Bitcoin Forum

I've been exploring Bitcoin, though a bit late to the game, and I've been pondering how newcomers like myself can contribute in this space. Recently, while reading up on Bitcoin, I came across a post where the author obscured a few characters from their address but left the rest visible. This got me thinking: Is there a way to get the complete address from just the partial information? I've searched online for such a tool but haven't found one.

So, I'm considering whether to pursue the development of such a service myself. Do you know of any existing tools or services similar to this idea?

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I'm aiming to develop a system that continuously scrapes all Bitcoin addresses used in at least one transaction and stores them (ensuring no duplicates). Then, I plan to create a user-friendly interface where individuals can input partial characters of a Bitcoin address. The system will then return all addresses containing those characters. The more characters provided, the more specific and faster the results.

This project is my current goal (unless one already exists), and I'm committed to seeing it through, regardless of the time it takes.  It will also serve as a form of motivation for me to continue my learning.

I'm grateful for any insights you can offer.

If the address has been used, it's publicly visible on the blockchain. I use grep (https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/grep.1.html) on this data to find an address:
List of all Bitcoin addresses with a balance (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5254914.0)
List of all Bitcoin addresses ever used (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5265993.0)

Years ago, I found a site that does this, but I don't know any at the moment.

Walletexplorer does that but it's mainly for tracing linked addresses, searching with the first few characters of an address is just an added feature.
But for some reason, I can't access the site right now.

BTW, the more popular term for that is "firstbits".

Some people black out parts of their address on a screenshot, and only the first part isn't enough to find it: Example:
1NXYoJ5xU91Jp83XfVMHwwTUyZFK64BoAD
To find all matching addresses:

https://mempool.space/ (https://mempool.space/) might work if you know some character in the beginning.

https://i.ibb.co/M74JKLf/g.png (https://imgbb.com/)

This is basically what the OP is trying to do.

However,  mempool.space searches only for the first characters, not characters in the middle or in the end of the address.

Or, if you're willing to put a bit of effort into learning how to use Regular Expressions (regex):


^ indicates the beginning of the line
.* is used to match any piece you're missing
$ indicates end of the line.

That's better indeed. I use pipes because I'm too lazy to think about regexes.

I had no idea of this before now, good I came across this post now I’ll love to know more.
Is there a reason for obscuring the address, is it for security reasons or something else. And I’m seeing some of the legends post with something like a code I’ll like to know more.
Please can someone give me a detailed explanation

FirstBits was a method used to shorten the address, and you can give someone lets say the first 10 characters and they can identify your address. The way this works is that the service will label each address with its unique prefix; For example, if my address is 1abcdefg, and there is already 3 other addresses that is given the FirstBits of 1a, 1ab, 1abc then I'll get 1abcd as my first bits.

The caveat of this is that it'll still be pretty ambiguous as the number of unique addresses on the blockchain grows. In addition, this also encourages address reuse which is more than enough of a reason this doesn't have much utility nowadays. Note that it is never an official implementation but it was a nifty service back in the days.

No intelligible reasons to it.
I mean, if you want to show an address, display it without any obstruction and
if you don't want to show the address but you have to post an example, then just show another address or replace most of the characters.

There are scenarios like the user has to show a screenshot with the owner's address,
But in that case, just cover the whole address completely or just leave the first three characters to show that it's an address.

People who did that are probably thinking that it's doing something for their privacy.
Most of those posts with partially obscured address that I came across usually has replies hinting that they already knew the address despite the intention of the OP to hide it.

Download list of Bitcoin addresses from blockchair.com and do your data filtering.

https://gz.blockchair.com/bitcoin/addresses/
https://gz.blockchair.com/bitcoin/addresses/blockchair_bitcoin_addresses_latest.tsv.gz