How to put words into a Bitcoin address? Here’s how vanity addresses work
Have you ever wondered whether a Bitcoin (BTC) address — or a string of 26–35 alphanumeric characters — can happen to have human-readable words instead of random letters?
You’ve probably heard of the Lightning Network, which allows you to create a fancy BTC address that looks like an email or a web domain. But there’s also a way of creating Bitcoin addresses containing human-readable words on the original Bitcoin blockchain. Such addresses are known as vanity Bitcoin addresses.
A vanity Bitcoin address is a personalized BTC address that contains a specific pattern or word in a part of its total 26-35 character string of letters and numbers. Unlike a usual Bitcoin address — which is made of random characters — a vanity Bitcoin address allows users to customize their addresses or even send a specific message just within the address.
The term “vanity address” comes from the plain meaning of the word “vanity,” which is used to express inflated pride in oneself or one’s appearance. In line with the direct meaning, vanity addresses are used by those who want to stand out and give their wallet address a unique identity.
Vanity Bitcoin addresses became popular a few years after the anonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto launched the cryptocurrency back in 2009. The first vanity address generator, called “VanityGen,” was released as an open-source platform on GitHub in 2012. One of the first references to vanity addresses on Bitcointalk.org — a major crypto forum created by Nakamoto — goes back to 2013.
According to Trezor’s Bitcoin analyst Josef Tetek, Nakamoto didn’t use vanity addresses: “He disappeared from the public before vanity addresses became popular,” Tetek told Cointelegraph, referring to Nakamoto’s vanishing in 2011.
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