Is there any good reason to be looking for complete character of an incomplete addresses? If you have your seed phrase or private key, they can generate your complete address anytime that you want it.
In these cases the private key tends to stay hidden under a seal. That's because short addresses/firstbits are useful for collectible items, usually coins, where the space is very limited.
And people still want to check whether the collectible they've bought is indeed funded.
The problems are as I said the fact that without 10+ characters of the address it is easy to generate another address with the same visible 1st bits.
Even if you have the complete address do you know what is really under that hologram:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5401502And the ever popular you don't know if you can really trust the coin manufactures.
When
BTC was $400 if some maker made 100
BTC0.1 and ran off with 10
BTC it sucked we all got pissed and went on with our day.
Now even at the $17000 price it starts to get into substantial amounts of money. Relying of 1stbits and holograms and so on is just no longer viable.
-Dave