Bitcoin Forum

The BTC address was changed in my wallet yesterday. It came after a failed transaction in an exchange.


There was just a little money in there, that is not the worrry. The worry is that I have uninstalled and deleted the Bitcoin program twice. I even restored the computer back about four days before this event.


Guess what happens? Both new downloads of the Bitcoin program produced the same Bitcoin address.


It is the same address that it was changed to when the money was stolen. I can not download a different address.


This is a Vista laptop, so if anyone knows how I can get the guy out of my computer and get my own BTC address, please let me know.

Take a step back for a moment, I have no idea what you're trying to say.

It would be good to list a sequence of events that lead you to this problem so people can help understand and possibly correct your problem.

The file that holds your bitcoin addresses does not get removed when you remove the software. This is for your own protection.

Redownloading the software won't change the address because it's still reading from the same file: wallet.dat.

Why do you think you were "hacked" ? Have you turned on wallet encryption?

The address in my wallet was changed. I did not change it. Then...


That is when I deleted the Bitcoin software, and downloaded new bitcoin software again from the link at (http://bitcoin.org/) all I got was the same address.... two times.


I deleted Bitcoin completely off my computer and downloaded the Bitcoin client twice and still ended up with the wrong address inside the wallet.

Wow I feel for you. Hopefully it all ends happily for you and it gets sorted out.

Thanks, not much was lost.

The address was changed. I did not change it.

I removed the whole bitcoin folder twice. If what you are saying is true, how did the address get changed?

I don't understand the problem. This is standard behaviour. Your bitcoin adress will change after a successful transactions. Go look in your adress book. The old one should be in there.

If the bitcoin client can't see your coins due to the de- and installation, start bitcoint-qt again with the -rescan option. Your coins should then be in there again.


EDIT: Wait, you completely deleted your bitcoin folder? The program folder or the one in the user directory? Because if it's the later, you just shot yourself in the foot real bad.

No I didnt. There was nothing or little in the wallet to begin with. Yes, I deleted the whole Bitcoin folder (programs/Bitcoin) two times. The same unwanted address somehow gets downloaded when I get the Bitcoin program off the web (brand new).

How in the haybale am I supposed to use the wallet (especially to receive money) if  the address is changing all the time? Why does the other computer not change its BTC address and it has plenty of transactions on it?

If there is nothing in your account simply stop the client copy the old wallet.dat in the bitcoin folder
and start it back up.
It will rescan and you have your coins back.

Please don't tell you do not have a backup.
Because this is ESSENTIAL when using bitcoin!

And the wallet.dat will always give you the same bitcoin address.
Because this is what the wallet.dat does/is.

Oh, you're good then. That wallet.dat should  still be sitting pretty in your user directory. Do the -rescan thing.


The old adresses will still work. I don't know why your other PC doesn't change them. Mine does it all the time and all the old ones still work fine.

How do I get the original address back? Who changed it to begin with?

How do you know what address to tell people to send your Bitcoins to?

I deleted the whole Bitcoin folder. Nothing is left of the program... zip.

I download a new bitcoin program and the same bitcoin address that the computer had as before is still there. It is also wrong.

You still 'have' it, it just displays a new one, usually after it is used, behavior might depend on the version, that might be why you had different experiences. It's simply to encourage you to not reuse addresses for privacy sake.

Not seeing your money and not seeing that address are not related. If you are all caught up on blocks you need to rescan like someone mentioned.

You deleted the program but not the data because that is in a different place. It would be like deleting notepad, redownloading it and being shocked that you can still read mydiary.txt.

You were not hacked. You did not lose anything yet. The new address is just a new address. You still have the old one.

So calm down...and STOP trying to delete things until you understand what's going on.

Where is that other file located? This is for Vista. I read this:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet#Making_a_new_wallet


and it says the file is at:

Windows: %APPDATA%\Bitcoin\


I deleted that whole folder → \Bitcoin\

There are 2 bitcoin folders. There is one Programs\Bitcoin, which you said you deleted. The other is at \Users\[your Username]\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin, which you hopefully did not delete.

You Bitcoin wallet is not under Program Files/Bitcoin. You can delete that as many times as you want and you will not delete your wallet. I will tell you where your wallet is, but first calm down and listen to the others.

Your bitcoin client changes your address pretty frequently (at least once a month). I think it's a dumb feature, because it seems to cause more confusion like this, but you are not hacked. All your addresses sit in the same wallet and your coins should all be there. If you have verified that you have actually lost coins (the balance has gone down), then you should do something about your wallet. First thing to do would be to post your old address here (you can find it under the Receive Coins tab in you client) and maybe someone can look a little more into it.

Then you can shut down you client software and go to
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Bitcoin
and RENAME your wallet.dat to wallet.bad.date

Restart your client and you will get a new address.

I already did delete things.. :)

Which is why I am mystified that I can not get a new bitcoin address.


This:


https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet#Making_a_new_wallet


says

That folder has been deleted twice.

and the same bitcoin address gets downloaded  -  twice.


Let me explain a little better.
My original address is "Fred". I open up the program today and the address is "Bob".
I notice that "Bob" is wrong. Because I had little or no money in "Fred"... I just delete
all ( the whole thing ) of "Bob".

But,

when I redownload the bitcoin program, "Bob" is there again. I did it twice, taking Bitcoin
totally off the computer, and "Bob" pops up both times.

Shut down bitcoin and go to:

Users/Appdata/Roaming/Bitcoin

you might have to unhide the folder

drag the wallet file to some other place

restart bitcoin and tell us what you see

This:

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Bitcoin


is not the folder sequence in my computer. This is Vista ( if that makes a difference ).

You are the genius. :)

When you said "you might have to unhide the folder". There it is.


I deleted the wrong thing. Its not fun being an ignorant fool.

Let me see what happens. I have to download again.
Thanks.

Ok, but do you understand you weren't hacked?

The client generates new addresses automatically. It's going to do that regardless of whether you get a new wallet or not.

The bitcoins you currently own are in the original wallet file that was in that directory. So do not delete or lose that file.

No. I have been involved with BTC for a while and never heard of a wallet changing its address. My question remains... how do people know where to send money to me ( or anyone else ) if the address is changing?

I looked in the blockchain... and there is no connection with the new address.

It just loaded up the history, about five blocks. Nothing changed. The transaction history is gone, but it was gone when the new address popped in.

Did you start it with -rescan ?

What you see is a fresh new address that has never been used.  If someone wants to send you money, give them that address, and you'll get another one.  The cool thing is that all of your old addresses are stored in the wallet database, and any money sent to those addresses at any time in the future will be yours, as long as you keep your wallet.dat safe.

If you had to tell two different people to send coins to you, you would not want to give them both the same address. If you did, each one could see every coin the other sent to you. So the address that you tell other people to send coins to changes constantly. This has no effect on your ability to receive coins.

No, what is that?

If you change the wallet file, you need to use "-rescan" or the client won't credit your balance with coins from transactions it had already downloaded before you changed the wallet file. The coins are still safe, you just can't see or spend them.

First time ever. Why is there no connection online at the blockchain.info site?

That adress was never involved in a transaction tracked in the blockchain.

Blockchain.info only sees what is transcribed in the blockchain.

To simplify, the new adress only exists in your client right now. Only when someone assigns coins to it, will it be visible in the blockchain.

I think this thread would be an excellent basis for a "FAQ" of Bitcoin for newbies.

- How to delete a wallet
- How to start up the Bitcoin client with -rescan
- Why Bitcoin addresses change
- Etc...

Stuff like this NEEDS to be explained/made more clear in the client itself, e.g. have a pop up when the adress changes with some info on why this happened.

What I did was reload everything, including from the user's folder. I re-downloaded Bitcoin and put the old wallet.dat file in the place of the new one that was just downloaded. I happened to look at the wallet address before I placed the old wallet.dat file there. It was different. (Thanks guys!)

Now the computer is downloading thousands of blocks anew.

I knew that it had not had any transactions on it yet because I checked out the blockchain.info site.
 I wondered where the address came from. I checked out the blockchain.info site and when there was no connection to the previous address there, I thought someone had hacked me. When I could not change the address, I thought he/she had placed another file on my computer that prevented me from getting rid of the "bogus" bitcoin address. It turned out to be a valid address.

I suppose the older versions of bitcoin did not change around like that.

Thanks.

All they would see would be each other's address and that they had more or less paid the same guy at the same time. They would have to verify it with me, what was going on, unless the guys knew each other's addresses and could connect the address personally to the "other" guy.


My other address has never changed.

This is not true for months

If you change the wallet.dat and then you start bitcoin it will automatically rescan it and shows all the btc and transactions of that wallet.

That's more than enough. Consider:

1) Some guy on the Internet owes me 2 Bitcoins for a Steam game. I give him my address. He knows my forum identity which leads him to my real name and address.

2) I sell my house for 15,000 Bitcoins. I give the buyer my address.

3) The guy on the Internet now knows I control 15,000 Bitcoins and he knows I haven't yet spent them. He has two tough guys show up at my real address with a wrench. Once they compel me to transfer the Bitcoins, chances of recovery are near zero. And I can't even really link the tough guys to the guy who bought the Steam game.

Re-use addresses at your own risk.

Consider this for a moment: the blockchain is publicly available to everyone, so every transaction done is publicly visible (that is how it can work decentralized).
So if you decide to use only one bitcoin address for all your transactions, once somebody knows your address (like the people that are paying you some coins), that somebody can see all your transactions. It's like making public your whole bank account !

For that reason, you should give different people different bitcoin addresses, unless you want your private transactions known to the whole world.

Of course, you are free to reuse any "old" address. The client keeps track of all your addresses (that's the wallet.dat file). Just beware of the consequences.

Thilo

It doesn't 'change' its address, it shows you a different one for convenience, that's all. As long as you keep wallet.dat you will have all the addresses it ever shows (and 100 more already made btw that you can't see).

which would be fine—if it were up to me—but the default client is more pushy than a banker and decides it wants to complicate my life for me

gee, thanks, papa bitcoin


here's a hint OP:  the satoshi client has so many examples of horrible interface design that i'm getting red in the face just thinking about it

try blockchain.info/wallet

if i were a betting man, i'd say the satoshi client scares off at least 5 people for every 1 that sticks around, and that one still gets pissed off

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=15918.0

Yeah, this is a good example. Thanks.

Its definitely safer to have more than one address. I dont have anything to hide in my transactions, but at the same time having everyone in the world know what I do with my money is not attractive as well.

I wish I had known that earlier. Perhaps other people will not have to make a thread like this one in the future.

Now that I know, and for the record - - → I was not hacked.

You can and should edit the title of the original post now. At least just add [Not actually hacked] to it.

Done. Thanks for the help.