What Does this Long String of Letters and Numbers Mean?
Updated: Nov. 15, 2022
Our company helps people recover their lost Bitcoin and other crypto assets.
People often contact us with information about a long string of numbers and letters -- sometimes they wrote themselves a note years ago, and they're hoping that we can help them identify what the characters mean.
This article should help you identify some of these strings.
| Starts with | Length | Example | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 51 | 5Kb8kLf9zgWQnogidDA76MzPL6TsZZY36hWXMssSzNydYXYB9KF | Bitcoin private key in WIF format associated with un compressed public keys (source) |
| 6P | 58 | 6PYKNsNn1Fq1QrAG581zP1t1KdmPDoncTeeXnHvugPdFvxvkJWjH1DRNX1 | BIP38 Encrypted Private Key (source) |
| capital L or K | 52 | Bitcoin private key in WIF format associated with compressed public keys (source) | |
| capital L or M | 52 | Bitcoin private key (WIF, compressed pubkey, Electrum-defined and deprecated) (source) | |
| S | 30 | S6c56bnXQiBjk9mqSYE7ykVQ7NzrRy | Mini private key format (source) |
| Hex | 64 | E9873D79C6D87DC0FB6A5778633389F4453213303DA61F20BD67FC233AA33262 | Private key in hexadecimal format (source) |
| 1 | 27 – 34 | 1LQoWist8KkaUXSPKZHNvEyfrEkPHzSsCd | Bitcoin address |
| L, 3 or M | 26 – 35 | MGxNPPB7eBoWPUaprtX9v9CXJZoD2465zN | Litecoin address |
| 3 | 27 – 34 | 34xp4vRoCGJym3xR7yCVPFHoCNxv4Twseo | Bitcoin address |
| bc1 | 42,62 | bc1qgdjqv0av3q56jvd82tkdjpy7gdp9ut8tlqmgrpmv24sq90ecnvqqjwvw97 | Bech32 Bitcoin address (source) |
| Hex | 64 | 8da4ef21b864d2cc526dbdb2a120bd2874c36c9d0a1fb7f8c63d7f7a8b41de8f | Ethereum private key (source) |
| 0x | 42 | 0xDC25EF3F5B8A186998338A2ADA83795FBA2D695E | Ethereum or ERC20 address |
