Default Bitcoin Addresses Are Much Cheaper And Simpler To Use Now

The default bitcoin addresses are now much cheaper and simpler to use since with the latest core client version 0.19.0.1 was released this past weekend. There are some minor changes but it does come with a few interesting speed and security improvements as we are reading in the bitcoin news now.

One of the default bitcoin addresses is the so-called Bech32 Bitcoin address is not set as a default option. Introduced in 2018, the Bech32 addresses start with the ‘’bc1’’ and are 15% longer but do not make a difference between the uppercase and lowercase letters. The mixed-case makes it harder to write down or type on mobile keyboards or even read loud while the increased length does not really matter when copying the address according to the developers that aim to change this and to reduce the possibility of human mistakes.

The Bech32 addresses are native SegWit addresses that allow much cheaper transactions. Not all crypto wallets and exchanges support the SegWit transactions but with the new software, they will be able to use the addresses. In other cases, P2SH or P2PKH addresses can be used according to the developers. The release of the Bitcoin software client is still the original version of Bitcoin which was initially launched by Satoshi Nakamoto 11 years ago. There is no fixed schedule but the improved version of Bitcoin Core client gets released once in six months or so followed by some fixes on a monthly basis.

The most recent version includes the contributions from more than 100 developers led by the Bitcoin Core lead maintainer Wladimir van der Laan and more than 550 merged pull requests and got released over a period of six months. Some of the key features include the two-block outbound connections, bloom filters that are not supported by default, the compact client-side block filtering improvements, and the disabled payment protocol support.

The peer-to-peer networks are vulnerable to the partitioning attacks which are situations where some of the network nodes are isolated and the entire network is tricked into accepting a minority chain. The Bitcoin Core changes the default number of extra connections and allows the network nodes to make the connections by relaying blocks that require less bandwidth. Although not fully available, the Bitcoin core 0.19.0.1 users can choose to use the compact client-side block filtering via the custom application that runs on top of the node.