1A Create a New Address + Best Practices

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Shannon Appelcline 2017-02-24 16:02:34 -08:00 committed by GitHub
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@ -250,3 +250,39 @@ Examples:
## Part One: The State of the Chain and the Wallet
You're now ready to work directly with the blockchain and your own wallet. To start with, you should learn a bit about the state of these elements.
### Create an Address
The first thing you need to do is create an address for receiving payments. This is done with the "bitcoin-cli getnewaddress" command. If you want more information on it, you should type "bitcoin-cli help getnewaddress".
Theoretically, you could run it just by typing it on the command line:
```
$ bitcoin-cli getnewaddress
miD9uGeAd2Akuf1bFVKCtE2qxfPBjVyy4p
```
However, this isn't best practice; if you retype that or cut and paste it, it would be easy to make a mistake. And then you're telling people to send money to somewhere else (or to nowhere!). So instead we suggest a best practice, which is meant to minimize address mistakes.
#### BEST PRACTICES: Use Variables to Capture Addresses
Instead, use your shell's built in variables to capture your address.
```
$ unset NEW_ADDRESS_1
$ NEW_ADDRESS_1=$(bitcoin-cli getnewaddress)
```
These commands clear the NEW_ADDRESS_1 variable, then fill it with the results of the "bitcoin-cli getnewaddress" command.
You can use your shell's "echo" command to look at your (new) address:
```
$ echo $NEW_ADDRESS_1
mxn1qAvM6wfnZbJAVM2DimUAQUHoGnNb9e
```
Note that this address (and the earlier example) begins with m. This signifies that this is a testnet address.
> **TESTNET vs MAINNET:** The equivalent mainnet address would start with a 1.
We'll use this same technique when dealing with future address; note that you could do it all by hand, instead of piping stuff in and out of variables ... but we really don't suggest it.
### Capture the Private Key