Address
A unique string of text that serves as a virtual location where cryptocurrency can be sent.
An address is always related to someone's wallet, as an address in the real world is related to someone’s house. It designates the location of a wallet inside the blockchain, used to send and receive digital assets, such as cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
It takes the form of a long string of numbers and letters, and every blockchain has its specific way of composing it.
To make a clear example, a Bitcoin wallet address will look like this:
16ftSEQ4ctQFDtVZiUBusQUjRrGhM3JYwe
And a wallet address on the Ethereum network will look like this:
0x71C7656EC7ab88b098defB751B7401B5f6d8976F
Since one of the public blockchain foundations is transparency, everyone on the internet can check the balance of each wallet address, it can be done by searching the address in any of the explorer websites on the web. Private blockchains, like Ripple, are not sharing any of this information, due to their privacy-focus nature.
Most cryptocurrency addresses on a blockchain network are anonymous, cause no personal information is required for owning a wallet address on the blockchain. However, addresses that belong to institutions or VIPs can be quite famous and known abroad in the crypto community.
For example, there are multiple Bitcoin addresses with a large quantity of BTC that are known to belong to Satoshi Nakamoto. There are multiple software and tools to track and monitor the cryptocurrency flow of any given public blockchain wallet.
