Bitcoin Forum

Hi everybody, I am an absolute beginner. Apologies if its a silly question  ;)

If I send bitcoins to somebody in order to buy a product or a service, how can I demonstrate that I am the actual sender of the money? Perhaps should I email him with the transaction number? Is that considered a suitable validation?  ???

All help appreciated!  :)

Mostly the services uses different Bitcoin addresses to identify the sender, since one can have practically infinite addresses. So almost always you don't have to do anything yourself for the receiver to know who sent the money.

Most people set up different deposit addresses for different senders, so when something is sent to that address, they know who gave them BTC.

Welcome to the world of cryptocurrency!!

You can easily prove this by signing the transaction. Or you can just ask the seller for bitcoin address just for you. Most online business that accept bitcoin use different bitcoin address every order.

Seller provides unique address for you to pay (best)
or
You send to a address shared with all customers, and you sign a message using your own address

Anybody can see the transaction ID on the blockchain. It's public.

sign message as said by other user. can do on bitcoin-qt 2 second.

welcome to forum =) Just to make aware. lot scammer in forum. escrow are a must!!!!

test

Welcome to the forum, everyone is a liar here to make profit from deceiving you!

Seriously guys, chillax. People are smart enough to make their own decisions without
telling them everyone is out to hurt them.

You don't. All you need to demonstrate is that the money was sent for the purpose of paying for that particular order, which the merchant can do automatically by using a unique Bitcoin address for each order. If that address receives the requisite number of bitcoins, the order is paid for and the merchant ships it out, regardless of who actually paid.

The reason for doing it this way is that in many cases, you are not the actual sender of the money, nor will the actual sender of the money necessarily know anything about the order that they're paying for. This will happen if you are using a web wallet or other payment processor that makes Bitcoin transactions on your behalf. In that case, they're making the payment, not you, and you cannot prove otherwise.

Note that if a merchant does ask you to prove you are the sender, they're doing something hopelessly wrong and you should not do business with them.

Everyone's hit everything, so I'll just add that the transaction ID is public knowledge, so you can't really use that as any kind of proof.

Is it true that most online business that accept bitcoin use different bitcoin address every order?

Most of the company's yes.

Competent companies that run a quality business do.

Incompetent companies that are poorly run and won't last wrong might not.

The best way to do is which i do too sometimes is to add a custom note while making the transaction  :)

So... as long as the vendor provides a unique Bitcoin address, all I have to do is sending the required sum to that address, pronto. There is no interface like the ones used for credit card payments, where I must indicate the Bitcoin address used to send the money. Right?

Bitcoin is anonymous. The merchant can see all the transaction information like your bitcoin address, TX Id that your bitcoins was sent from and other but they will never know what physical individual sent the money because they don't have any information about you, in case you need to provide shipping address if purchasing physical goods.

 If you want to prove that you sent the money adding a note to the transaction would be easiest solution probably.

Yes, if they provide you with a unique address then they will know you sent the payment.  If not, you'll have to sign a message with your private key.  But if they're any good you'll get your own unique address to send to.