user61697: I have wondered how many Bitcoin addresses are possible. When looking around, I stumbled upon this thread on BitcoinTalk:

There are exactly 2^160 possible addresses as long as we keep using
RIPE-MD160.
2^160 is
1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976.

Then I wondered if there are less possible addresses with the Bech32-format, specified by BIP 0173.
Besides, you cannot use uppercase format of characters in your computation, and some numbers as letters, such as i/1 and o/0 characters/numbers are excluded in Bech32 format.
Should that not decrease the possible amount of Bitcoin addresses dramatically, and decrease the security of Bitcoin?
So, I would like to know how many possible Bitcoin addresses there are with Bech32 format. How could I calculate it? What will the total number (plain long number, not the squared one, I'm not good in math) of possibilities be with the restrictions of Bech32 then?

user51948: Keep in mind that both types of addresses, assuming we are comparing P2PKH with P2WPKH addresses, are just encoding the hash of a public key. The hash used in both address types is a RIPEMD-160(SHA-256(public key)), so regardless of the encoding, the number of possible valid addresses remains the same. Each address format is simply encoded with a different checksum system, different version system, and different characters. But neither address format is actually ever used within bitcoin transactions themselves, they both just get "unwrapped" when given to a wallet.

61697: <p>I have wondered how many Bitcoin addresses are possible. When looking around, I stumbled upon <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=24268.0" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this thread</a> on BitcoinTalk:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There are exactly 2^160 possible addresses as long as we keep using
RIPE-MD160.</p>
<p>2^160 is
1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Then I wondered if there are less possible addresses with the Bech32-format, specified by <a href="https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0173.mediawiki" rel="nofollow noreferrer">BIP 0173</a>.</p>
<p>Besides, you cannot use uppercase format of characters in your computation, and some numbers as letters, such as i/1 and o/0 characters/numbers are excluded in Bech32 format.</p>
<p>Should that not decrease the possible amount of Bitcoin addresses dramatically, and decrease the security of Bitcoin?</p>
<p>So, I would like to know how many possible Bitcoin addresses there are with Bech32 format. How could I calculate it? What will the total number (plain long number, not the squared one, I'm not good in math) of possibilities be with the restrictions of Bech32 then?</p>
 51948: <p>Keep in mind that both types of addresses, assuming we are comparing P2PKH with P2WPKH addresses, are just encoding the hash of a public key. The hash used in both address types is a <code>RIPEMD-160(SHA-256(public key))</code>, so regardless of the encoding, the number of possible valid addresses remains the same. Each address format is simply encoded with a different checksum system, different version system, and different characters. But neither address format is actually ever used within bitcoin transactions themselves, they both just get &quot;unwrapped&quot; when given to a wallet.</p>
