Specific address lists for certain purposes:
Posted: Wed May 21, 2025 5:09 am
How: If you run a full Bitcoin node (like Bitcoin Core), you download the entire blockchain. This blockchain contains all transactions ever made.
What you get: From these transactions, you can programmatically extract all Bitcoin addresses that have ever received or sent funds. This is how blockchain explorers (like Blockchain.com or Mempool.space) work; they parse the entire blockchain and index the addresses and their balances.
Challenge: This is a huge amount of data (currently 650-750 GB) and requires significant computational resources to parse and index. It's not a simple CSV file you can just download. Projects like btcposbal2csv (as seen in search results) exist to help with this, by analyzing the Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) set from a full node to list addresses with positive balances.
Using a Blockchain Data API:
How: As discussed previously, specialized API lbank database providers (e.g., BlockCypher, Bitquery, or even general crypto data APIs like CoinMarketCap for some basic address lookups) offer programmatic access to blockchain data.
What you get: You can query these APIs for information about specific addresses, including their balance, transaction history, and associated transactions. Some advanced APIs might allow for bulk queries or data dumps for research purposes, but typically not a simple "download all addresses."
What you get: From these transactions, you can programmatically extract all Bitcoin addresses that have ever received or sent funds. This is how blockchain explorers (like Blockchain.com or Mempool.space) work; they parse the entire blockchain and index the addresses and their balances.
Challenge: This is a huge amount of data (currently 650-750 GB) and requires significant computational resources to parse and index. It's not a simple CSV file you can just download. Projects like btcposbal2csv (as seen in search results) exist to help with this, by analyzing the Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) set from a full node to list addresses with positive balances.
Using a Blockchain Data API:
How: As discussed previously, specialized API lbank database providers (e.g., BlockCypher, Bitquery, or even general crypto data APIs like CoinMarketCap for some basic address lookups) offer programmatic access to blockchain data.
What you get: You can query these APIs for information about specific addresses, including their balance, transaction history, and associated transactions. Some advanced APIs might allow for bulk queries or data dumps for research purposes, but typically not a simple "download all addresses."