What Is a ‘Vanity Address’ and What Are Its Security Implications?

A vanity address is a cryptocurrency address with a custom, human-readable prefix, such as one starting with "1Trade". These addresses are generated by repeatedly creating key pairs until a public key hashes to the desired pattern.

The security implication is that the generation process is computationally intensive, and if the user did not use sufficient entropy or the generator program was malicious, the private key could be weaker or known to the creator.