better to send BTC to Wallet address or to my Public Key?

[joe1234]

Hello

does it make a difference if the sender tranfers BTC funds to my Wallet address or to my Public Key?


Thank's in advance!

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[justinlamode]

Hello
does it make a difference if the sender tranfers BTC funds to my Wallet address or to my Public Key?
Thank's in advance!

The question is not clear. To receive Bitcoin, all you need is your wallet address, which you will send to whoever is sending you the Bitcoin. Every other information apart from your wallet address is your sensitive information that you should keep within yourself and never disclose to anyone. Of course, your wallet address can be public, and that will not be an issue.

[Zaguru12]

does it make a difference if the sender tranfers BTC funds to my Wallet address or to my Public Key?

If your question is maybe you can spend that bitcoin spend to your public key instead of address i will say technically you can spend it if you have the corresponding private key. Because ideally it is the public key that actually receives the coin, the address is just a hash plus checksum of the public key.  With the checksum it is easier if the address is correct or not.

Nonetheless i don’t think wallets allow the sending of bitcoin to public key just like how sending to ip addresses were ban. But it is not that it’s not possible.

[Orpichukwu]

But honestly speaking, in the eyes of many, there is nothing much different from the public key and wallet address, as I have seen even some platforms mistake both, like when I came across a form where one was required to either put their public key or their wallet address for receiving payment.
 
It's hard for me to differentiate between them most of the time unless you, as someone with technical knowledge, are able to tell the difference between them, which brings me to the question: how can I differentiate between a wallet address and a public key?

[BitMaxz]

does it make a difference if the sender tranfers BTC funds to my Wallet address or to my Public Key?

You might be talking about the public key with 130 characters? or xPUb?

To make it clear better check "Bitcoin prefixes".

And take note if it's a 130 characters or xpub you cant send a BTC to that address you need to use or provide an address that starts with 1, 3, or bc1 if you give a different address than these then you can't be able to send or receive BTC.

[hosseinimr93]

P2PK (Pay to public key) transactions were common in the early days of bitcoin.
These days, it's not common to pay bitcoin to a pubic key. If someone wants to send you bitcoin, give him/her your address.

which brings me to the question: how can I differentiate between a wallet address and a public key?

Your bitcoin address is derived from your public key.

A public keys starts with 02 or 03, if it's compressed and with 04, if it's uncompressed.
A bitcoin address starts with 1, 3 or bc1.

You might be talking about the public key with 130 characters? or xPUb?

xpub is the term used for master public key.

OP is probably talking about individual public keys. A public key includes 66 or 130 characters.

And take note if it's a 130 characters or xpub you cant send a BTC to that address you need to use or provide an address that starts with 1, 3, or bc1 if you give a different address than these then you can't be able to send or receive BTC.

Technically speaking, it's possible to pay bitcoin to public key, but as I said, that's not common these days.

[nelson4lov]

Sending Bitcoin directly to a public key is not recommended and my best guess is that all modern day Bitcoin wallets will have checks to ensure that recipient of any tx is actually an address and not a public key. When dealing with cases like this - crypto where transactions are immutable and cannot be reversed once completed; it is imperative for one to be careful rather than sorry.

TLDR => stick to addresses for sending and receiving value. Or better still, generate a new address from public key and use.

[letteredhub]

Hello

does it make a difference if the sender tranfers BTC funds to my Wallet address or to my Public Key?


Thank's in advance!

From the title of your post asking if it's: better to send BTC to Wallet address or to my Public Key?

The wallet address serve as a destination route for the transaction of  your crypto.  They are gotten from your public key for the reception of funds.

.one of the usefulness of the public key is that you can use it to create signature and sign transactions to prove ownership of wallet address where there is doubt.

So if I get you correctly, the better the right channel through which you can send BTC to your wallet is through your wallet address.

[tranthidung]

does it make a difference if the sender tranfers BTC funds to my Wallet address or to my Public Key?

Difference between sending BTC through a public key and a public address was explained by hossenimir.

If you want to understand more about Public Key and Public address, read chapter Chapter 4, Key and Addresses in Mastering Bitcoin book 3rd edition.

A process of creating Private key > Public key > Public address is one way and you can not do the opposites like finding a public key from public address, private key from a public key. So it's safe to send your bitcoin through public key.

However, nowadays, people mostly use Public Addresses, like they use centralized exchange, wallets provide them public addresses. If you use public key for transactions, you will create inconvenience for them and for you as well.

[Julien_Olynpic]

Currently, payment using a public key is possible, but almost no one does this. This is an outdated format for payment details. But previously such payment was common - “Pay to public key” or P2PK. Right now I don't even know of any Bitcoin wallets that would allow me to do this. And even if you manage to somehow send funds to a public key, this will become a big problem for the recipient of the funds. After all, almost no modern Bitcoin wallet explicitly operates with such functions. You know, there are currently 7 types of addresses in Bitcoin. P2PK is the most outdated of them. Even a legacy address is no longer used much due to high fees. The most used one now is native segwit (bc1...). There are also taprut addresses that have not yet become widespread.

[Ben Barubal]

Hello

does it make a difference if the sender tranfers BTC funds to my Wallet address or to my Public Key?


Thank's in advance!

   The Bitcoin address and public key are the same, as far as I know. The only thing I don't understand about what you said in this op is that it's not clear what you really want to know. Maybe you mean that from your bitcoin address you want to transfer it to another bitcoin address as well or to another exchange, right?

Because it seems to me that you want to send it to a hardware wallet or software wallet like Exodus or other wallets that can hide Bitcoin.

[Fundamentals Of]

Your wallet address is derived from its public key. I haven't tried sending Bitcoin to a public key. I searched about it and it seems there's a confusion, but it looks like it is indeed possible to transfer Bitcoin using a public key. (https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/83631/sent-btc-to-public-key-instead-of-my-address)

But what is the point? I think there's no difference at all. After all, your Bitcoin address came from your public key. And it's public. It isn't your private keys. But public keys are composed of more characters than your address so you better use addresses instead. And I also haven't experienced a Bitcoin wallet which has a box intended for public keys in case a user prefers to make transactions with it rather than an address.

[alastantiger]

If you want to understand more about Public Key and Public address, read chapter Chapter 4, Key and Addresses in Mastering Bitcoin book 3rd edition.

Yes, @joe1234, you should totally read this Chapter. It answers the question very clearly.

does it make a difference if the sender tranfers BTC funds to my Wallet address or to my Public Key?

In the past, the standard was to send bitcoin to a public key but now, the standard is to use your wallet address because it is more user-friendly and the most preferred method for receiving bitcoin. Stick with what the majority of the community is doing. I think in terms of convenience of transactions, sharing a wallet address is better than a public key. In terms of security and privacy, since the wallet address are produced by hashing the public key twice, you can be sure that you are provided with an extra layer of security of your bitcoin assets that is not availed to you when you share your public key.

[Nothingtodo]

Hello

does it make a difference if the sender tranfers BTC funds to my Wallet address or to my Public Key?


Thank's in advance!

I usually send bitcoins to bitcoin wallet addresses (Segwit, Native, Taproot) but I have no experience sending or receiving bitcoins to any public key addresses. But as far as I know I'm not sure if any public key can send bitcoins.

[Pierre 2]

P2PK (Pay to public key) transactions were common in the early days of bitcoin.
These days, it's not common to pay bitcoin to a pubic key. If someone wants to send you bitcoin, give him/her your address.

which brings me to the question: how can I differentiate between a wallet address and a public key?

Your bitcoin address is derived from your public key.

A public keys starts with 02 or 03, if it's compressed and with 04, if it's uncompressed.
A bitcoin address starts with 1, 3 or bc1.

You might be talking about the public key with 130 characters? or xPUb?

xpub is the term used for master public key.

OP is probably talking about individual public keys. A public key includes 66 or 130 characters.

And take note if it's a 130 characters or xpub you cant send a BTC to that address you need to use or provide an address that starts with 1, 3, or bc1 if you give a different address than these then you can't be able to send or receive BTC.

Technically speaking, it's possible to pay bitcoin to public key, but as I said, that's not common these days.

I think it's much more convenient to be get used to send your bitcoins through wallet addresses. As its explained here by hosseinimr9, sending bitcoin through public address is now very uncommon option that exist around wallet software etc. Most exchanges would directly hand you bech32 address nowadays (I think taproot is still not very common) so you can send or deposit through that. Wallet addresses are not that too long to be checked in my opinion, I think its not hard method at all.

[Despairo]

I usually send bitcoins to bitcoin wallet addresses (Segwit, Native, Taproot) but I have no experience sending or receiving bitcoins to any public key addresses. But as far as I know I'm not sure if any public key can send bitcoins.

This is the procedure if you send Bitcoin using public key, I'm glad with many improvement by developers, we only need to copy public address to receive or send Bitcoin without need to make it more complicated.

If I were know Bitcoin at that time, I doubt if I will interested with Bitcoin since as an Average Joe, it's really like an alien numbers.

[adaseb]

I am not too technical on this but isn’t the public key exposed anyways as soon as you send a transaction? And people reuse addresses all the time even exchanges keep billions in there and reuse the addresses.

From what I remember the public key isn’t hashed as the wallet addresses so if in the future there was some exploit, you might be a target but this is highly unlikely. And if it happened then many would be in trouble, especially exchanges.

[ArikeTobi]

does it make a difference if the sender tranfers BTC funds to my Wallet address or to my Public Key?

I think the wallet address is what we use in receiving the fund which is our bitcoin address and this is how a lay man understand it, but technically, the public key is what constitutes the wallet receiving address, I've not seen anyone using the public key to receive bitcoin before even though it is the basic foundation to how the address where being generated, the coin itself is on the blockchain, every other keys are to help us decode the way our bitcoin was endoded on the blockchain in other to show our ownership.

[Mate2237]

Op, hosseinimr93 has said, it was common in those early days for a sender to send bitcoin to the public key and it will s not in these days again and some said the two two mentioned are one and from logical reasoning, the two teams (Wallet address and Public Key) are one in these days. Therefore it is possible for you to send bitcoin to any of the address. So don't confuse yourself with the two. You can give you public key to receive or the wallet address.

Though I was not around or was not in bitcoin Blockchain when public key was using to receive bitcoin but I came to the Blockchain when the wallet address was used to receive bitcoin so I was not even aware that public key was a separate address from wallet address.

[BitMaxz]

So don't confuse yourself with the two. You can give you public key to receive or the wallet address.

No, you can't give this public key to anyone because most of the exchanges and wallets like Electrum don't recognize this when sending a BTC to a public key already tried it on my mobile phone but on desktop Electrum the public key it works but I don't know if you will receive it once you broadcast the transaction.
 
I don't know other wallets if there are still Bitcoin wallets that can able to recognize public keys to send BTC. To make sure you will receive BTC in your wallet always provide only BTC wallet address as we mentioned above.