Why does Base58 drop some characters?

Base58 omits 0 (zero), O (capital o), I (capital i) and l (lowercase L) because they are easy to confuse visually. This is why it is used for Bitcoin addresses and keys, where a single mistyped character would be costly.

How are leading zero bytes handled?

Each leading zero byte in the input is encoded as a leading 1 character, matching the Bitcoin Base58 convention. The decoder restores those zero bytes exactly.

Is this the same as Base58Check?

No. This tool does plain Base58 encoding and decoding. Base58Check adds a version byte and a checksum on top of Base58, which this tool does not compute.

Base58 Encoder & Decoder

Base58 encoder and decoder (Bitcoin alphabet)

Base58 encodes binary data using 58 characters, deliberately leaving out the visually ambiguous 0, O, I and l. This makes encoded values safer to read, copy and type by hand, which is why it underpins Bitcoin addresses, private keys (WIF) and other crypto identifiers.

Choose encode to turn text into Base58, or decode to convert a Base58 string back to text. Leading zero bytes are preserved as leading 1 characters. Everything runs locally in your browser.