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What is the difference between a bitcoin public key and a wallet address?
Public Keys are used to create wallet addresses. How that public key is created is independent of the bitcoin protocol.
Both the public and the private key are stored in the wallet software. It is possible to offload these to a cold wallet.
Can you retrieve the public key from the wallet address?
Not directly, no.
If bitcoins that were received at that address have ever been sent elsewhere, then the public key should exist in the blockchain (tied to that wallet address).
If all you have is the bitcoin address, without any other record on the chain, then it is not possible to retrieve the public key.
Details on Private and Public Keys
A private key is a 32 bytes number
A public key is a 33/65 bytes number of 66 or 130 characters. Public key hash is a 20 bytes number of 40 characters. Bitcoin address is 25 bytes number with 26 to 35 characters, starting with ‘1’, or ‘3’ or ‘bc1’.
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Anuj holds professional certifications in Google Cloud, AWS as well as certifications in Docker and App Performance Tools such as New Relic. He specializes in Cloud Security, Data Encryption and Container Technologies.
Anuj Varma – who has written 1214 posts on Anuj Varma, Hands-On Technology Architect, Clean Air Activist.
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