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What Bitcoin address formats does Zengo support?
What Bitcoin address formats does Zengo support?
Ouriel Ohayon avatar
Written by Ouriel Ohayon
Updated over a year ago

TL;DR: the format we support allows you to send  and receive from any bitcoin wallet with the best conditions.

Like with email, sending and receiving Bitcoin (on any cryptocurrency) requires addresses. Unlike with email, Bitcoin addresses have several formats with different properties and structures which can sometimes effect the speed and cost of transactions.

Because Zengo is all about simplicity, we decided to optimize the user experience that guarantees your transaction will be sent and received with the best conditions.

  • For sending Bitcoin (BTC), we support any existing address format. This means that you can send to any type of Bitcoin address, even bech32 native SegWit addresses (you can identify these because they start with “bc1”).

An example of a SegWit address:

  • For receiving Bitcoin (BTC), we generate a type of address that is identifiable because it always starts with the number “3" (see below). These addresses follow the format of pay-to-witness-public-key-hash nested in pay-to-script-hash. The benefit of these addresses is that they are identical to much older ‘3’ addresses which are widely supported by today's wallets and applications. This means that these addresses can receive BTC from any wallet or service (unlike native SegWit addresses). 

This helps us provide an ideal balance between our two priorities: keeping transaction fees low for you and being completely backward compatible with other formats. It simply works. 

For the most curious of you this type of address format is called p2sh-p2wpkh.

Simply put, with Zengo, you do not have to worry about the address format: you enjoy lower fees while still being able to send or receive BTC with anyone. 

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