Quote from: BitcoinScholar on February 06, 2013, 09:55:55 PM

Also, on another note, is an address just a public-key?

I believe this has already been answered for you here:

Quote from: Stephen Gornick on February 04, 2013, 04:09:13 AM

Quote from: BitcoinScholar on February 04, 2013, 03:36:48 AM

What's the algorithm the hash uses and how was this determined?

A bitcoin address is a derivative of a hash of a private key.

Quote

A Bitcoin address is a 160-bit hash of the public portion of a public/private ECDSA keypair.

- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_Bitcoin_addresses

- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Private_key
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address

If you don't want to click on the http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address link, I can explain that the public key is hashed using SHA-256. That hash is then hashed again using RIPEMD-160. A 1-byte version number is prepended to the hash, a 4 byte checksum is appended to the hash, and then that resulting value is encoded with Base58Check encoding. The result is a bitcoin address.