Hey all.

Publishing a Bitcoin address as you would an email address means handing the world a permanent public record of everything you receive to it, not to mention anything you later spend. Satoshi even alluded to this in the Bitcoin whitepaper.

Silent Payments are the fix. You publish one address - it starts with sp1 - and share it freely. Yet every payment you receive lands on a different address on-chain, so nobody watching can tell those payments share a recipient. No sender interaction, no XPUB.

Possible on paper since BIP-352, but real support only just arrived: Sparrow shipped it in 2026, and paired with a new server called Frigate, it's now practical even without your own node.

I've written a hands-on guide. By the end you'll have a working sp1 address of your own - it covers how it works under the hood, why scanning is so hard, and a full Sparrow setup.

Silent Payments: a hands-on guide to better Bitcoin privacy

One honest caveat: this is new. Hardware support is still patchy, so be careful testing with real funds. I cover all the things to watch out for in the guide.

Thanks for reading, and happy stacking.

Bennet