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Bitcoin => Bitcoin Technical Support => Topic started by: pawanraila on April 07, 2018, 10:33:33 AM



Title: Can address be hidden?
Post by: pawanraila on April 07, 2018, 10:33:33 AM
Hello.
Bitcoin and crypto currencies are well known for its security.
I also agree on it as no third party is required and also because it is based on P2P transaction.
But, what if some one knows our wallet address because I once sent him some bitcoins.
And after some time, he was willing to hurt me if I send some btc to one of my friend [his enemy]?
It happened with me.
He knows my address and will hurt me if I send any coins from my wallet to any other wallet.
He started checking my recent transactions and will ask me to whom I send bitcoin and why?
Is there any way we can hide our wallet?
But, it will create problem in transactions, right?


Title: Re: Can address be hidden?
Post by: ranochigo on April 07, 2018, 11:07:49 AM
Bitcoin is not anonymous. Transactions are supposed to have an input and an output with it. Without the public key in the transaction, the signature cannot be verified and hence the transactions cannot hide their origin addresses.

As per most wallet behaviors as of now, they discourage address reuse. Each of the addresses are supposed to be used only once and hence all the change are sent to a new address and a new address is given in your wallet when the previous gets used. With this, no one can know whether the address in the other output is yours or if the coins are sent to another person.


Title: Re: Can address be hidden?
Post by: Xynerise on April 07, 2018, 11:29:58 AM
Like ranochigo says, bitcoin addresses are always visible, which is why you shouldn't reuse addresses.
When the Lightning Network is mature enough, you can open a channel with someone else and route some bitcoins to someone else entirely off chain.


Title: Re: Can address be hidden?
Post by: aleksej996 on April 07, 2018, 03:12:21 PM
Hello.
Bitcoin and crypto currencies are well known for its security.
I also agree on it as no third party is required and also because it is based on P2P transaction.
But, what if some one knows our wallet address because I once sent him some bitcoins.
And after some time, he was willing to hurt me if I send some btc to one of my friend [his enemy]?
It happened with me.
He knows my address and will hurt me if I send any coins from my wallet to any other wallet.
He started checking my recent transactions and will ask me to whom I send bitcoin and why?
Is there any way we can hide our wallet?
But, it will create problem in transactions, right?

Other than the fact that I think you might need to call police, I have another suggestion for you.
You can tell your friend that your wallet was hacked or that you decided to send your BTC to a new address for security reasons.
Since you already sent BTC from that address before, your public key is on the blockchain now.
In case there are quantum computers big enough to break your key or that public key cryptography is broken in the future, your bitcoins would not be as safe as they would if you sent them to a new address.

This new address can be of your friend and he could send you change on some other Bitcoin address your other friend doesn't know about.
That is if you trust that friend and doesn't want to give him all of your bitcoins from that address.

You could do some other stuff as well, of course, but all of it will be obvious that you moved those bitcoins.
Blockchain simply needs to know if some address has bitcoins to spend or not. (not literaly but close enough)

Lightning network is already being considered safe enough to be used on mainnet and I think there is a new Eclair Android app for LN.
This is a good excuse to lock your funds in a payment channel and use it to send your friend some bitcoins with basically no fee.
Your other friend will see that your bitcoins are locked in a payment channel (if he knows what that looks like), but he will not be able to see whether or not you spent some of your bitcoins and where they went. Only upon closing a channel there will be obvious lack of funds, but still no known destination for them . You don't need however to ever close your payment channels if you don't want to.

You could also, of course, use an excuse that you want to switch to a new bech address format and have cheaper transactions in the future.
And send your bitcoins to your firend's bech address.


Title: Re: Can address be hidden?
Post by: NeuroticFish on April 07, 2018, 03:19:27 PM
And after some time, he was willing to hurt me if I send some btc to one of my friend [his enemy]?
It happened with me.
He knows my address and will hurt me if I send any coins from my wallet to any other wallet.

This being said no solution would work for you: neither mixer, neither sending your coins to an exchange to get to an anonymous coin, nothing.
As other said, Bitcoin is not anonymous.
I think that what you write here is a police matter.



Title: Re: Can address be hidden?
Post by: btccrusher on April 07, 2018, 03:54:27 PM
The simple answer is: "NO, you can not hide your bitcoin wallet address." Technically you don't have any solutions for your problem.
The possible solution I can give for your problem, use a new BTC wallet (also can use an exchange account) and buy any amount Bitcoin you need. Then send it to your friend without letting know the other friend.


Title: Re: Can address be hidden?
Post by: bob123 on April 07, 2018, 05:13:40 PM
Unfotunately there is no real solution to your problem.

But you could prevent this from happening in the future.
You might consider using a mixing service. ChipMixer allows you to split/merge into smaller/bigger units of BTC and export these private keys.
This way you will have different amounts of BTC's sitting on your addresses.
This will prevent anyone to see how much you really own, assuming you don't mix all of those UTXO's together in one transaction afterwards.


Title: Re: Can address be hidden?
Post by: kevoh on April 07, 2018, 05:27:08 PM
A simple idea might be to withdraw all your bitcoin to fiat (local currency), your friend can only monitor you to this extent and ends here. Then get a new wallet, which means a new wallet address will be generated that is in no way linked since no transaction has been done. Now purchase some bitcoin into the new wallet with your fiat and then send the money to his so-called enemy.There is no way he can trace. You might lose few satoshis/fiat during the conversion from bitcoin to fiat and vice-versa but it is worth it, as you will become free of this parasite of a friend.


Title: Re: Can address be hidden?
Post by: LoyceV on April 07, 2018, 05:48:05 PM
He knows my address and will hurt me if I send any coins from my wallet to any other wallet.
In most countries, a threat like this would be a reason to call (or go to) the police, and let law enforcement handle it.

But from your other post:
It's illegal in here. But who cares?
It's weird you don't care that something is illegal, even though someone wants to hurt you over it. I doubt your story is real.


Title: Re: Can address be hidden?
Post by: pawanraila on April 07, 2018, 06:42:13 PM
Hello, it is illegal. Yes. But people still use it. As I am from a developing country, it does not have any tracing technology. So, we use it. But, we can not trasact our crypto directly.
Still many people use crypto.


Title: Re: Can address be hidden?
Post by: cellard on April 07, 2018, 06:50:23 PM
Quote
And after some time, he was willing to hurt me if I send some btc to one of my friend [his enemy]?
It happened with me.
He knows my address and will hurt me if I send any coins from my wallet to any other wallet.

This is insane. Are you saying that your so called enemy will automatically show up in your house and shoot you if you send coins from X address? Where are you from?

If you are living in some sort of third world country with 0 protection surrounded by criminals, I guess it's smart to not send any coins from a known address.

You should get new addresses and never link them to that account. Accumulate BTC in other addresses, and when you make transactions, be sure to not have selected the address that is known by your enemy.

Once you have enough money, move to another country and you will be able to spend from that address, I doubt they will bother to go overseas unless you are some deep trouble.

Your friend should generate new addresses to receive money, he has it easier than you if they don't know addresses from him that contain funds.


Title: Re: Can address be hidden?
Post by: Sinecoin on April 10, 2018, 03:20:21 AM
Hello.
Bitcoin and crypto currencies are well known for its security.
I also agree on it as no third party is required and also because it is based on P2P transaction.
But, what if some one knows our wallet address because I once sent him some bitcoins.
And after some time, he was willing to hurt me if I send some btc to one of my friend [his enemy]?
It happened with me.
He knows my address and will hurt me if I send any coins from my wallet to any other wallet.
He started checking my recent transactions and will ask me to whom I send bitcoin and why?
Is there any way we can hide our wallet?
But, it will create problem in transactions, right?


Hiding your address would go against the very nature of bitcoin which is why its not a feature.  The point of blockchain technology is for complete transparency and verification so in order for people to trust the system they need to see the transactions.  The common misconception about bitcoin is that is it anonymous (which it is not) but transaction can made to me anonymous through the use of coin mixers and vpns.