Address: 11111111111111111111QekFQw

Burn Address

Bitcoin addresses are generated by base58 or bech32 encoding the hash of a public key or script, along with a version and checksum.

As the encoding is directly performed on this hash value, it is possible to generate a valid address for which the pre-image public key or script is unknown. This is known as a burn address.

This is commonly done to create a visually distinct address, and to demonstrate some level of “nothing up my sleeve” transparency. The hash values are picked to be values that are improbably to have been generated by chance (due to the immense computational power required to find a pre-image that hashes to a specific value).

While some burn addresses were used in Proof-of-Burn schemes, the majority of burn addresses are simply vanity addresses used to simply burn coins or encode a message into the blockchain.