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Topic: Is there a chance you will know if one address came from the same seed owner? (Read 142 times)

legendary
Activity: 2702
Merit: 4002
I was curious about for example I create an Electrum wallet and I can generate a lot of wallets through it and every time I am going to receive Bitcoin I always give different Bitcoin address would they be able to determine that the owner of those addresses are the same or not?
The more technical expertise you have, the more difficult it will be to track your coins and know which addresses are used, but this does not prevent you can actually be tracked, do not forget that Bitcoin is not anonymous and was not designed to be 100% anonymous.

bitcoin Block Explorer sites can track your IP address, some servers in your wallet can get some data, and analysis sites can link your addresses.
legendary
Activity: 1512
Merit: 7340
Farewell, Leo
I was curious about for example I create an Electrum wallet and I can generate a lot of wallets through it and every time I am going to receive Bitcoin I always give different Bitcoin address would they be able to determine that the owner of those addresses are the same or not?
If you understand how seed works, you'll see why they can't determine such thing.

Visit iancoleman.io, a site in which you can see the procedure of way we end up to addresses from a seed. (At least on a simple level)

Once you generate a seed, which is the entropy of a very long number, you'll have access to the derivation paths of it. What are those? Paths in which after some hash functions you get your addresses. Example:

Code:
m/44h/0h/0h/0/0: 1AZnveys2k5taGCCF743RtrWGwc58UMeq
m/44h/0h/0h/0/1: 1AMYJTJyV4o1hwNACJtfdXBW6BiD1f5FXb
m/44h/0h/0h/0/2: 1NPFFtSiFRatoeUf35rwYb8j8C1u7sVhGa
m/44h/0h/0h/0/3: 1L44VTYEzWesp8cxnXcPGbUzuwTYoSW9at
m/44h/0h/0h/0/4: 1FK85vpZavzZu6oBCvBcmD4FWXQT5fVYRu

The last number of the derivation path is called index and can be whatever integer you want. Electrum generates the first 15 indexes of the path by default (I think). To answer your question, these addresses are not somehow connected unless someone has the seed or masterkey to prove it. Since a character of the path changes it means that the hash functions will generate completely different results. ~Long live anonymity~

(Check the links, they're pretty useful.)
legendary
Activity: 1512
Merit: 4795
Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
witcher_sense has commented the most information needed accurately, but in addition, while using wallet, your IP address can be used to track your wallet, this can come from governments, that is why I will not recommend VPNs that keep your logs and also IP providers, they can easily give your information to governments to know everything about your wallet. That is why it is good to use Tor to access your wallet.

Also, about what witcher_sense commented, while sending transactions, many people still make transactions in a way they can later be tracked, also know about dust attack that attackers uses to track a wallet, all these can still lead to many addresses to be linked to a single wallet.

There are sometimes people will not have options than to make use of crypto mixer or coinjoin means to gain back their privacy.
hero member
Activity: 2702
Merit: 716
Nothing lasts forever
I was curious about for example I create an Electrum wallet and I can generate a lot of wallets through it and every time I am going to receive Bitcoin I always give different Bitcoin address would they be able to determine that the owner of those addresses are the same or not?
Addresses per se don't contain any information about the wallet you use, they just random numbers. So, it is not possible to figure out whether or not addresses belong to the same wallet. However, transactions you make may reveal that some addresses belong to you. For example, if you combine UTXO of different addresses, it will tell to an attacker that both addresses are likely yours and belong to the same wallet. If you spend your UTXO not entirely, you will send a change to your another address and thus reveal that both are yours.
That's pretty much the only way I know to find if the addresses belong to the same seed.

To make it easier to understand for newbies.

UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) are the unspent amount in your wallet. Whenever you make a transaction the unspent outputs are taken as input for the transaction.
The balance amount which is left over after doing a transaction is known as 'change output' and is returned back to the owner as an unspent output. Every wallet has few or many unspent transactions.
So whenever multiple unspent outputs are used in a single transaction an observer can find out that these unspent outputs belong to the same owner since they are combined to make that particular transaction.

Example :
If the wallet has 3 unspent outputs

Address: aaaaaaaaaaaaa      amount : 0.01 btc
Address: bbbbbbbbbbbbb      amount : 0.005 btc
Address: cccccccccccccc      amount : 0.002 btc

Total wallet balance : 0.017 btc

If you make a transaction of 0.014 btc then the below unpsent outputs will be consumed

Address: aaaaaaaaaaaaa      amount : 0.01 btc
Address: bbbbbbbbbbbbb      amount : 0.005 btc

Hence a person can identify that both of these addresses belong to the same person/wallet
legendary
Activity: 2450
Merit: 4415
🔐BitcoinMessage.Tools🔑
I was curious about for example I create an Electrum wallet and I can generate a lot of wallets through it and every time I am going to receive Bitcoin I always give different Bitcoin address would they be able to determine that the owner of those addresses are the same or not?
Addresses per se don't contain any information about the wallet you use, they just random numbers. So, it is not possible to figure out whether or not addresses belong to the same wallet. However, transactions you make may reveal that some addresses belong to you. For example, if you combine UTXO of different addresses, it will tell to an attacker that both addresses are likely yours and belong to the same wallet. If you spend your UTXO not entirely, you will send a change to your another address and thus reveal that both are yours.
jr. member
Activity: 307
Merit: 1
I was curious about for example I create an Electrum wallet and I can generate a lot of wallets through it and every time I am going to receive Bitcoin I always give different Bitcoin address would they be able to determine that the owner of those addresses are the same or not?
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