Bitcoin Forum

Hi everyone,

I think there is some issue with blockchain.info.

I made couple of transactions to SatoshiDice but only 2 of them are visible on the blockchain.

Wallet:

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2dqqaf9&s=5 (http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2dqqaf9&s=5)
http://tinypic.com/r/w6xwk6/5 (http://tinypic.com/r/w6xwk6/5)

Blockchain:

https://blockchain.info/address/18XcsA9AQQRWaFonAWECg6W1zZsmgYjioY

I have a total of 41 transactions but in blockchain shows only 3 and also the balance is wrong.

The transactions are fully approved already for 2 days.

Can someone explain me why this happens?

Thanks

You seem to be confusing addresses with wallets. Wallets contain many addresses. The blockchain link you posted is for only one address, not the entire wallet.

My wallet only has 1 address

Look again at all the addresses you received coins in on the Transactions tab of the QT client.

I see there some other address yes, with the type "Received with"

for example

13F9yzbH3MPPakw92aRSG9dB47b8Me6bdp
1GaiFTHerc5c9PzPcfvPp4BCbBHsWimJ3f
etc.

But... what are these addresses? I don't own them, I just have this wallet with 1 address, something I'm missing here?

They're change addresses. Its part of how the protocol works.

They confuse everyone. :) Most clients will show you those addresses in the address book. Actually, I think QT might be the only client which doesn't.

So you mean this is a limitation of the QT wallet, and as far as I understand then, addresses were created without my consent? Why is this?

Whenever you spend bitcoins, you need to spend the ENTIRE transaction you got.  Since you usually only want to send a small portion of them, you send them two places, one to the merchant, and the rest comes back to you as change.  Think of it as giving a cashier a $20 bill and then having him give you $12.58 change back.  The change comes back to a new address to avoid address reuse and to make it harder to track people.

So but every time I make a transaction and there is a charge back my previous wallet backup is obsolete am I right? Because the old wallet didn't have these new addresses

Your qt wallet has a pool of 100 addresses. So yes, you need to backup again after every 100 transactions. Or increase the keypool size, which is something I haven't managed to do myself...

Alternately, may want to consider software which has a deterministic wallet (addresses are all predetermined from one seed), so you'd only need one backup.

So means that the private key of my wallet can generate multiple addresses and any of them can be used for the wallet to receive money. did I understand correctly?

Keys are generated in pairs. When you first open your qt wallet, 100 keypairs are generated. These are then used when you tell the client to create a new receiving address, or when you make a transaction and a change address is needed.

EDIT for clarity: your wallet holds multiple private keys each with a corresponding public key.

EDIT (again): Yeah sorry you understood correctly, I missed the bit from Kluge

This would be much easier.

Yes, all addresses are predetermined from some seed data in the privkey. This would mean you only need to back up the wallet once, and you would still be able to generate all the addresses no matter how many you made.

I know Electrum and Armory both use deterministic wallets, but unsure about others. I read QT is supposed to switch over to deterministic wallets... dunno about progress on that, though.

Ok I think I got it.

Thank you all for the clarifications!