DEFINITION OF BITCOIN FIRSTBITS

Bitcoin Firstbits are the first bitcoin address to appear in a transaction on the bitcoin blockchain that matches a specified prefix.

For example, I often say, "I am the owner of bitcoin firstbits 1GLENCo, 1GlenCoo, and 1GlenCoop". What does that mean? Let's break it down.

How to confirm what those firstbits are? Use the search box on https://walletexplorer.com, search for "1GLENCo".

By doing that search you will find a page that indicates bitcoin address 1GLENCoSJJHH7FahyhTi16iwZQcHtMbxA4 is the firstbits address "1GLENCo".

Since I have control of the private key that corresponds to that bitcoin address, then I can say that I am the owner of bitcoin firstbits 1GLENCo.

Follow the same process for the other firstbits combos and you will see: 1GLENCoo58vDpnVAiBHSPbmBQhTQzSMyTh corresponds to bitcoin firstbits '1GLENCoo', and 1GLENCoopvTFq7ZxvJPhrvk8nPbZxbU3hx corresponds to bitcoin firstbits '1GLENCoop'.

WARNING:

Generating your own firsbits combo will consume roughly the same amount of energy as would be required to mine bitcoin. In other words, it will take a lot of energy.
You will spike your CPU to 100% utilization during the execution of supervanitygen. It will run up your electricity bill by leaving your CPU at 100%.

It also risks overheating your motherboard. Most consumer grade computers should be able to handle some max-CPU events by using their own cooling mechanisms. Make no mistake about it: It will strain your hardware.
Do it enough (as in for days on end) and you'll likely kill your motherboard.
If you have an older laptop laying around that you wouldn't mind losing if it died, use that if you want to generate bitcoin firstbits. Know where your fire extinguisher is before starting supervanitygen. For real. Your computer or laptop could overheat and worst-case scenario catch fire. 🔥🧯🚒

HOW TO GENERATE YOUR OWN FIRSTBITS:

You can generate your own firsbits combo by using supervanitygen.

PROCESS THAT I USED:

Find a firstbits combo you might want by searching to see if those firstbits are already taken by searching on https://walletexplorer.com.
If the desired firstbits are available, you will get a blank search result.

Example: Let's say you wanted to claim firstbits "1Stacker".

Search on https://www.walletexplorer.com for "1Stacker", or use this link. At the time this tutorial was written, that firstbits combo was available.
Once you know it's available, start mining for it using supervanitygen.
$ /usr/bin/supervanitygen/vanitygen nice -n 19 vanitygen -i 1stacker

NOTE ABOUT CASE SENSITIVITY

Bitcoin firstbits are case insensitive. Said another way; it does not matter if you wanted 1Stacker, but 1sTaCKeR is already taken. In that case, firstbits '1Stacker" are taken, even if the actual address was something like 1sTaCKeR12345...

BITCOIN FIRSTBITS ARE FOREVER

Every bitcoin firstbits combo is immutable since each requires an on-chain transaction, and bitcoin transactions occur on an immutable ledger that is the bitcoin blockchain.

BITCOIN FIRSTBITS ARE SCARCE, AND THEREFORE ARE VALUABLE

Since firsbits combos can only ever be mined once, they are by definition scarce. Scarcity creates value. If you think of a firstbits combo that is still available, grab it now before it's gone forever by someone else captures it by chance, or intentionally mines it.

PRIVATE KEYS

When you generate a firstbits address, you will see a public address followed by a private address. Save the private address somewhere safe. You will need it if you ever want to move the bitcoin sent to whatever bitcoin firstbits address you generate.
After you have saved the private key, send a bitcoin transaction to the associated public address. Watch for the transaction to be confirmed on-chain by using a bitcoin mempool explorer (like https://mempool.space).
Once the transaction is Confirmed, give it a day or so and then check on that firstbits combo again at https://walletexplorer.com. If the search results indicate that firstbits combo corresponds to the bitcoin address that you generated using supervanitygen, then you can rightfully say you are the owner of those bitcoin firstbits.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @DarthCoin 5 Feb

No! Please don't do this stupid thing, only if you want to create a dumping address. These addresses are very easy to decrypt their private keys by anybody else. Especially if you use it on a public website.

PLEASE DO NOT ENCOURAGE NOOBS TO DO THIS STUPID THING!

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @1GLENCoop OP 5 Feb

Where does it say to generate them on a public website? Nowhere. I would never do that, nor should you or anyone reading this, so stop attacking my post and kindly GFY.

Everyone using the pubic site https://walletexplorer.com/ absolutely should be using a new TorBrowser session when searching for firstbits combos. Doing so will ensure that each search cannot be tied back to you.

walletexplorer.com was actually determined to be a honeypot, as documented here, so absolutely be safe about searching for a desired firstbits combo using that search engine. There are other ways of searching for firstbits combos using other tools, but the only method I am aware of involves a lot of work to make happen. If anyone knows of any other search engines that search for firstbits combos, please do share. I heard at one point there was a way to do firstbits searches using mempool.space, but I was not able to figure out how.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 5 Feb

stop attacking my post

too much snowflake ? I just warn noobs to not use this. This is only for experimenting not for using daily.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @1GLENCoop OP 5 Feb

Not too much, Big Daddy. I would expect nothing less from you tbh, @DarthCoin. You've always been very toxic. It took me a very long time to warm up to your toxicity. I slowly did over time as I came to realization that you've usually been right about everything you've said. I believe you have the best intentions of making bitcoin better for everyone, not worse. Having said that, you might want to try to simmer down just a little bit please. Thanks. xxoo :-D