Bitcoin Forum

Is there any way to track where I got some BTC from?  I checked my wallet this evening, and I received .03 BTC to an address that I haven't used before and haven't given out to anyone.  I know more addresses are generated when you send coins to someone else, so I understand where the address could have come from.  I'm assuming the new address was generated when I sent some bitcoins to my Android wallet.  But why would I receive BTC to this address?

You got them from me by mistake! Please give them back! j/k

Look at where it came from in block explorer and see if that's an address in your wallet too?  I haven't seen that, so I'm not sure whether or not it's standard for partial transactions in some scenario (although I've read that people do it on purpose to make it more difficult to track), but if they're from you to you, then that explains it.  If it's .03 more BTC than you should have, then that's interesting, but I doubt it's a glitch in the bitcoin protocol.  More likely someone else accidentally sent to the wrong address or you managed to hit that one in (some ridiculously large number) chance of generating the same address someone else had already generated, inheriting their bitcoins tied to that address until such a time that one of you spends them (and the other posts about .03 BTC missing).  I don't fully comprehend all of this yet, though; I'm not sure whether those supposively unique practically impossible to stumble across key combinations are for wallets or addresses.  If they are for wallets, then my second suggestion is 100% wrong.  I'm guessing they are for addresess, though, since your wallet shouldn't be stored on the net work per se.  I was actually going to post a question about the possibility of someone else generating the same address that you are using for your "savings" after following the securing your wallet instructions on the wiki, but I stumbled across a thread that made it seem pretty unlikely (I thought of the possibility because I have seen so many newsgroup headers collide, but I don't think they have near as many random possibilities as wallet addresses).

Let's say you only got one deposit of 1 BTC. Now let's pretend you want to send 0.5. When you send it you can't send just part so you send the whole 1 Bitcoin as the input. Two addresses will get the output. The person you are sending the 0.5 to and the other 0.5 will come back to you at a different address. This would be your "change".

Okay, I understand what you are saying about the change and why it generates another address, but that should happen more or less at the same time, right?

My wallet shows -0.50 sent to my Android wallet on 7/11 (this is indeed the amount I sent). On 7/13 I'm receiving a deposit of +0.03 to a receiving address I've never used before, and to my knowledge, never given out before.

Here's the short link http://blockexplorer.com/a/7AJnb1rfHc (http://blockexplorer.com/a/7AJnb1rfHc)

Are you the one that sent:
0.05071192  to 1AduGaXGn1GybskUQ5g4KsZnQUh5UB8Zg7

No, I only ever sent 0.50 bitcoin to my Android wallet.