Topic: New Bitcoin Address (Read 786 times)

I was in the same situation as you around a year ago - I was very surprised. But sooner I learnt that this is nothing dangerous or bad, but rather something good. Wallets do this to protect your anonymity. It is only in your interest. What happens is that they replace your current Bitcoin address with a new one, but is still connected to your wallet so you do not loose of have to transfer your funds to a new account. The new address helps in security and privacy. A new address is generated from an infinite (i think it is) pool and the old address may be recycled.

Your crypto wallet is like your real life wallet for your € or $.

Your addresses are like the paper money you have, different pieces/adresses with different values (in €/$ or BTC), but every piece/adress is in your hands/in your wallet.

Another good explanation is that your address is like a box made out of glass (public address), everybody can look into it but you need a key (private key) to use what is inside

No, that is incorrect.

Each public key has one private key, and each private key corresponds to only one public key. Each public key corresponds to one address. If you have multiple addresses, you have multiple public keys, and multiple private keys. A wallet is simply a collection of private keys and their corresponding public keys and addresses. To the network and the blockchain, there is no such thing as a wallet.

No. That is not how Bitcoin works.

In Bitcoin, there is no such an object as a "Bitcoin". There isn't anything for you to actually receive. All Bitcoin is is transactions with outputs. Each output specifies that whoever spends it must provide a proof that they are allowed to spend it. For most outputs, that means providing a digital signature which signs the spending transaction and that signature is then included in the spending transaction itself. There are no actual "coin" objects; just outputs.

Addresses are a hash of the public key. So with most outputs, the output specifies that a valid digital signature must be provided and the public key that verifies that signature must hash to the hash specified in the output. The signature can only be created by the private key for the public key that was hashed to become the address.

You can check how much Bitcoin an address can spend. Based on past spends, an address can be linked to other addresses. But other than that, you cannot know what other addresses are in a person's wallet and thus you cannot know his wallet's full balance.

If it is an exchange wallet, then that means that they aren't actually making a Bitcoin transaction. The transaction is an internal off-chain transaction which is just changing records in the exchanges database to update with the new balances for each account. This is 0 fee because there is (basically) 0 cost, although the exchange may charge a fee for doing that because they can make money from doing so.

There is no such thing as a "main address" or a "sub-address". Addresses are not related to each other and can stand separately. A wallet may have a "main address", but that is internal to the wallet only and no one else knows nor cares about it.

No I didn't copy anything except for the quoted part.

Actually you can still use those addresses since I don't said it is not.

And generating might be a suitable term than using. If you had used the word generated rather than using then I would have go against it. And I am not using the word "using" in the post of mine that you'd quoted.

I am saying it is "not for" and I just bolded it. I am talking about what it can provide, the benefits. It is more like security derived from privacy but not actually it provides security. It is privacy that it really provides.  FYI I read that link and you seem to be lacking in comprehension. Security reasons is another thing.

And I am also not saying that HD wallet is the only one who has the ability to do it. I said some.

P.S. The HD wallet that I'm using as an example and in explaining is Mycelium.

P.P.S. Why don't you read it carefully and enhance your comprehension. ^--^

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Yeah. True. But I know a wallet that doesn't have fee when you transfer bitcoins to similar wallet and fees only applied to other wallets though unfortunately it's not HD wallet (it's our leading local exchange wallet here) though it is not or might not be possible to adopt it since it runs a little bit diffeent.

this is incorrect. using a new address for each new transaction has nothing to do with HD.
the wallet can be non-HD and still generate a new address for each usage. and similarly you can still use an HD wallet and reuse the same address over and over.

HD wallets is what you explained (copied from mycelium?) at the end. it simple means deriving the keys from a master key which some wallets show as seed (each of these HD wallets use different method of deriving from the master private key).

and also using a new address each time also has a couple of security reasons in addition to privacy reasons. read the wiki link that was posted above for all the reasons.

Bitcoin Core supports HD format since 0.13 version, the problem is, in order to activate the HD format, you must delete your wallet first (of course be sure to back it up in case it goes wrong) then generate the new wallet, create receiving addresses, then put the old wallet again, boot and send the coins to the receiving addresses of the new HD format wallet... it's annoying because you will waste money in fees sending bitcoins to yourself. Unfortunately I dont see myself doing this anytime soon so im stuck with the old format.

There are some wallet providers that offers this called HD wallets. You can try searching: HD wallet vs Classic wallet. It is not for security as they say but rather for a better privacy that is others could not be able to peek your total balance.

I'll elaborate HD wallets a bit. In HD wallet, every time you spend or receive bitcoins it generates new addesses.


These new addresses are derived from your master private key and all these addresses are linked there. You can back it up by 12 words so you can just restore it in case your device is lost or anything but some do it with more than just 12. An example of HD wallet is Mycelium and also you can generate a single wallet account if you want and also you can import bitcoin addresses or private keys.

So every wallet has one private key. You can generate many (infinite?) addresses from it, right? And this are called public keys. So when you want to receive BTC you give public key to person who will pay you. He get this address and BTC is sent to you.
Now i have some questions, if someone could explain me:
1. Who is actually getting BTC? Public address or private key?
I assume you get it on public key, but you can manipulate that asset only if you have private key of that public key. Is this right? And if yes, could you send BTC between public keys generated from same private key?
2. Are only public keys used in Blockchain to record transactions?
3. You can't really check someones full wallet if he is using more public keys? You only know how much BTC is on one public key not whole private key/wallet?

Very well said, even you do have lots of different address but all are linked on the same address which is your primary and as being said all bitcoins that have been transferred on those sub-addresses will always credit on the main address. This is what I like when you tend to hide your main address on public and they cant really peek you out. I don't have much knowledge what would be the risk on using it on exchanges though.

in the old days you were using a "bad wallet" that you have experienced such behavior. in fact from day one it was always suggested that addresses never be reused. but people confuse a bitcoin address with a bank account and use it in a similar way.
while this is not a serious issue but it is worth knowing it is not recommended to do this. please read this for more information: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address_reuse

what the currently wallets are doing is exactly how they should have always done things.

This is to keep you anonymous, the addresses are all linked. Makes it a little bit easier to separate your transactions, and you can give someone an address that isn't your primary, so they can't peek inside

The balance will all end up in the same wallet and you can reuse the old addresses on clients, BUT BE CAREFUL if you do this on an exchange.

Hello,

In old days I see there is one address for which we used always now wallets refresh the bitcoin address. How this thing works? I mean how the balance is collected at one wallet of different addresses?