Author

Topic: Blockchain balance different than wallet balance (Read 696 times)

legendary
Activity: 3122
Merit: 2178
Playgram - The Telegram Casino
September 11, 2017, 01:43:04 PM
#8
It's to add both security and privacy. Security in the unlikely event that quantum computing enables deriving the private key from a public key (ie. your address) after it has been used at least once (ie. to send a transaction), privacy to make it harder to track the balances of a specific user. The privacy aspect is only marginal though, since analysis of regular Bitcoin transactions has been proven to be a viable way to link addresses to wallets, hence Bitcoin being pseudonymous, not anonymous.

Change addresses are also the reason why deterministic wallets (ie. ones based on a seed) are recommended over non-deterministic ones. With non-deterministic wallets it is recommended to make regular backups of your wallet file whenever you have sent a transaction. I remember Bitcoin Core being one of the wallets that use a non-deterministic address derivation scheme, not sure if that's still the case though.
Many thanks for your explanation. So to surely not get tracked is the best to use a mixer, right?

Correct. This is one of the reasons why Bitcoin mixers entered the market in the first place.

You could also try to jump between alt coins; but this is rather bothersome, may cost you in terms of alt coin volatility and may still be traceable across chains due to the temporal sequence of similar-sized transactions.

Alternatively you could look into privacy focused alt coins such as XMR, which comes with built-in mixing properties, but is currently more volatile than BTC and not as widely accepted, meaning you will likely have to go through an exchange at one point of your transaction. Additionally some privacy focused alts may still be broken at one point in the future.

So in the end mixers are probably the most convenient and safest way to retain your privacy, unless you plan to go long on XMR and have places to spend it at.
hero member
Activity: 909
Merit: 508
Usually what a wallet does is that it sends the part of the transaction you don't send (change) to a different address.

For example.

You have received 1 BTC on address 1. You want to transfer 0.2 BTC to a friend, with address 2. The wallet automatically sends the remaining 0.8 (minus the tx fee obviousely) to address 3 which is controlled by you. You do not need to worry about it. If you look in your wallet, it will tell you that you have the .11 BTC available.
That is completely new to me. Could you maybe explain, if you have the time, what for a wallet sends also the rest to the own address and does not simply keep, where it was?

It's to add both security and privacy. Security in the unlikely event that quantum computing enables deriving the private key from a public key (ie. your address) after it has been used at least once (ie. to send a transaction), privacy to make it harder to track the balances of a specific user. The privacy aspect is only marginal though, since analysis of regular Bitcoin transactions has been proven to be a viable way to link addresses to wallets, hence Bitcoin being pseudonymous, not anonymous.

Change addresses are also the reason why deterministic wallets (ie. ones based on a seed) are recommended over non-deterministic ones. With non-deterministic wallets it is recommended to make regular backups of your wallet file whenever you have sent a transaction. I remember Bitcoin Core being one of the wallets that use a non-deterministic address derivation scheme, not sure if that's still the case though.
Many thanks for your explanation. So to surely not get tracked is the best to use a mixer, right?
legendary
Activity: 3122
Merit: 2178
Playgram - The Telegram Casino
Usually what a wallet does is that it sends the part of the transaction you don't send (change) to a different address.

For example.

You have received 1 BTC on address 1. You want to transfer 0.2 BTC to a friend, with address 2. The wallet automatically sends the remaining 0.8 (minus the tx fee obviousely) to address 3 which is controlled by you. You do not need to worry about it. If you look in your wallet, it will tell you that you have the .11 BTC available.
That is completely new to me. Could you maybe explain, if you have the time, what for a wallet sends also the rest to the own address and does not simply keep, where it was?

It's to add both security and privacy. Security in the unlikely event that quantum computing enables deriving the private key from a public key (ie. your address) after it has been used at least once (ie. to send a transaction), privacy to make it harder to track the balances of a specific user. The privacy aspect is only marginal though, since analysis of regular Bitcoin transactions has been proven to be a viable way to link addresses to wallets, hence Bitcoin being pseudonymous, not anonymous.

Change addresses are also the reason why deterministic wallets (ie. ones based on a seed) are recommended over non-deterministic ones. With non-deterministic wallets it is recommended to make regular backups of your wallet file whenever you have sent a transaction. I remember Bitcoin Core being one of the wallets that use a non-deterministic address derivation scheme, not sure if that's still the case though.
hero member
Activity: 909
Merit: 508
Usually what a wallet does is that it sends the part of the transaction you don't send (change) to a different address.

For example.

You have received 1 BTC on address 1. You want to transfer 0.2 BTC to a friend, with address 2. The wallet automatically sends the remaining 0.8 (minus the tx fee obviousely) to address 3 which is controlled by you. You do not need to worry about it. If you look in your wallet, it will tell you that you have the .11 BTC available.
That is completely new to me. Could you maybe explain, if you have the time, what for a wallet sends also the rest to the own address and does not simply keep, where it was?
HCP
legendary
Activity: 2086
Merit: 4361
Also, you should stop using MultiBit... the whole application has been dumped by the developers and now neither MultiBit Classic nor MultiBit HD are supported.

ref: https://multibit.org/


Also, read more about "change" here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Change
newbie
Activity: 2
Merit: 0
Thanks for the speedy response. I was freaking out.
hero member
Activity: 1008
Merit: 515
Usually what a wallet does is that it sends the part of the transaction you don't send (change) to a different address.

For example.

You have received 1 BTC on address 1. You want to transfer 0.2 BTC to a friend, with address 2. The wallet automatically sends the remaining 0.8 (minus the tx fee obviousely) to address 3 which is controlled by you. You do not need to worry about it. If you look in your wallet, it will tell you that you have the .11 BTC available.
newbie
Activity: 2
Merit: 0
So I transferred.03 btc from my multibit wallet to my keep key a few days ago with a fee of 0.0005btc. Blockchain says transaction was about 0.14btc and my keep key only received 0.03btc. There's two addresses on the transaction on tradeblock one that I entered and one that I'm not familiar with. On my transactions page on my multibit wallet it only lists the one to my keep key address. What's the deal? Was I hacked or something? Also, my balance on multibit only reflects the transaction to my keep key and doesn't match tradeblock even after I refreshed it. Are those 0.11btc gone?
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