People keep asking me about the different types of bitcoin addresses and what they mean. Here's a simple breakdown...

A lot of people have been asking me about the different types of bitcoin addresses they see in wallets and the difference between each of them. Understandability, for a nontech person, it can be a bit confusing to see different types of addresses in their wallet and what all of it means.

Here is a simple breakthrough of the types of addresses you see in your bitcoin wallet.

Legacy: This is the original form of a bitcoin address that has been in existence ever since bitcoin.

A simple way to recognize these addresses is they all start with a "1".

Example:

1BvBMSEYstWetqTFn5Au4m4GFg7xJaNVN2

Issues:

• Case-sensitive
• High transaction fee due to the large size

Segwit: The second version of the bitcoin address helped save in transaction fees by reducing the transaction size.

All of these addresses start with "3".

347N1Thc213QqfYCz3PZkjoJpNv5b14kBd

Issues:

• Case-sensitive

Native Segwit: The third edition of a bitcoin address. These addresses further reduce the fee and offer better usability by eliminating case sensitivity. They even offer an error-detection mechanism.

All addresses start with "bc1"

Example:

bc1qar0srrr7xfkvy5l643lydnw9re59gtzzwf5mdq

Issue:

• A bug was reported in its error detection mechanism
• Not very common with crypto exchanges

Bech32m: An updated version of native segwit, bech32m fixes the error that was in its previous version plus it supports taproot [a latest bitcoin technology development]

Issues:

• It's a new development so support is very limited.

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Address compatibility:

By design, all addresses are compatible with each other. It's the wallets where the bitcoin address support varies.

Most popular wallets support all 3 address types, while some others only 1 or 2. It's best to pick the wallet that supports all 3 and will also provide support for bech32m in the future.

As for the address, bech32/bech32m offers the lowest fee.

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Source: Blockonomics - Types of Bitcoin Addresses