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…	Number of Characters	Example	Explanation	Notes
5	51	5Kb8kLf9zgWQnogidDA76MzPL6TsZZY36hWXMssSzNydYXYB9KF	Bitcoin private key in WIF format associated with uncompressed 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
S	22	SzavMBLoXU6kDrqtUVmffv	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	source
	40	DC25EF3F5B8A186998338A2ADA83795FBA2D695E	Could be Ethereum or ERC20 address. Try adding “0x” at the beginning and check for transactions	source