As u already know. u need to have a bitcoin address to send and receive bitcoin. The address itself consists of between 26 and 35 alphanumeric characters; for ease of use they are often converted into a QR code format for sharing.

Many cryptocurrency wallets allow users to generate multiple Bitcoin addresses, but this feature is rarely available on cryptocurrency exchanges. It's good to have a lot of address to mitigate risk and avoid scam.

What is a bitcoin Address?

Most of u here already know what is a bitcoin address but this is for the people who came here to learn.

lets just say, in a typical bank to bank transaction if u need to send money u need to know acc no, person name, bank location, and so many other details. Its the same principle basically a Bitcoin address is a public identifier for your Bitcoin wallet, acting as a virtual location where the cryptocurrency can be sent. 

When you create a Bitcoin wallet, you receive a public key and a private key. The private key proves you’re the owner of the wallet in question; the public key is used to receive funds. The public key and private key are linked through asymmetric encryption; the private key can be used to derive the public key, but the public key can’t be used to extrapolate the private key. For this reason, you should never share your private key.

Do note one more point here if u are creating a wallet in a centralized exchange in this lets say binance they wont provide u with your private and public key they are responsible for it and u need to believe them for the most part.

A Bitcoin address isn’t quite the same thing as your public key; instead it’s a temporary, hashed version of your public key. The address itself consists of between 26 and 35 alphanumeric characters; for ease of use they are often converted into a QR code format for sharing. For each new transaction, the recipient generates a new single-use address which they provide to the sender. The latter part of creating a address has been changed by lot of exchange and wallets and instead provides a single address so don't fear if u transact a lot.

Types of bitcoin address out there

As the bitcoin evolves and new technologies are used to improve the efficiency and safety of transactions. So as the time goes by now we currently use three different type of address. This is the major thing to keep in mind because some exchanges or wallets accepts all formats and some won't so check before u transact.

As mentioned above, Bitcoin addresses are between 26 and 35 alphanumeric characters long. There are three different types of Bitcoin address: Pay-to-PubKey-Hash (P2PKH, also known as Legacy address), Pay to script hash (P2SH) and Bech32.

Legacy Addresses

Also known as PubKey_Hash(P2PKH) Address is the the original Bitcoin address format. They start with the number 1, and are case-sensitive. All wallets should support legacy addresses. You can send and receive bitcoin from any type of address with legacy address as it is the oldest of them all. The drawback of legacy address is its high gas fees.

• Example

  1FWu4Z9NoBWnguurBCdXpmM2xuiog6kbdy

Nested Segwit Addresses

Its simply an updated version of legacy address. It most has similar structure of bitcoin address with one small change instead of starting with 1 in address it start with 3 to support the segwit or segregated witness. Segregated witness is an update to bitcoin protocal. Segwit is used to reduce the size of transaction data that needed to be stored in Bitcoin blocks in bitcoin transaction.

Practically speaking, that means that P2SH addresses have reduced transaction fees. They act as a “halfway house” between Legacy and Native SegWit addresses, supporting both types of transactions. They also support greater functionality than legacy addresses, such as multisig addresses.

• Example:

  3C3nZhpVjjDGo7vGzBCTJkKfYzCGWGLWsq

Bech32 addresses

It is also know as Native SegWit address. It start with "bc1" and it is not case sensitive like the above mentioned addresses. It is the newest type of bitcoin address. It comes with some key advantages like improved transaction speed, reduced gas fees. It also has some downside it is not supported by all wallets and exchanges.

• Example:

  bc1qwdanan7d5dq99l6v7z65a4x50cqf2rep6wj9z6