Quote from: PVminer on November 09, 2017, 06:31:48 AM

Quote from: Spendulus on November 09, 2017, 01:45:48 AM

Going with the "bc1***" on there own was a serious mistake.

There is enough confusion already, without developers placing burdens on the entire software community to support their latest style of encoding of the same data.

I disagree. P2WPKH and P2PWSH are incompatible with earlier wallets anyway and required their own addresses. BIP142 proposed cramming them into base58 format and the result was ugly. P2PWPKH started with letter "p" and P2PWSH with number "7". The latter were longer than usual base58 addresses. Base58 has a lot of limitations (mixed case is one of them; try to spell it via telephone or type on a mobile keyboard). Bech32 is much superior and now there is a clear upgrade path. Legacy addresses are base58, pure segwit is bech32. It is good that they look completely different because you can clearly see which is which.

I agree with everything you have said. I like bech32 much better, it is practically no different than typing hex.

But that wasn't my point. I said that for electrum to "go with bc1***" on their own was a serious mistake. Think of it as a business mistake, not a technical one.

Better would have been at some get together, for a half dozen of the major players to announce support for bech32 "within a year."