How to Get a Partial Bitcoin Address Complete

I'm kinda new to Bitcoin, definitely jumping in a bit late. Got curious about how newcomers like me can actually help in this space. I saw a post where someone hid part of their address but showed the rest. Can we find a full address from that limited info? I looked online but no luck. Should I build a tool for that?

If it's been used, you can see it on the blockchain. I use grep on the data to spot addresses. There are lists of Bitcoin addresses with balances or just used ones. Found a site that did it years back but I can't remember it now.

Walletexplorer does some of that, but it's more for tracking related addresses. Searching by the first few characters is just a bonus feature. Can't get to the site right now though.

Yeah, people often black out parts of their addresses in screenshots. But just the start isn't gonna cut it. Like this example: 1NXYoJ5xU91Jp83XfVMHwwTUyZFK64BoAD, you'd need more context to find something matching.

You could try using mempool.space if you know a few starting characters.

That's basically what OP is after. But mempool.space only looks at the start of the address, nothing in the middle or end.

Learning regex could help here. For example: ^ at the beginning,.* for the missing part, and $ for the end of the line.

Regex is cool, but I usually just use pipes cause I'm lazy to mess with that stuff.

Had no clue about any of this until now. Glad I stumbled upon this thread. Why do people even obscure their addresses? Is it for privacy or something else? I see legends posting codes, wanna learn more.

FirstBits was a way to shorten addresses. You can give someone the first 10 characters and they can identify it. It relies on unique prefixes for each address, like if mine is 1abcdefg and others are 1a, 1ab, and 1abc, I’d have 1abcd.

But this method has issues. The more addresses there are, the more confusing it gets. Plus, it promotes address reuse, which is a problem.

Honestly, makes no sense. If you want to share your address, just show it all. If you wanna hide it maybe just use another example or blur it fully. Leaving parts obscured doesn't really help privacy. Seems like those people think they're being clever but it just complicates things.

You can download Bitcoin addresses from blockchair.com and filter the data yourself.