Google Search now includes crypto wallet balances for bitcoin, Fantom and other blockchains - SiliconANGLE (2024)

Google LLC’s search engine now allows users to search balances of cryptocurrency wallets on bitcoin, Arbitrium, Avalanche, Optimism, Polygon and Fantom blockchains.

The search results display a token balance that includes transactions up to the last time the network updated, Google said late Tuesday. Users can search using three different bitcoin address formats including P2PKH, P2SH and Bech32. All of these are extremely large groups of letters and numbers that represent the crypto wallet address of token holders where balances are held.

For example, a user could enter a search for the bitcoin blockchain address “bc1qq904ynep5mvwpjxdlyecgeupg22dm8am6cfvgq” and Google Search will return a result of how many bitcoins are currently available in the associated wallet, including the date and time of the last recorded transaction.

Google also noted that the updates are not instantaneous, so there may be a delay between new transactions and search index picking up new wallet balances.

As all bitcoin network transactions are public on a blockchain distributed ledger, knowing the address means that it is possible to display information on how many tokens are in the wallet. However, it does not reveal the owner of the wallet. This is also the case for transactions on other public blockchain networks such as now supportedArbitrium, Avalanche, Optimism, Polygon and Fantom addresses.

This update follows Google adding the capability of displaying the balances of Ethereum Name Service addresses, which the company rolled out in search resultsearlier in Marchvia Etherscan.The ENS is similar the Domain Name Service for websites, which makes it easier to find internet addresses using human-readable names for internet addresses. This makes it simpler for users to share wallet addresses instead of having to remember a bunch of letters and numbers. The ENS allows users to attach a human-readable name to Ethereum wallet addresses such as “mypersonalwallet.eth.”

In 2022, Google added the ability totrack the balancesof some Ethereum addresses directly using its search index. The company expanded that capability last May to Ethereum wallets.

The feature currently saves users the time it takes to go to a tool such as Etherscan to look up Ethereum balances. Google Search also allows users to look up the current market price of bitcoin with a search for “BTC USD,” which provides a market summary similar to that of traditional stocks with a historical chart.

Images:Pixabay, Google