Kraken supports all bech32 formats for Litecoin withdrawals

[Mercury]

Kraken exchange announced the support of bech32 withdrawals for Litecoin via a tweet on May 31, 2019. With the new update, all bech32 formats for Litecoin will be supported by Kraken.

Kraken tweeted:

Kraken Litecoin (LTC) withdrawals now support all address formats – Bech32 (native SegWit starting with “ltc1”), M (P2SH starting with “M”), and L (non-P2SH starting with “L”). Existing addresses aren’t affected, only new addresses will need to use the new formats.”

Bech32 is a special SegWit address that was first introduced to Bitcoin via BIP 0173, however, it was later introduced to Litecoin. Normally, the bech32 addresses are prefixed with the number 3, like on Bitcoin. Since Litecoin is a fork of Bitcoin, by default, it has the same format. Unfortunately, this can lead to confusion with users who accidentally send Bitcoin to P2SH Litecoin addresses or accidentally send Litecoin to P2SH Bitcoin addresses.

In order to resolve the conflict, the Litecoin community developed a new format for bech32 address, which would be prefixed with M, or ltc1, or non-P2SH addresses starting with L. The exchange also clarified that existing addresses would not be affected and that only new addresses would need the new formats.

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