March 2018
Beginner to intermediate
656 pages
20h 9m
English
Content preview from Mastering Blockchain - Second Edition
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Addresses in Bitcoin
A bitcoin address is created by taking the corresponding public key of a private key and hashing it twice, first with the SHA-256 algorithm and then with RIPEMD-160. The resultant 160-bit hash is then prefixed with a version number and finally encoded with a Base58Check encoding scheme. The bitcoin addresses are 26-35 characters long and begin with digit 1 or 3.
A typical bitcoin address looks like a string shown here:
1ANAguGG8bikEv2fYsTBnRUmx7QUcK58wt
This is also commonly encoded in a QR code for easy distribution. The QR code of the preceding bitcoin address is shown in the following screenshot:
QR code of a bitcoin ...