I have always been a fan of altcoins for a very long time now and now I feel like learning more about Bitcoin and Ordinals is one that triggered this, so I want to ask a question about Bitcoin wallet and their Bips.
I am curious why my Bitcoin wallet has four types of Bitcoin, Bip44, Bip49, Bip86 and Bip84, I don't see people asking questions about them, what are they in existence for? There is oy one Bitcoin I believe but why different Bips and what's the differences and functionalities?
the way they layout the derivation path is a common methodology shared by many networks. so that people can use a single seed phrase over multiple networks to get the desired public addresses that respond to those networks. so that you dont need to have multiple seeds per network
its for the address formats and the methods of starting from a private key/seed to a end result set of addresses
the 'cointype' (SLIPS)
where by for instance the litecoin network it takes in the same seed and processes it with litecoins 'cointype' versionbit to produce litecoin public addresses. where as on the bitcoin network using bitcoins cointype it would produce bitcoin addresses
heres a list of them
https://github.com/satoshilabs/slips/blob/master/slip-0044.md#registered-coin-typesthe 'purpose' (BIPS)
starting from 44 which is where numbers 44+ are deterministic type derivations
49 84 86 is for things like determining which format/function of deterministic addresses are to be formulated EG
p2sh-nested-segwit(49) -bitcoin address prefix '3'
native-segwit(84) - bitcoin address prefix 'bc1q'
taproot(86) -bitcoin address prefix 'bc1p'