Base58 numbers (used in bitcoin addresses) are those funny looking groupings of alphabet letters with numbers mixed in.

Base58 numbers can be made up of any combination of:

…10 numeric digits: (0-9)

…26 lower case letters: (a-z)

….26 capital letters (A-Z)

…which would total a pool of 62 characters/digits for use in making a number…

…but then four letters are disallowed ( O, o, I, l ) because they are easily confused with zeroes and ones.

Leaving 58 characters to make numbers with.

62 - 4 = 58

In Base58, rather than counting from 0 to 9 and then saying “10” next, you instead start saying the alphabet and pretend those letters are numbers.

Even though Base 58 may look confusing at first, it is helpful because it allows large rnumbers to fit into smaller spaces.

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Let me know if any of this is incorrect or there is something useful to add in….