Topic: Financial tracking app asking for BTC address (Read 323 times)

Like I mentioned earlier, it would help a lot if you took some time to learn a thing or two about hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallets. The term "hierarchical" refers to the tree-like structure of the keys, where each key is derived from its parent key in a predictable and repeatable manner. Basically, the seed phrase is used to create a master private key, which is then used to derive child keys.


Source: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawiki

Does a wallet have a 'main address'??

It depends on the specific wallet you are using. The primary purpose of a seed phrase is to act as a backup and recovery mechanism for your digital wallet.

In general, most wallets will prompt you to enter a seed phrase during the initial setup process. In some cases, when you reinstall or switch to a new device, you may need to choose to restore your existing wallet instead of creating a new one. During the restoration process, you will typically be prompted to enter your seed phrase, which will allow you to regain access to your existing wallet and funds.

Thanks for the info and suggestion, I'm trying to wrap my head around all of this.

Is is possible to set the seed-phrase manually? I can't remember being prompted to enter one when setting up the wallet

What worries me is that you don't know the difference between the seed phrase and the password (passphrase). No, they are not the same! The passphrase (AKA password) in Bitcoin core is used to encrypt the private keys in the wallet data file, while the seed phrase is used to generate the private keys themselves. So while both the passphrase and the seed phrase are important for securing your Bitcoin, they serve different purposes.


Yes, it is possible. Although using a new address for each transaction is a good privacy practice, it's still possible for someone to link those transactions together and determine that they all came from the same wallet. There are some block explorers, like for example WalletExplorer.com, that can use advanced algorithms to analyze blockchain transactions and attempt to link them together.


How will you delete an address from your bitcoin core wallet?
It seems like there might be some confusion here. Sharing a single address does not give anyone an insight into your entire wallet balance, but it is still possible for them to track down your other addresses through the use of blockchain analytics. Sharing the master public key of your wallet, on the other hand, is a completely different story.

(By the way, it could be helpful for you to learn the ins and outs of key and address generation in hierarchical deterministic wallets.)

Well, it should not be a problem... if you do not use that address for everything you do. People can only get a full picture of your spending habits and the size of your wealth, if that address are linked to your other coins. I use several different addresses for all the different things I do.. and they are never linked, so nobody can track everything I do and what I own. 

Ps.... You have a spelling mistake in your Subject.... ===> "Finantial tracking app asking for BTC address" - It should be financial. 

we still don’t know which application are you talking about?  You have not mentioned any application name or link here, from where we can verify the authenticity of the application. But before downloading any app make sure that app is official and authentic.

if you just share your public key then it will not any problem. but keep secret your private key or security phrase. Be careful while installing any application that it is official.  Otherwise hackers can hack your device through that application and you can lose important data or your crypto.

That's great for increasing your privacy, but someone can also track it if they know your main address.
If you really care about privacy, then try obfuscating your transactions by using a mixer. I think it's a solution to increase your privacy.

But for your main question in the OP, you can safely share your public address ^{[except you don't want anyone to know how much budget you have in your wallet].} Protect your financial privacy, it is better for your security and convenience.

OP, You can learn how you protect your privacy here with bitcoin: Protect your privacy

Its nothing like that. Once you share your public address to anyone or lets say anyone who has your public address
 will be able to see your balance in the address.
Bitcoin has a public ledger which means all the transactions made on bitcoin blockchain are publicly known for everyone to verify.
You can read more about it in the book called mastering bitcoin.

No there is no problem at all. You can easily use your Bitcoin address to track your portfolio through financial tracking app. But always keep remember to make secure you private keys.

I don't think we should realistically consider this a security risk. We're long before elliptic curve cryptography becomes weak. Revealing your public key should be no concern for 2023. If it ever becomes even slightly practically possible, we'll have known about it before.

Okay, but I don't see how this is relevant with the discussion, because we were talking about privacy concerns.

I just mean the difference between public key and public address. Public address is the hashed public key ya know. Public keys were given in the original bitcoin transaction type but all newer transaction types have only used public addresses for the receiving address rather than public keys. From what I've read about quantum computing, eventually when quantum computing is mature it would be able to crack a private key from a pubic key, but not from a bitcoin address (the hash of the public key). So public key just exposes more information that will in the future become a threat. You only expose your public key to the blockchain when you send a transaction, which as I understand it is why bitcoin addresses are supposed to be one-time-use only, because once you've sent a transaction your public key is on the blockchain so you ideally for privacy you don't want to use it again, though I don't think it matters for security until quantum computing becomes a thing. I guess the idea is just that you never want to expose more information than is necessary, and a public key is closer to a private key so it is exposing more information than a public address.

Which address are you talking about like public one, if yes than i think there is no big deal in sharing your address to third party app. because anyone can see you public address along with the transactions that you will perform using that same address. So i think these are most basic ingredients that your selected financial tracking app needed to make a quick report of your transactional data. Well, if you are like signing your wallet (btc wallet) with that app that i do not recommend it if you just have to give your public address than i say there is no bad in this.

If you provide more details like the name of your financial tracking app so maybe i can look into it and could suggest you with facts and figures. That would be of great use for you to make decisions.
 Well how this thing work. Like if you have wallet "X"  having some btc and you want to track them and you create Wallet "Y" having no btc so what good in there, tracking new wallet "Y". i did not catch your logic here. will you send your some btc from X to Y or what. Well, from all of your queries i can say. if you are worried about getting hacked through that app then you should check the age first and level of trust community have on it. secondly, your anonymity could be exposes if you attach your wallet with it. well if you do not care about security and anoynmity than i must say well give it a try and share your experience with us. (it's joke do not take it seriously)

If you're bored to update the numbers, then you can do it in your way. Just acknowledge that you're likely sacrificing most of your privacy for this little convenience.

What difference would it make if you gave them your public key? Did you perhaps mean master public key?

You only compromise your privacy because you are giving your Bitcoin address to a company and who knows they may sell their data or share it with the government or hackers may hack them to see everyone's address. It doesn't pose a risk to your Bitcoin because you're just giving them the public address, not the public key or the private key, but it is a privacy issue so just depends on whether you care about others knowing your address and your bitcoin holdings.

I would ask does your Bitcoin in the address(es) change often? Are you DCAing and the amount of Bitcoin is changing regularly? If it is then I guess I could see you using this app if you want to regularly check your money in Bitcoin. But if your amount of Bitcoin is not changing often, or if you just occasionally want to check how much money you have, you can just go to a block explorer and type in your address. This would just take a few seconds and barely longer than opening up an app that shows your net worth. Only reason to use the app you are talking about would be if you just really really want to track your net worth over time and watch it go up and down all together with Bitcoin included in whatever other finances you have.

Good point. Do you know what spreadsheets are known for being private and secure?

Where is my public key located? Is this a file? (this app only asks for the address)


This worries me. Is the seed phrase the same thing as the password used to encrypt my wallet in btc core?


My initial thought was purely for convenience - to have the sum total of all my assets automatically updated, and in one place. However, I like this philosophy better.


If I make a new address per transaction, is it possible for someone to see that all these transactions came from the same wallet?


If I delete an address from bitcoin core that I've previously shared with someone, does this mean that this person can no longer see my wallet balance?

There's no risk of sharing publick address to anyone. It is meant to be shared.
But you must know that everyone who knows your public address will be able to see how much BTC you hold.
So when you share your public address to this app, you are basically giving it the right to see how much balance you hold.
Also, this app will be able to track you using this address and identify you as the owner of this address.
This decreases your anonymity. You can go ahead if you don't really care about privacy that much.

Actually it's not even the public key that they get since addresses are one-way hashes of them - there's no way to get back even the public key.

It should be straightforward to use the blockchain.com API or some other API to periodically update your address balance for you, without having to register. In fact, there's nothing to register for in the first place.

I see similar tracking bitcoin apps, it's either you

1. just type your bitcoin address and it will fetch how much bitcoin it had
2. create a account on that app, and save your bitcoin address

So there is more danger on option 2 specially privacy as others pointed out. I mean I have no idea why someone will put their addresses on that app in the first place You can just used the old and reliable,

https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/[insert your bitcoin address here].

I am on the very edge.  No idea if I think it is safe or not.  If you are using a Financial Tracking app, I assume you already do not care about your Privacy in which case it probably does not matter if you share this information with them.  Want my opinion?  I would never do this because I value my Privacy.

After all, it is about you and what you want.  Do you trust this Financial Tracking app?  Do you trust the developers?  The owners?  If you hand them this information, chances are they will sell it away to some body else.  Do you mind that, or do you just not care.  If you care, do not hand them this information.

You likely already gave a lot of people the information that you own this amount of Bitcoin.  By using a Bitcoin Explorer to check your Address balance, you are doing just this.  You are giving them the information that the balance of that Address is in your interest.  If you search it once, they may not link it to you.  But if you specifically search your own TXIDs, Addresses et cetera multiple times, they will link it to you with great accuracy.

The whole thing you are asking is surrounded by a question.  Do you care about your Privacy?

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

Other than privacy concerns, there are no drawbacks to entering your address there, but is it really necessary? With an explorer, you can bookmark your address and check it at any moment. Just wondering why using an app is required for tracking your assets. But, until you tainted your seed/private keys, this is not dangerous. Without private keys or a seed phrase, funds from your address cannot be tampered.

All you need to know when you are in the crypto space and have to give away some random codes. 

I have been there actually when I started very fresh in the crypto. When I first generated my address I did not even think about public and private addresses from bitcoin org website. I was so excited about it that I sent screenshot to my friends who introduced myself to the bitcoin universe. Believe me they had greatest laugh on that day in WhatsApp group.

Why would not they? I had laughable mistake but they soon taught me what went wrong. Since then I am not even taking screenshots of my addresses which is again malpractice in the crypto game.

Better learn basics before using them. As stated here it wont be problem to share your public address.

It is important to ensure that the app is trustworthy and secure before providing the Bitcoin address.  Typically, financial tracking apps don't ask for the private keys of the Bitcoin wallet, just the public address.

Instead, if it were to request the private key or the seed then it is not an app to be trusted.

If want nothing to worry about, it's best not to share a BTC address at all.

Even if it's just a BTC address it can trace your accounts from which exchanges you have been by tracing the origin of your coins. It depends on where you are from also. If you are from a country where the government is cracking taxes on crypto then I guess you might just give it so they know you are paying.

The first question why do you need additional software for something that can be done with software that initially generated your address? Your wallet, for example, can track your balance and show it in whatever form you wish. If you are also a mobile user who value privacy and self-sovereignity in transactions, you can download Bluewallet which offers some advanced functionality: you can connect your mobile to the Bitcoin Core full node you are running on your computer. Check this small guide, it may give you some food for thought: https://bitcoiner.guide/blue/

You should avoid services asking you to whitelist your address via providing personal information.

If you want to, you can probably manually enter the amount of your cryptocurrency holdings (like BTC) in some applications to achieve the same effect as using an automatic API or integration. The specific application you're using will determine whether or not this is possible, but it's definitely worth exploring as an option.


When it comes to the security of your crypto assets, you don't need to worry. However, when it comes to privacy, it's important to be aware that there are some potential risks to consider.


It's entirely up to you and your personal preferences. As I mentioned previously, one option to consider is manually entering your amounts without providing too much of your personal information to the app.

I'm sorry, but am I the only one who recognizes danger beyond handing over private keys? If an app asks you to write a private key, it's a scam. Period. That should be taken for granted. But that doesn't mean you should hand over your addresses to any stranger, just because he can't take your money.

I'd neither trust a closed-source (I presume) app that requests my Bitcoin activity for obvious reasons: privacy violation. Why would an app need my addresses to determine my portfolio? Can't I just type that myself, without sharing any addresses?

The application will only see the address you input and cannot steal your Bitcoin as long as you are giving it the public address and not the private key make sure that you understand which one is which other wise you could make a mistake and lose all your money. If you care about privacy I recommend not using a tracking app and just use a blockchain explorer and add the total amount of btc in your address to your total fiat money and you should have the same result without giving someone your address which they could use to track every transaction you make and the amount of money you own.

What are you doing that for? Is there any other purpose besides tracking your net worth? If you just keep BTC in your wallet, you can immediately see how much your wealth is in FIAT, so you don't need to use a financial tracking application, especially if it's issued by someone else. Also, on bitcoin core, you can see how much BTC and money you have.

It's better for you to see the total/transactions in your wallet than to use the application. But it's up to you, and you have to find out the risks for yourself.

Before I make any comment, I will ask you this, have you been able to check the reviews on the app on trustpilot to know peoples view and experience about the app because that would give you a little hint on the app reliability. The idea of tracking your assets is not bad but the fact that the wallet would expose your networth us the problem. Hackers if I am not mistaken uses these app to gain access to people's funds, stealing of information linking your wallet to steal your assets. I suggest you give this a rethink because apps are softwares designed for some specific purpose and here you are thinking of downloading the assets tracking app without any knowledge of the developer. What if the app is designed with some malware to stealing or exposing your information to hackers, do you not think you have granted them access to your assets?

How sure are you with the app reliability on trust, going by tracking your financial flow isn't a bad idea but you must be careful not to ket that be a means to track you on phishing attack through malicious apps such as this, your keys or details may be leaked, possible attack can set in, but this should even be something you can take time to run by yourself without seeking the help of a notifying app to engage such track for you, always think about the risk that could be involved before concluding on using any.

Do you have to include all of your addresses in the app?

Well if you don't like anyone to see your holdings then why used that financial app? Although bitcoin addresses doesn't have names, who knows, maybe someone is going to track you down and try to hack you.

Privacy centric individual uses or create new address for every transaction as far as I know. So if you want to protect yourself, much better to create a new address, in my opinion.

As long as its only a public key you should be safe. (not your private key or seed phrase). The only thing you should be worried is the fact that if these data will be compromised, hackers knows exacly how much money you have and where it is. If you used your email to register, the same email you used somwhere else with your personal data (like phone number, name, surname, address - like when you buy in online store) its possible it was already compromised and traded in big leaked files on darknet. They can now attach more sensitive data (your net worth) to old packages and continue to trade it on the darknet. Guess who will be intterested in buying such database (mr XX yy, home address zzzz, net worth >...... ).

The reason concerned when you share your public key to the application is your privacy would be harmed. The application might collected and share the personal information they get from you e.g. email address, password, IP address, your Bitcoin balance etc, they could even sell it without your knowing. It's better if you setup your own financial tracking by using trusted and open source spreadsheet.

It won't be a problem since you share only the public key/bitcoin address to track your net worth.

If you are concerned about your wallet privacy then you shouldn't share it with unknown apps and yes it can only watch your transaction and balances and you don't need to create a new BTC address.

I've got a financial tracking app that can keep track of my net worth. I can add a bitcoin address and it will keep track of my BTC, and include it in the total.

Do I have any reason to be concerned about giving this app my bitcoin address? Will it only be able to view my wallet total/transactions?

Should I create a new address for this purpose?

I use bitcoin core