An address is a human-friendly encoding of a locking script: it tells the sender's wallet which conditions must be met to spend the coins later.
Common formats
- 1… legacy (P2PKH)
- 3… script hash (P2SH)
- bc1q… native SegWit v0, encoded with Bech32 (BIP173)
- bc1p… Taproot, SegWit v1, encoded with Bech32m (BIP350)
Bech32 addresses include a checksum, so most typos are caught before anything is sent.
Addresses are often shared as a BIP21 link such as bitcoin:bc1q…?amount=0.001, which a QR code can carry. Use a fresh address for each payment for better privacy.