A lot of people say, the address of digital wallet, be equal to the card number of our bank card in reality, but actually, address and bank card number have a place in common, also have difference.
The wallet address is the same as the bank card number, so you need to give it to someone when you transfer money. However, the wallet address is generated by randomly selecting 256 bits of binary digits to form a private key, which is then generated by an encryption function, The direction of formation is unidirectional and irreversible. That is, if you know the address, you cannot calculate the private key by decryption. With current human computing power uncrackable, you can safely post the address online.
And different Banks have different card Numbers, corresponding to different digital currency address format will also be different, so we must repeatedly confirm whether this address is this digital currency in the transfer operation.
In addition, address also has one of the most special functions different from bank CARDS. Blockchain is a completely transparent network. When you give someone an address, they may also check the transfer, flow and balance of your address.
Therefore, we should also pay attention to the privacy of individuals when using addresses. For example, if you give address a to one person, it is better to give address b to another person, which is the most convenient way to protect your privacy.
There are generally four formats we use for bitcoin addresses. BASE58 is the popular bitcoin address format that begins with a 1. HASH160 format is the result of RIPEMD160 algorithm to calculate the SHA256 signature of the 130-bit public key. WIF compression format, namely the wallet input format, is the result of BASE58 compression of the 130-bit public key format, which is the original bitcoin public key calculated by the ECDSA algorithm. The 60-bit public key format is the result of the compression of the 130-bit public key.