Bitcoin Forum

Hi, I'm new to this bitcoin stuff(just rolled into it today feeling heavily mentally retarded not knowing what any of the terms meant and how they would be applied). I know that addresses are like a home address or email in the sense that they apply to a Bitcoin wallet, but how do I tell the address of a wallet after it's creation?

A wallet can contain multiple addresses.  Are you using the standard client?  If I believe there is a default address created for you and you have to open the correct tab for this.  You can also create more addresses.  This is useful if you want to receive payments from multiple people and know who sent you the bitcoins.  For example, if I want to get 50 BTC from Bob and 50 BTC from Fred, I give them each different addresses so that Fred can't claim that the coins Bob sent to me are really from him.

A bitcoin address is not like a home address or email address. It is more like a payment code that can be reused.

My bitcoin address is 1DtafKcVqpmVCJADcD4ojQUo317BmqJfsX ;)

For some reason the forum wouldn't let me post earlier...

I was going to say that you can have multiple wallets which in turn have multiple receiving addresses. One tip I've read is that you can use receiving addresses for each transaction (or site) for organization purposes. That way it's easy to keep track of whenever a certain person or site is paying you. Personally I use Multibit. When I first started, I used the official Bitcoin client, but it takes ages to synchronize. I'm not sure why, but Multibit doesn't have a synchronization period, unless it happens in the background. I also use inputs.io, which is nice because it's instant.