Bitcoin Forum

Hi

I read all the rules I can find and searched online about this question before I posted.  I see many people have wallet addresses in their signature.  Is this for people to send them tips?  Am I allowed to put a wallet in my sig and ask for tips if someone thinks I have been helpful, informative, funny or nice?  Or is this not allowed?

Also can putting a wallet address in sig be a security risk.  Could someone us that address against you in some way to steal from you.

Many thanks for taking the time to read my question.

Yes, you can do it.

If someone know your bitcoin address, they could check the tx to and from your address, but they cannot steal bitcoin from it.

It is a anonymity risk.

They can see all transactions that you ever receive at that address and what addresses you send those bitcoins to in the future.  Depending on the wallet you are using, they may be able to link that address to other addresses in your wallet and determine how much total bitcoins you are controlling, who is sending them to you, and where you are sending them to.

Only you can decide if this loss of privacy matters to you.

It is a "best practice" to use a new bitcoin address for every transaction.  This reduces the privacy issues, and increases security slightly.

Thanks Danny and Sonny.  That was really helpful.

Yes you can put your wallet address in your signature. Nobody can steal your coins.

i don't think showing off your btc address will be vulnerable  it is as unsecure as showing off your bitcointalk username  or less then that according to me..!

Thanks.  This has also just made me wonder. Does this mean I should avoid Faucets for the same reason?  I made a separate address for a faucet so they could see what goes into that address.  But any payments I send would be from my wallet address so they could not see that?  Or could they see?

That is what I was thinking but then as Sonny has pointed out they can look on the block chain and calculate how much BTC you have in the wallet; which is not good if someone links that back to you and knows ways to hack.

You can see all transactions in the block chain.

Its public and available for anyone to look at.



You can move the money between wallets, put your saving in cold storage yet keeping small change in a normal wallet.

Of course it is allowed. People don't do it just for the tips, but because when they've done some job people don't have to ask for their address since they already know it.

No problem.




You could use that address for your signature here only, and not for faucets or any other trades. So, others can only see how much you get from tips.

It is true that people can see it if you send bitcoin out of that address.
But, they don't know if you are sending it to coinbase or a gambling site or buying something using bitpay, or you are just sending it to your other addresses.

Unless of course the place you are sending it to is also using publicly known static addresses.