Bitcoin Adress Formats
There are three principal formats of bitcoin addresses. Bitcoin addresses are the bitcoin internet protocol. We have three bitcoin address formats. These are: P2PKH or legacy address format, P2SH address format and the Bech32 address format.
The P2PKH or legacy address format is the oldest bitcoin address format and it is still working till today. It is
not segwit compatible but you can send bitcoin from this address to a segwit addresses. The only problem is that the sending fee may be higher than when you send bitcoin from a segwit address. An example of a P2PKH bitcoin address is the address that start with “1” : 1B6mDL1WNWqP5y6xPL4A17DYELRStUy55w
The P2SH bitcoin address format otherwise known as pay to script hash address has more functionality than the P2PKH address format. It usually starts with figure “3” e.g.: 3PzDyoFfLWJN2KFWkKS4zdWUNFdDsZ9THH
This address format is widely supported and can be used to send bitcoin to both the P2PKH and Bech32 address formats.
The last but not the least address is the Bech32 bitcoin address format. This bitcoin address format starts with “bc1” and this prefix makes it longer than the P2PKH and the P2SH address formats. It is largely supported by most softwares and hardware wallets but a large number of Exhanges do not support this bitcoin address format. An example of this bitcoin address format is: bc1qrxznz9z4hkl8psss7n3xg3clr077mlvhe4r95r4t3ln9l9n3n3qssj2e2h
There are three principal formats of bitcoin addresses. Bitcoin addresses are the bitcoin internet protocol. We have three bitcoin address formats. These are: P2PKH or legacy address format, P2SH address format and the Bech32 address format.
The P2PKH or legacy address format is the oldest bitcoin address format and it is still working till today. It is
not segwit compatible but you can send bitcoin from this address to a segwit addresses. The only problem is that the sending fee may be higher than when you send bitcoin from a segwit address. An example of a P2PKH bitcoin address is the address that start with “1” : 1B6mDL1WNWqP5y6xPL4A17DYELRStUy55w
The P2SH bitcoin address format otherwise known as pay to script hash address has more functionality than the P2PKH address format. It usually starts with figure “3” e.g.: 3PzDyoFfLWJN2KFWkKS4zdWUNFdDsZ9THH
This address format is widely supported and can be used to send bitcoin to both the P2PKH and Bech32 address formats.
The last but not the least address is the Bech32 bitcoin address format. This bitcoin address format starts with “bc1” and this prefix makes it longer than the P2PKH and the P2SH address formats. It is largely supported by most softwares and hardware wallets but a large number of Exhanges do not support this bitcoin address format. An example of this bitcoin address format is: bc1qrxznz9z4hkl8psss7n3xg3clr077mlvhe4r95r4t3ln9l9n3n3qssj2e2h
