Bitcoin Forum

I'm new to Bitcoin, and It is an extraordinarily intriguing concept.

I'm sure the answer is yes, but I was wondering if there is a way to enumerate a user/wallet's transaction history for a given time range. Then take the result and generate a report, similar to what you would see on a bank's website to get an idea of how you've spent your money recently.

Does the Bitcoin application remember the history and save that information somewhere? Or this data inherent to the technology, since all transactions are indeed public? Furthermore, is it possible for a developer to write a tool that, given a list of receiving addresses, uses the public information to construct an accurate history? (This way, you would only need to have such a list and not your entire wallet in order to view your statement.)

If so, a user could have the same financial reporting functionality as a bank without relying on a 3rd party to do so. I have always been very interested in developing these kinds of tools. It is currently impossible to independently develop anything that is remotely attached to a bank account. This tool could offer advanced (and highly customized, since open-source tools would begin to emerge) finance reporting/analysis to those interested, which would be another piece of flair for people to begin taking notice.

I just create a new address for each transaction and the client/mybitcoin keeps a history of generated addresses and transactions.I am not sure how you would export such information.

Not everybody will use a new address each time. Even if they do, I'm wondering if there is a way to get the transactions from one or more address, or from your wallet, etc.

It is ok to use the same address more than once for manual transactions but for someone running a merchant site or other such service it would be best if they generated a new address each transaction to prevent analysis of their income.  If you see they sell bags of heroin for 500 BTC for a small one and 5000 BTC for a big one, and they always use the same address, you can just count how many bags they've sold, it's like having your accounting books open for everyone to see.

I understand. But that is not my question.

How much is remembered in the network? Is every transaction remembered publicly? Or will a transaction that happened, say, 10 years ago no longer be out in the open? It would be useful to have Yodlee/Mint.com-like services to attract new people with. I'm wondering if such a service could work by having the user provide some kind of Bitcoin wallet ID (like those sites currently do, taking your bank name and web account/password instead). Or if that is not possible, take a list of addresses. Either way, will the entire transaction history always be available or would it need to be stored separately from the P2P network?

The client stores your own transaction history. The network-wide transaction history is available for some time, before it is garbage-collected. So you would need to store the transaction history separately if you need it in perpetuity.