Extended Keys (for HD Wallets):

[rosebaby3892]

Private Key: A large, random number (256-bit). It's typically represented in:
Hexadecimal: (64 characters long).
WIF (Wallet Import Format): A Base58Check-encoded version of the private key (starts with 5, K, or L), which includes a checksum and version byte for safer handling.
Public Key: Derived from the private key. It's also a large number (a point on an elliptic curve).
Uncompressed: (65 bytes) starts with 04.
Compressed: (33 bytes) starts with 02 or 03. Compressed public keys are standard practice as they save space.


xpub/xprv: Base58-encoded extended public or private keys used in Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) wallets (BIP-32) to derive multiple child keys.
ypub/yprv, zpub/zprv: Newer albania phone number list versions that signal specific script types (P2WPKH-in-P2SH and native P2WPKH, respectively).
5. Encoding Schemes
Various encoding schemes are used to represent Bitcoin data in a compact and user-friendly way:

Raw Binary: The actual data stored on disk and transmitted over the network is in raw binary (bytes).
Hexadecimal (Hex): The most common representation for raw binary data, like transaction IDs (TXIDs), block hashes, script opcodes, and public keys. Each byte is represented by two hexadecimal characters.
CompactSize Integers: A variable-length integer encoding used throughout Bitcoin's data structures to efficiently represent numbers that can vary greatly in size (e.g., transaction counts, script sizes).