Post
Topic
Board Nigeria (Naija)
Merits 11 from 6 users
Identifying Bitcoin Address By Format
by
Obim34
on 09/07/2025, 13:48:27 UTC
⭐ Merited by Igebotz (5) ,Mia Chloe (2) ,Felicity_Tide (1) ,Solodoski (1) ,Zaguru12 (1) ,Charles-Tim (1)
We don't hear it common but over and over there has been transfer gone wrong when sending Bitcoin to address, either to a wrong address or to a wrong network. Identifying address by format eradicate such mistakes because it helps decide what type of wallet or transaction is in use before sending.

Address Format|Identify By Prefix|
Legacy (P2PKH)|Begins with "1" - Bitcoin core and old Bitcoin mobile wallets|
P2SH|Begins with "3" Still part of segwit but older version|
Native Segwit (Bech32)|Begins with "bc1q" - modern and updated version of segwit|
Taproot Segwit (Bech32m)|Begins with "bc1p" -  wallets like BlueWallet, Electrum and Sparrow wallet use taproot etc...|
Lightning Invoice|Begins with "lnbc1" - lnbc1 for Bitcoin, lntb for testnet|


Fees Comparison
Address Format|Fee Levels|
Legacy (P2PKH)|Highest Fees|
P2SH|Medium - Better than Legacy|
Native Segwit|Lowest|
Taproot Segwit|Low - Better than P2SH (Simple tx X Complex tx )|
Lightning Invoice|Zero or little|

Identifying any address can be done simply by knowing each prefix, another similar method is length of address but that may not be efficient as two address can have very close characters, example of P2SH and Legacy having close or similar characters.