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Topic: Is it possible for any Bitcoin Exchange or Any Crypt Expert (Read 81 times)

legendary
Activity: 2534
Merit: 6080
Self-proclaimed Genius
Is it possible for any Bitcoin exchange or Any Crypt Expert [who has expertise in cryto algorithms] to come to know that these 2 addresses are:
For bare addresses, there's no data or tag that'll link them to the HD source.
Those addresses are derived from their respective public key having steps using "one-way" hashing algorithms, namely, SHA256 and RIPEMD160.
The other steps are just for checksum, address type and encoding; there's nothing to link it back even just to the public key, more so, to the extended public key.

Then, for scenarios with spent inputs where the public key is exposed, there's no way to link them to the HD source either.
Those child (public) keys are derived from the extended public/private key using another one-way method "HMAC-SHA512" with different 'index'.
It simply impossible to compute the extended private key from the public key.

Read this for more info about how HD Wallets work and how the child keys are generated: learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/hd-wallets

But that doesn't mean that your privacy is certain.
As mentioned by others, there are methods that can potentially link them together; IMO, number one is using their associated UTXOs together in a single transaction.
Second is by connecting to a public server that's "investigating" Electrum users. (not all of them does but consider your privacy compromised by using public servers)
legendary
Activity: 2268
Merit: 18711
If you are using Electrum out of the box and connecting to third party servers, then yes, these servers will be able to link these addresses together.

As Electurm is a light wallet, it connects to third party servers and nodes to download the transaction data and address history relevant to your addresses. It will query all the addresses in your wallet at once, so whichever servers or nodes it queries this with will know that all those addresses are linked. If you want to avoid this, then you need to run your own node and your own Electrum server.

If you do run your own node node and server, then as OmegaStarScream says, the only way to link addresses as belonging to the same user/seed/wallet would be if you use them together in the same transaction (or you accidentally leak this information).
staff
Activity: 3500
Merit: 6152
No, it's impossible for them to know that they were created from the same wallet/by the same person unless you spend these funds.

So if you were to receive 0.5 BTC to address A, and another 0.5 BTC to address B and then you decide to send 1 BTC to someone else, for example, both addresses will show in block explorers.
newbie
Activity: 4
Merit: 0
Hello Everyone,

Lets say I've a wallet named: Wallet_1
and its has a SEED phrase:
ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE

and when I clicked on Receive Tab, Electrum created an address for me:

bc1jsdklfjsufojfkjlksjfousdfjlkjsdofuldja1
I received some bitcoins on this address.


Now on the second day I again clicked on Receive Tab and Electrum created another [New] bitcoin address for me:
bc1ueioutoiueo3tuo9hmcnanvoiroujjljslfjjk2

which I gave it to someone to send me bitcoins.

Is it possible for any Bitcoin exchange or Any Crypt Expert [who has expertise in cryto algorithms] to come to know that these 2 addresses are:

Created from Same wallet
or
Created from Same SEED phrase [even though that Exchange or that crypto expert don't come to what the seed phrase is but can they guess it?]
or
Created by same person

Is there any such thing reverse engineering or any other similar term or technology in crypto to come to know that both Bitcoin addressed are created by same wallet?

Thank you (in advance) for answering 😀
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