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Topic: Pros and cons of using new Bitcoin addresses for each transaction? - page 3. (Read 48694 times)

hero member
Activity: 1092
Merit: 523
pros : More anonymous and hard to detected
cons : Hard to remember the last addresses after transaction, and hard to prove your own wallet
well that is only thing that i can think

What does this mean that it is hard to prove your own wallet and why is it important to remember the last addresses after a transaction? thanks in advance  Smiley
mean hard to prove that every transaction the address will change
the thing remember the last address is to prove your own wallet sir, because every transaction address changed and we must give new address to do some transaction
You don’t need to use a new address every time, that’s not how it works. You can still use the very first address you got and use it to get funds. But using different address every time makes it harder for hackers to get any possible information about you from anywhere they are following you. There is no cons in using multiple address other than getting messy with more addresses.
member
Activity: 200
Merit: 10
Can someone please give me a list of the pros and cons of using new Bitcoin addresses for each transaction? It seems very inconvenient to use a new address each time.
I think it helps with the security a lot. The chances of someone being able to use one of your previous address to get bitcoin is already impossible. The cons are that you constantly have to check your site if you want to know your current address, even though the previous is still working.
newbie
Activity: 2
Merit: 0
Thank you all for the great answers, very interesting.  Smiley Is there any suggestions on what may be an all time favorite for some of the Old'Timers here to set up an account & or wallet ?  Smiley
sr. member
Activity: 350
Merit: 250
Shit, did I leave the stove on?
I prefer to have a designated address for each website I am dealing with listed under labels and such so I don't need to waste time figuring out which address is for which website. Having a different address for each TX sometimes gets messy if you want to keep track of your bitcoin finances but of course that improves your privacy.
full member
Activity: 224
Merit: 100
Defender of Bitcoin
I love using new addresses for each transaction because it's harder for people to trace back to your main wallet with your stash.
newbie
Activity: 1
Merit: 0
So wonderful about Bitcoins.
legendary
Activity: 1708
Merit: 1007
The addresses are valid forever unless you lose your wallet.
oh, didn't know that.
thanks for the info!
How could a "Legedary" don't know about this???

Notice when he posted that. He wasn't legendary then.
sr. member
Activity: 406
Merit: 250
i dont think that there are any pros, the only con that will make you have hard time with it is taht you will have bunch of addresses and wouldnt know which one to use when you will need it
hero member
Activity: 756
Merit: 500
pros : More anonymous and hard to detected
cons : Hard to remember the last addresses after transaction, and hard to prove your own wallet
well that is only thing that i can think

What does this mean that it is hard to prove your own wallet and why is it important to remember the last addresses after a transaction? thanks in advance  Smiley
mean hard to prove that every transaction the address will change
the thing remember the last address is to prove your own wallet sir, because every transaction address changed and we must give new address to do some transaction
legendary
Activity: 1526
Merit: 1179
Pro :
I use a new address for every transaction - privacy, that is the sole reason for me.

Con :
I once forgot to give my new address to the person that I quite often do business with and he sent the coins to one of my older wallets. Lucky enough it was a very small amount.
legendary
Activity: 1120
Merit: 1000
For me :

Pros :

-anonymity. That's the only one I find.


Cons :

-messy. This will be a big mess in your transaction history. This can also don't help your customers (in my case, as a loan provider, I can no more contact my "clients". Having the same address for all the transactions is better for them, because it's in my OP, so people can find it even without an account).

-fees. If your bitcoins have to be sent from different addresses it will be more expensive.
hero member
Activity: 952
Merit: 503
The addresses are valid forever unless you lose your wallet.
oh, didn't know that.
thanks for the info!
How could a "Legedary" don't know about this???
legendary
Activity: 2450
Merit: 1047
thecryptocurrency.directory
This is one of best feature of bitcoin you create as many address as you want,unlike the other payment processor where you need to confirm your email and identification before you can use a new payment email/wallet,I don't think there are disadvantages using multiple address it's just that you will be confused on where did you use one particular address
legendary
Activity: 1652
Merit: 1057
Using new bitcoin address for new transactions is the idea of Satoshi. He mined all the blocks to different addresses.

Using same address will mess up you, with more transactions.
Using different addresses, again mess up with managing more addresses.

Great! It is a good thing for using different addresses for different specific purposes. So we can easily know about the money transacted to our account. Different addresses are specialized for increasing the security of our funds. Do you think any problem will occur by using same address?
hero member
Activity: 756
Merit: 500
pros : More anonymous and hard to detected
cons : Hard to remember the last addresses after transaction, and hard to prove your own wallet
well that is only thing that i can think

What does this mean that it is hard to prove your own wallet and why is it important to remember the last addresses after a transaction? thanks in advance  Smiley
legendary
Activity: 3598
Merit: 2384
Viva Ut Vivas
So if you're not doing anything wrong why are people so worried about being anonymous?  i guess i've never worried about it yet. Why is it such a major part of bitcoin?  just curious.

The jews were doing nothing wrong in 1930s Germany.
legendary
Activity: 1596
Merit: 1081
I hope that miners some day will reward transactions that allow significant pruning aka merge many addresses. Why should I pay for a transaction of 50kB if after this transaction the blockchain shrinks by 49kB?

Yes, there are ongoing discussions about choosing metrics which encourage shrinking the UTXO (unspent output) set.

legendary
Activity: 980
Merit: 1004
Firstbits: Compromised. Thanks, Android!
So if you're not doing anything wrong why are people so worried about being anonymous?  i guess i've never worried about it yet. Why is it such a major part of bitcoin?  just curious.

Good question. Don't think of it as people worrying about being anonymous, but rather people just wanting the ability to maintain some privacy if they so choose.

Remember, Bitcoin is money. And the way the system currently works, all transactions are publicly viewable. Ask yourself, if every transaction everyone at your bank ever made with anyone else was viewable by anyone with a few clicks, wouldn't you be a bit more concerned about your privacy, possibly even total anonymity?

Also keep in mind, it doesn't have to be total anonymity. I have public addresses so people can identify spends from me, and so anyone wanting to send me money for whatever reason (debt, gift, purchase, etc.) has at least one reasonably-easy-to-find address they can send it to. And I use BitcoinSpinner, an Android app that only gives you one address that gets constantly reused. But I also have other addresses and wallets that I maintain various degrees of privacy with, for various reasons. Having that be easy to do is always a plus, no matter who you are, or how innocuous your transactions.
legendary
Activity: 1862
Merit: 1105
WalletScrutiny.com


Necroposting, yeah!!!! … cause it's cool to resurrect 2 years old threads!!!!

How difficult would to associate one address with your other addresses? What precautions should be taken to protect against this?

It's not totally easy, but it's possible.  For example, a node could listen on the network and see that you are using the same IP when sending from two of your different addresses, and thus associate those addresses.  To prevent this, you should mask your IP using Tor or similar.

There's also a more fundamental risk in that the chain of ownership of each bitcoin is public knowledge.  So, if you, say, purchased the bitcoin from an exchange and gave your name during that, then the exchange can associate your name with that bitcoin.  There's a really really nice post by Theymos on that here, and the following thread proposes some great solutions (mainly, a "scrambler"):

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/anonymity-241

Even besides these two things, there are some other things that need to be handled.  For example, you should find a way to encrypt your traffic so your ISP can't read your addresses.  Also, you should send out identical traffic regularly, so that your ISP cant associate your addresses using timing alone.

If all of these things are accounted for, I believe you are very close to 100% safe from technical address association.

Wallet boundaries are normally not identified by spying on the IP used (which might help but is not necessary) but by the fact that almost always the input of transactions does not fit exactly with the output which is why more than one input is used. Each time more than one input is used, these inputs are guaranteed to belong to the same wallet.

How fast does wallet.dat size grow with creating new addresses? It would be nice feature to physically remove entries from it if I'm pretty sure no one will send coins to that particular address. For example, if would be useful for shops which create one-time addresses to recieve payments. If it's used once it's not needed anymore so the shop engine sends coins from that address to a certain fixed address and removes keys for that temporary one. It will prevent wallet.dat from growing indefinitely. Also note that invisible address is created each time one sends the sum which isn't equal to the sum of a particular address or sum of several addresses so it's divided by two parts: one goes to the recipient and the other goes to your just transparently generated invisible address (you don't see it in your address book but it's in your wallet.dat). If you often send money you'd already have lots of such addresses and some empty ones. AFAIK no automatic garbage collection is done for now and it's right — there is no way to know which address is temporary and which is constant. Another proposal is to make a special «temporary address» flag which may be set on any of your addresses either on its creation or anytime later. Bitcoin checks this flag on transaction and if this (these) address(es) become empty AND the transaction was confirmed by the network (6 confirmations) then it's removed from the wallet. Hence this flag should be set for all «change» (invisible) addresses because they can't be used to receive payments (they aren't displayed anywhere).
In bitcoin, 2 things that take disk space do grow. Wallet and blockchain. Deterministic wallets can avoid the former and pruning can avoid the latter.
I hope that miners some day will reward transactions that allow significant pruning aka merge many addresses. Why should I pay for a transaction of 50kB if after this transaction the blockchain shrinks by 49kB?
newbie
Activity: 9
Merit: 0
Pros:
  • Secure
  • Higher Anonymity
Cons:
  • Can be time consuming

Several of my clients prefer that I use a new address per transaction. It can be a little more time consuming, but it does improve anonymity.
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