Bitcoin addresses and your Phantom accounts
When you create a new wallet in Phantom you'll initially start with a multi-chain Account with support for Solana, Ethereum, Polygon, and Bitcoin. Ethereum and Polygon share the same address, and on Bitcoin, you can select to have one or both address types per account: a Native SegWit (Bech32) address, which starts withbc1q; and a Taproot (Bech32m) which starts with bc1p.
Newly created Phantom wallets start with a Native SegWit bc1q. This makes it easier to buy Bitcoin (BTC) directly from within Phantom, or receive BTC from other wallets and exchanges. This address is usually used by dApps like Magic Eden as your "Payment address". What this means is that your Native Segwit address will fund your purchase and your purchased assets will reside on your Taproot address.
When purchasing ordinals (NFT or Collectibles on the Bitcoin blockchain) and BRC-20s, most dApps will require you to enable the Taproot bc1p address inside of Settings > Preferences > Preferred Bitcoin Address, as your "Ordinals address" and it will be used alongside your other Bitcoin address.
If you restore a Bitcoin wallet using a Secret Recovery Phrase that you have previously created in a different Bitcoin wallet, Phantom automatically detects which addresses you’ve previously used for BTC and Ordinals. Therefore, you will see a Taproot (Bech32m) address and/or a Native SegWit (Bech32) address if you have previous activity in those address types.
Remember, you can always go to Preferences and choose which address type you want to see. You can also keep both types enabled as some dApps make use of both addresses at the same time to keep your Bitcoin and Ordinals separated.
When sending Bitcoin, there are two other address types on Bitcoin that you can send BTC to using your Phantom wallet:
- Legacy addresses (P2PKH), which start with
1 - Nested addresses (P2SH), which start with
3
It is always better to copy and paste the address directly or scan using the QR code. You need to be extra careful when managing them as you can end up sending funds to the wrong address.
If you don't see the addresses you use on a different wallet software, please take a look at this article about what derivation paths are currently supported on Phantom.