Learn
Short guides to what a Bitcoin address shows and how to read it in a report. They explain; they do not advise. Each one ends where it started, at the address lookup. The words are in the glossary.
Reading an address
- Which Bitcoin addresses are well-known?Public examples, their recorded balances and history, with the source behind each association.
- How do I check an address balance?See what a public address holds, with its transactions and unspent outputs. No wallet or account needed.
- How do I watch an address without a wallet?Look up any address once, or save addresses in a free Watch account to follow them.
- Why doesn’t one address show my whole wallet?A wallet uses many addresses, so a report and your wallet can show different totals.
- Why does a balance show zero after I received coins?Pending payments, a wallet's other addresses, and payments that never reached the network, and how to tell them apart.
- When was an address first used?The Since date and the transaction count, what they tell you, and why an address has no creation date.
- What do 1, 3, bc1q and bc1p mean?The four address formats and what their first characters can tell you.
The chain notes
- What are chain notes?The observations at the end of an address report, one by one. They describe what the chain shows; they do not rate.
- What is an unspent output?The pieces of bitcoin an address holds, and why many small pieces cost more to spend.
- What is dust?Pieces of bitcoin too small to be worth the fee to spend them. They stay with the address.
- What is a change output?Bitcoin spends whole pieces and sends the difference back. Why that matters when one piece holds most of a balance.
- What does address reuse mean?How many transactions an address appears in, and why wallets hand out a fresh address each time.
- What do dormant, quiet and pending mean?When the address last took part in a transaction, and what a transaction waiting for confirmation is.
Value
- What does historical value mean?How a report estimates what a balance was worth, and why that is not what anyone paid.
- What are satoshis, and how does a balance become dollars?The two units of bitcoin, the eight decimals, and why a dollar figure moves while the balance stays the same.
Privacy
- Is it safe to share my address?An address alone does not authorize spending. Sharing it exposes balance and history, with privacy risks to consider.
- What does address reuse mean?How many transactions an address appears in, and why wallets hand out a fresh address each time.
Common questions
Is any of this advice?
No. The guides describe what the public chain shows and how the report presents it. Nothing here is financial, tax or security advice, and no guide rates an address as safe or unsafe.
Do I need an account to read a report?
No. Any public address can be looked up without one. An account only saves addresses so you can see them together.
Where do the guides come from?
They are written by the satoshis.watch team from how the report works and what the chain records, and corrected when the report changes.