Bitcoin Wallet

A Bitcoin wallet is a software program that helps to keep track of your Bitcoins. To be technical, Bitcoins are not stored anywhere; a private key (secret number) for each Bitcoin address is kept inside the Bitcoin wallet of the person who bought that amount. Users can transfer and receive Bitcoins via Bitcoin wallets, which also give them ownership of their Bitcoin balance.

Wallet Address

A Bitcoin wallet address functions similarly to a bank account number. It’s a one-of-a-kind 26–35-digit letter-and-number combination that appears like this: 1ExAmpLe0FaBiTco1NADr3sSV5tsGaMF6hd. Your Bitcoin wallet address can be shared with others.

Types of Wallet Addresses

Vanity Address

To put it another way, vanity addresses are Bitcoin addresses that begin with words like your name or company’s name or any other word you desire in your Bitcoin wallet address can help your wallet become distinct when receiving or transferring Bitcoin.

How to Create a Vanity Address

To ensure the safety of your private key and public key pair, you should create the key yourself. First method is using a processor and a CPU. It is more like mining it yourself where you compute it with a software like Vanitygen. 

The second method is using pool generator. Pool generators are Bitcoin miners. They will use software, GPU and CPU to generate the address and forward it to your email.

Multi-Signature Address

A Bitcoin address containing multiple private keys is known as a multi-signature address. To authorize a multi-signature transaction, you’ll need more than one private key. These are commonly set up as m-of-n addresses. 

A 2-of-2 multi-sig address, is associated with two keys and requires two valid signatures for the transaction to be legitimate. To produce a successful transaction, a 2-of-3 multi-sig address is paired with three keys and requires two valid signatures out three. Traditional addresses are more difficult to steal from than multi-sig addresses.

How to create a Multi-Signature Address

• Use “get a new address” or “get account address” RPC commands to generate three bitcoin addresses. Also, you can copy and paste from the GUI.
• Use “validate address” RPC command three times to get the public keys of those addresses.

• Add multi-sig address to generate a 2-of-3 multi-sig address; for example: bitcoin add multisig address 2 ‘[“044322868cb17d64dcc22185ae2d4493111d73244c3668f8ac79ecc79c0ba8d30a6756d0fa20157 709af3281cc721c7f53321a8cabda29b 

• Be cautious, as the public keys are in raw hexadecimal format and do not include checksums such as bitcoin addresses. The standard send to address/send many RPC commands, as well as the GUI can then be used to send money to that 2-of-3 transaction.

SegWit Address

Transaction signatures and scripts (the so-called “witness data”) are separated from other data in a process known as “Segregated Witness,” or “SegWit.” Layer 2 Bitcoin scaling is enabled by removing non-intentional transaction malleability. Segwit has lower fees as more Segwit transactions can fit in a Bitcoin block.

The Bech32 address standard is used in conjunction with SegWit. The characters “bc1” start all Bech32 addresses, which is alternatively “native SegWit” addresses, while Legacy addresses start with a “1.” SegWit (Bech32) which is receiving addresses, and are now used as the default in Blockchain.com Wallet. Segwit fees are lower.

How to create a SegWit Address

The steps to create a SegWit address are: 

• Log in to your Singlesig Bitcoin wallet using Blockstream Green. 
• Select Add New Account. 
• Choose SegWit and give your account a name. 
• On the Accounts page, you should now see your freshly formed SegWit account. 

To use it, simply tap on it. When you pick Receive, a bech32 address will be produced. Not every service supports bech32 addresses yet.