Bitcoin Forum

Super newbie here.
When I download electrum and start it, it creates a wallet for me.
In the "receive" tab I see a collapsible tree where the root is labeled "Main Account" and underneath it are five addresses.

I can label each address. And I was thinking of a scheme like this:

address1 "Mining account" (Will supply this address to my mining pool where asked to supply an address for collecting payment.)
address2 "Public account"  (Will transfer funds here when I want to spend them)
address3 "Private account" (I know this cannot truly be "private" but I would transfer any funds received in either of the other two addresses to this address.)

However the electrum doc states
"New addresses are generated automatically when your receiving addresses are used"

How does this work then? For instance I see forum sigs which include BTC addresses for donations or whatever. These people cannot possibly be changing their forum sig every time they receive a payment.

How "temporary" are these addresses? And because of this, would the above scheme be better off using different wallets rather than different addresses within the wallets?

The electrum doc mentions:
- Seedless wallets can generate addresses to receive Bitcoins, but cannot send them.
- To create a seedless wallet start Electrum, select the restore option and enter your Master Public Key instead of your seed.
- You can use seedless wallets in Point Of Sale systems.

If a seedless wallet cannot send them, then what is the point?


What would be the best way to implement a scheme as the above?
Use wallets for the "accounts" I want? Use addresses for the "accounts" I want? Or something else?

I cannot see where in electrum to create anything outside of this "Main Account" it calls it in the receive tab.

I guess these addresses do not make sense as accounts, given that when sending I cannot choose from which address it is sent? So I would have to use different wallets to implement the above?
Thanks for any tips.

Too much text, too many questions... Could you make a proper list of your questions to be answered? Not that long post

I suspect this is an error in translation from another language. As far as I know, Electrum does not automatically generate a new address every time a previous address receives bitcoins.


No, most of them don't.  I prefer to use a new address for every transaction, so I don't put a donation address in my sig.  Instead, if someone wants to make a donation to me, they must contact me and ask for an address.


That decision is up to the user.  You can continue to use an address for so long as you have access to the private key it you want.  Keep in mind that any time you re-use an address you reduce anonymity and security.


That depends on what you are trying to accomplish.  When you send bitcoins from an Electrum wallet, you will not be able to choose which bitcoins are sent.  The wallet will decide for you from among all the bitcoins in the entire wallet.


It allows you to monitor your addresses and know when you've received bitcoins and how much bitcoins you have without having your private keys on a computer that is connected to the internet.  That way if someone hacks into the computer or you end up with some malware running on the computer, your bitcoins can't be stolen.  As long as you keep your seed you can always re-generate the wallet to send bitcoins from on another computer in the future.


That depends on what you're trying to accomplish.


That depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

Of course it does, it is called gap limit.

If you freeze (right mouse button context menu) all but one address than Electrum will only send from that address.

Thanks everyone.
This is incredibly helpful.
So the wallet decides which address(es) to send from, unless I freeze addresses which it will then exclude.

You can also prioritize addresses so the funds are gotten from the prioritized address before the others