can still be spent using 2 of the remaining keys. It can also be shared between multiple people, majority of the people can vote and spend the coin.

That is really useful. I've already asked myself if it would be possible to "split" the key for security reasons and have some kind of fallback in case I loose one part. Great to see that a solution exists already.