Bitcoin Forum

Hi all,

Quick question, I have about 8 - 10 different addresses which are all used to receive payment from different sources. As such my btc is scattered all over the place but nice and neat in my wallet.

Is it a good idea to send all my BTC to one address? I've got a spare computer here which has never seen the internet so I'm thinking of generating a wallet(paper/cold) there and sending all my btc to that. What approach should I take?

It doesn't make a difference. Though some people will say it's a privacy concern.

Also, depending on the wallet you use, as soon as you spend from your "one" address, most wallets will create a new change address, so after a few tx your BTC will be "scattered" again.

Basically, no if you want to have more privacy and yes if you want to save the BTC securely in a offline computer. However, you may want to consider to review the source code of the wallet you are going to use and compile it yourself. This would ensure that you would be safe if you know what you are doing. If not, just choose a trusted and well known one. It is advisable to not reuse a address, create and broadcast a transaction then storing more Bitcoins in it. In some incidents, flawed RNGs can cause you to lose your coin even though that is rare with most desktop wallets. If the RNG used to generate "k" to create your transaction is not random enough, it can allow people to bruteforce your private key after a few transactions from the wallet. It is a fairly small security risk if you use well known wallet, example Bitcoin Core. If you are paranoid, just generate a new address after sending a transaction from the previous one and send all the coins to it.

In my opinion, it doesn't make a difference; it is a matter of personal choice than security.

This might affect in future if you want to spend those coins. If you have all coins on one address, you will need to expose that private key to spend even a little amount. If you have distributed the total balance among multiple addresses, you can keep releasing the private keys one by one as you need. I don't know how it affects security.

If it is not a big amount of coins, you can keep them their but if you have bigger amount you can make a cold storage wallet in that off-line computer and transfer your funds their for extra security.

He is already thinking of a cold wallet. His main question is - does it matter to have all your Bitcoins on a single address or you should distribute them over many addresses?

I think that's a matter of personal choice rather than security.

If you want to store some bitcoins that you don't need often, store them offline on a single or two wallets.

It's like with the cash. Will you keep all your cash in your pocket? I guess not.
Keep what you use daily in one place and the rest somewhere more safe (a couple of paper wallets?)

If you can keep all the private keys safe then use multiple wallets ... not addresses as addresses have the same private key and basically it's the same wallet!

I would go for multiple wallets and keep the private keys safe .... so I can give the wallets to my kids when I will have some :) 

Its also concerned with security as if multiple account is pretty safe, you dont have to worry much if one gets hacked small amount is lost..but offline is the safest and i guess it has no fee as well only online wallet does :-\ Like equally distributed amounts to 8 addresses.

Interesting. Well what I use is Bitcoin Core QT. I will not store BTC online. I've generated say 6 addresses and done a private key dump on a test system and each private key for each address has been different.

I've taken a new approach. I've generated 5 wallets on an offline system, and divided my BTC against those five wallets. I've then printed out the private keys and stored them in my safe along with a USB .dat file. If the dat file is ever corrupted, I will still retain the physical private keys.

I think the only precaution I'm taking this for is the potential for a brute force attack. Although I do not have much BTC, I am certain there are people out who dedicate quite a lot of effort into cracking the BTC system. So as some of you guys suggested, you don't go around with all your money in your wallet, I've split the load.

Just a pain in the ass to send the btc back lol if I need it.

Who would want to crack bitcoin addresses, unless they are idiots. You would need millions and thousands of years to crack a single private key. Assuming that a shift of algorithm will happen if a weakness is found in the protocol itself. There is really no need for you to split the amounts, if your computer have weakness, all of your amounts will be taken, all the same.

Yeah and i even have the proof, i had kept my btc in coinbase for a while like 4months and gradually i started noticing my amount was reducing by 5th month i had lost like 3,00,000 satoshi out of 8,00,000  so its noways safe..maybe it can be the fee but too much so anyway desktop wallet is the safest..i dont have one..ryt nw i have created other coinbase account and see the same happens.

What you have done is the safest perhaps so far..no one can hack ur pc..but there are tons of chances onl. And not by the private key itself but by password guessing and many ways.In the future no.of hackers are gonna increase as btc approches more fame.  :-\

If your btc was going down it means you were using it. You have a fee per transaction. Coinbase with F2A is safe but for large amount of btc a cold storage is better.

There is really no difference between the two things mate , It's up to you to decide what do you like more .
Basically it's for Security, people want to remain annonyme by having multiple adresses and they are right about it . but if you don't really care about your privacy then just go and send them on one Paper wallet .

If you have a big amount of BTC that your looking to keep for a long time then go for the cold storage scenario and then allocate a hot wallet you can use for your usual transactions.
Its good you have many addresses to factor in the anonymity, but it is still your personal choice if your go for 1 wallet address.

I have 9 adress in the wallet, and it was not a problem
I always use the address that is on file for input into my bank hehe
thats oaky ?

thats a good idea to put it all on a private computer.

I wasnt using any..and sure that no one even knew my password..i will check if same happens with another coinbase account.
Still online storage..won't take any risk.