See the private key encoding full-service wallet, distribute public keys.
As for day-to-day use, software wallets are perhaps a more convenient alternative. That is because the private key has an added one-byte suffix shown as 01 in hex in Table , which signifies that the private key is from a newer wallet and should only be used to produce compressed public keys. Using a vanity address generator, someone with the intent to steal by substituting a similar-looking address can quickly generate addresses that match the first few characters, as shown in Table The digital keys are not actually stored in the network, but are instead created and stored by users in a file, or simple database, called a wallet. You can use Bitcoin Explorer to decode the Base58Check format on the command line.
