Bitcoin Address

Overview

A Bitcoin address is a human-facing representation used to create a transaction output. Depending on its format, it can encode a public-key hash, script hash, witness program, or Taproot output key. It is not an account stored with a mutable balance in the protocol. Common mainnet forms include legacy addresses beginning with 1, script-hash addresses beginning with 3, and SegWit addresses beginning with bc1. Address checksums detect many typing errors, but a valid address can still belong to the wrong recipient or network. Payment systems should generate a fresh address when practical, validate its network and supported script type, and monitor the resulting outputs rather than the address string alone. Users must never assume that sending an unsupported asset or using the wrong blockchain can be reversed.

Bitcoin Address must be interpreted with its network, address or account type, encoding rules, and any required routing fields. A string that passes a format check can still belong to the wrong chain, unsupported asset, contract type, or destination that requires a memo or tag. Authorization depends on keys, scripts, contracts, or protocol rules, while custodial systems may expose an identifier without giving the user direct control of the underlying account. Bitcoin Address is an identifier or spendable object, not proof of legal ownership and not a secret credential. Systems storing Bitcoin Address should preserve the exact value together with chain identifiers and type metadata. Normalization, case conversion, truncation, and alias resolution need protocol-aware rules, because a visually similar value can represent a different destination or fail checksum validation.