You can still store and process it as a large integer, rather than a less efficient string, unless something in your stack is enforcing validation of the versio

You can still store and process it as a large integer, rather than a less efficient string, unless something in your stack is enforcing validation of the version/variant bits. Unless your concern is more that they may not be unique enough due to bad choices in their derivation function, but this will not change no matter what representation you store them in.