Bitcoin Forum

Like the the topic implies, that was what a friend made me feel due to his panic on why will his bitcoin address and transaction be tracked by a third party after forwarding what I posted here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5454672.0 to him and other friends.

Himself and some other friends are those I do not want them to miss out in bitcoin investment, a reason I every time took my time to explain and any beginners may learn from this short response.

1- You bitcoin address in not your bitcoin but a house for it just like your bank account.
2- Your bitcoin address can only be be compromised if you share your personal details or private key along with sharing the address.
3- People may say that your bitcoin address can be likened to your bank account and and email address, I have read it online myself. They are right to some extent, but the privacy of bitcoin is far better. Why? Through your bank details, your details can be known by diggers, same goes for email address if you use your real identity to open it.

But for bitcoin, nothing will be revealed relating to you by merely seeing your address. It is again good to use non-custodial wallet for keeping your bitcoin safe and own total right to it.

This is only true if you are using an account that reveal your identity to post your Bitcoin address but simply posting your Bitcoin address online anonymously won’t harm you at all because all our address is exposed publicly on blockchain ledger.


Exposing your private key is the only way for your Bitcoin to become compromised. Giving personal details and other things is not related on accessing your Bitcoin wallet.


This is only possible if you are using a centralized exchange to purchased and sell Bitcoin. Also you will encounter that kind of sensitive problem if you do something wrong because no one can access your data on centralized services without request by the authority to share your information.

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Sharing publicly your wallet address is not a big deal at all if you knew to keep safe your private key properly. Most of the scammers blatantly posting their address publicly to scam people. If this people hiding from the law can do it without a problem then why normal people will worry on doing same thing?

Your explanation is quite impressive as you made them know that there is nothing to panic about just because they track their Bitcoin transaction in any of the websites you provide in your previous post.

There are more this explanations, I will suggest you recommend learnmeabitcoin.com (http://learnmeabitcoin.com) to your friends so that they can learn more about Bitcoin wallets, keys and address.

Yes, the address is like your bank account number; therefore, there is no problem sharing it with the public since it cannot be used to unlock the wallet.

You mean Bitcoin wallet?
Your Bitcoin address is your public key, which has nothing to do with the privacy of your wallet; only the private key has that.

You are right just the way you share some private information about your bank account and hackers can compromise it. This is the same way if you give or expose your private keys or seedphrase online or to thieves that your wallet can be compromise not your public address.

This is when you use a centralized platform to carry out one or two services. Apart from that there is no way such will happen. This is why it is advisable not to store or keep your personal information on centralized platform or exchanges.

Any bitcoiner that is privacy conscious should understand the needs why he should not post about bhis life on social media not to talk about showing the world he's a bitcoiner and making his address public, this is one of the ways we carelessly attract spammers, hacker and scammers to ourselves from the open ed internet through our negligence to security control measures, henceforth we begin to receive malicious links, physhing attacks and we becomes the center of target to be hunt down by the fraudulent ones on the internet, it is also not a good decision to go public with your address especially in countries where bitcoin is not accepted as a legal means of transaction or payment.

This is a mistake!
Nothing can be revealed when you just post an address that has either zero balance or that you have just deposited some coins from a really private source, like a mixer and that's it.

The moment you start using the address that has been linked to your profile and the more you post about your profile, with every single action your privacy gets eroded till you will not be safe anymore, and in extreme cases it might be even worse than a bank. Let me give you an example, of how badly this can turn
- you purchase from that address a hard wallet since a ton of chain analysts can label almost all business and value at the moment of the tx, they will see you have made a transfer of the exact value of a Ledger Nano X.
- Ledger does what it knows best and leaks the data again

So now everyone can link all the addresses that have paid the price of a ledger wallet to the addresses posted online on social media, and here you go, addresses bc1xxxx, with a balance of 100 BTC which is tempting to any thief has a user that is from Shangri La and here you go, the address, your phone number, and everything are now tied together and your privacy is gone, forever!

And it's not just that complicated, you order a simple pizza from that address, the pizza store owner knows your apartment address for the delivery and knows from where you have paid him, from now he can have a new hobby, let's see what this customer of mine has been doing, oh, he just withdraw 20 BTC, half a million from ana exchange...Hmm, I know a few guys!!!

Indeed, just by seeing someone's public address, no one will be able to find out anything if the owner of this address has not told anything about himself. Since all addresses are immediately visible on the blockchain, we can see any of them. If there were any direct danger because of this, then the owners of the largest amounts in bitcoins would have faced it long ago.

Most of the issues that have come to light are related to the careless storage of private keys and seed phrases, as well as the fact that the victims widely talked about having bitcoins, which attracted the attention of criminals.

For security, it is important to store your private keys and seed phrases as securely as possible, never transfer them to anyone or store them on a computer that can be attacked by viruses.

It is also important not to tell anyone you have bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies. There are cases when someone talked about their bitcoins, and then was attacked by criminals who forced the victims to give them private keys from addresses with cryptocurrencies.

Since the number of addresses in the blockchain is quite large, it is undesirable to use the same address repeatedly if it has already been associated with you in some way. You can always get a new address for more security.

I mean you are right, but I guess it's just how Bitcoin is created since all of the transactions are recorded and everyone can see them, I mean bitcoin addresses are public and there's no way you could get hacked by just posting your Bitcoin address online, but I guess there is still a danger of posting it so you could just send to if you someone that your gonna have transactions with.

How can you see the Bitcoin address that is linked to your bank account? Seems not possible and I don't think you're going to use a wallet that publicly shows your wallet is linked to a Bitcoin address. May centralized exchanges do this but they don't really give personal information easily for someone to see.

If your bitcoin address is exposed then they may be able to track your transaction and if your personal details is linked to your bitcoin address then there's a possibility that they will know who own that bitcoin address. Exposing bitcoin address won't cause your wallet to be compromised. Bitcoin wallet and Bitcoin address is different where you a bitcoin address is where you will need to receive Bitcoin while bitcoin wallet is where you can make transactions like send btc to another person and also to access your wallet. It's up to you if your bitcoin address is linked to your personal information or not.

News about how various exchanges are hacked, which ultimately leads to the loss of users' personal data, is published regularly. Even if the exchange does not have any criminal intentions, the loss of data by it can lead to no less sad consequences. If you look at the statistics, then a huge percentage of people in the world suffer from identity theft. You should take your own safety as seriously as possible and not rely on third parties for this. KYC is what critically reduces security. Any loss of data or malicious distribution by those who asked you to go through the KYC procedure can lead to the most unpleasant consequences for you.

tell him to retire the one posted and just use another address. am i missing something? you should use them as single serving fyi. so history isn't built up.

We only say, Not your keys, not your coins. Keys are private keys, not public keys and not public address.

You have your own bank only if you have private keys of your public addresses.

If I have a private key of your coins, I can sign a transaction and move it to a new wallet. I can import it and know it public address but I even don't have to know it. My task is simple, sign a transaction and steal your coin. If I am a bad person.

You use metaphor a lot and make your post harder to understand.

If you share your public address, I and other people can paste it on a Bitcoin block explorer and check it transaction history, balance etc. It is what you lose, privacy, personal transaction history, nothing more. Nobody can steal your bitcoin with onky a public address.

Keys, Addresses (Mastering Bitcoin) (https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook/blob/develop/ch04.asciidoc#keys-addresses)

All addresses are not immediately visible on the blockchain, the blockchain shows all the transactions that has been made in the network, thus an address must have sent or received funds (and "change") to show on the blockchain.
Mind you that you cannot lose your Bitcoin via your address, the only downside with sharing your address is that of loss of privacy. If you use an address that isn't linked to your identity, people can of course see your transactions with the address on the blockchain, but they can't know the real person who uses the address. But an address that is connected to you can reveal your true identity, for example if you use a centralized exchange like binance that holds your personal data, if there is a data leak, people can trace and link true identities with your address because they now have your personal data; this is the reason why KYC is somewhat dangerous/risky.

It will not cause any danger unless you also exposes the private keys but it definitely a concern for privacy, and anyone can track all the transactions and balance and if someone you know personally know about these then it's definitely a big problem. So don't ever expose even the address for any reason so that your privacy won't be compromised at all.

Anybody can share their Bitcoin address online, there are many Bitcoin addresses that are visible online by the real owners, some content creators always leave their Bitcoin addresses at the end of every contents they create online, honestly,  I think Bitcoin address was meant for public use because there is no danger doing so.

The problem here is not the Bitcoin address going public but knowing who the real owner of a particular Bitcoin address, this means the owner is already a target, all eye will be on such person and if bad people are around, they can go after the person, I don't feel bad exposing my Bitcoin address online but I don't want anyone to know that I am the owner, I don't use Facebook and my twitter doesn't even have any information about myself.

I do this because I use my Twitter account for content creating and my addresses for Bitcoin and other coins are on there, imagine my Twitter account having my home address and my pictures.

You will need to share your address with someone, and once you share it, they can send it to third parties, and so on. The wisdom of your words should be advice to enhance privacy, as Bitcoin was not originally designed to be highly private, but rather highly transparent (Pseudonymous).

Tips to enhance your privacy are as follows:

• Do not reuse your address.
• Use an open source wallet enables you to connect to your own full node.
• Manage a full node through Tor and use a block explorer within Tor.
• Use address control feature.
• Do not link your address to any central platform or use mixing services to break the link.

avoiding publishing your address, it is closer to stopping using Bitcoin, because you will not guarantee that it will spread on the Internet.

Bitcoin is pseudo anonymous, this means that while every transaction is visible on the block chain it is impossible to link an identity to the address cause the blockchain does not contain that sort of information.
When you expose your personal address you break that pseudo anonymity and every transaction to and from that address can reveal more about you;
• Other addresses you own,
• Your balance across different wallets,
• Possible centralized exchanges you use,
• Hardware wallets you use,
• Other possible informations which can be hacked from the logs of a centralized exchange you're registered on or your social media pages.

Most addresses people reveal are either zero balance wallets or are not linked to any other wallets they owm

Still, it remains dangerous to post something that is very important to you. Disclosing essential details will only trigger some potential hackers to steal what you have, most especially when it comes to bitcoin as they already know that it’s a very valuable investment. Although exposing your bitcoin address will never compromised your bitcoin portfolio, but who knows, some professional hackers might even link it to your bitcoin wallet especially if you are not responsible enough keeping the security of your own account.

Yes, but you should know that it's only addresses, it doesn't have any name on it. Specially if you exposed a wallet addresses that you have control of, then I doubt that someone will know that it belongs to you unless you publicly going to state it that it is yours.

Of course, there is blockchain analysis that can track your addresses, but they really need to dig deeper and to see the connections per se.

And this is why there are traders who like to used DEX, because the exchanges doesn't require you to submit KYC and again, you have that control of your private keys which is very important.

I am aware of the consequences if you exposed your BTC address that is linked with your personal information kr personal details but it there's no personal information linked in the btc address then I don't see any problem if my btc address is exposed. I don't care if they can check the transaction in my btc address but they won't know who I am and where I sent my btc. If ever they get your personal information then I can say it's either they won't do anything at all or they use or in short, identity theft.

If you reveal even a single address, your whole wallet could be revealed if that address is used together with other addresses in your transactions. If your addresses are revealed, they can be linked to your social media, for example to address that you put on your profile on this forum. After your social media profile is identified, your identity could be uncovered if you post some photos of yourself, or leave other information.

Bitcoin only has anonymity if you put some effort into it, otherwise it's really easy to leave a lot of traces.

Hmm, yes, this is a fact if your posting your Address on some social platform then there are high chances of being traced but who cares about that privacy if anyone does then my humble question is Web 2.0 is not for you please avoid it. Because on Web 2.0 in my observations nothing is private.

Why do you need to hide your address?
You are not involved in money laundering or any type of misuse, except if your country's policy is against crypto then you should take care of it.

But bitcoin is a currency, so why always hide the bitcoin  address? Does this mean that a genuine business man cannot use bitcoin? How about the companies that accept bitcoin. They will tell you to pay with bitcoin what happens to them.
It is not very one that wants to hide;
Not everyone wants to evade tax;
Some people don't mind if you tress their address back to them;
Not everyone cares about privacy.

I'm not sure it's a good practice for beginners though, because for example when you post one address here you are linking it to your username, and then if you post your social media accounts here for some bounty campaigns or for doing some trades with other forum users, the addresses you've posted under this pseudonym will be linked to your social media accounts.

As long as your private key or seed phrases are sage with you everything is fine, after all, it is dumb to share your keys to public.
The problem you might have though from publicly declaring your bitcoin address is when people can track your transactions, you can use mixers though for best privacy. Personally, it doesn't matter if my btc address is posted publicly as I have no big transactions rn.

Why publish your main bitcoin address unnecessarily?
Create a new wallet in Electrum if you need to and post it on the forum. There will be no large transactions there, so using a VPN service will be enough for you.

It's kind of inevitable, though, isn't it? For instance, my main wallet address can easily be found through my signature campaign; it's impossible for me to hide it, which is linked to my Bitcointalk account, from which you can find my email. Thankfully, my account isn't linked to my main email address; this is an old email I'm using and I haven't changed it for this very reason. Still, even then, my identity can probably be easily discovered if someone decides to dig deep enough to find more details.

Even if you had a secondary wallet to which you'd send your funds, you'd still be able to be tracked back to your first address through the transactions. Thus, I don't see a way to avoid having any links to your Bitcoin address, unless you're using a mixer or if you were extremely careful from scratch, something that I wasn't, if I'm honest.

Posting your wallet address is not all harmful because one can't penetrate your wallet using only the address, they need to have your passphrase which are security key words for a particular acount.
Wallet address is used in sending and receiving crypto currency just like your bank account and can be shared with anyone you want to receive bitcoin from,since it can't be easily hacked by mere knowing the address.
 The most important thing to safeguard is the passphrases which servers as a security key to the wallet asides from the password or fingerprint security.
To save your passphrase you need to copy and save as draft in your secured Gmail account with a 2factor authenticator, or write it out and secure in a hidden file where it safe from water or fire outbreak.

If your wallet is protected by a passphrase, an attacker needs your seed phrase and your passphrase to gain access to your funds, mind you that what your wallet generates is your keys and your seed phrase, but you have the option to extend your seed phrase with a passphrase for more security.
What you have to secure is your seed phrase, and if you have a passphrase, you have to secure it too, but in a different location from your seed phrase, i think what you want to say is seed phrase, but you're calling it a passphrase, mind you that they are two different things. Having said that, never save your seed phrase or passphrase in your Gmail account or anywhere online you should put it on a paper and protect it.

In cryptocurrency we have the Public key and the private keys, that bitcoin address is the public key we are using the wallets can generate a lot of public keys that are used for your transactions, and the private keys are the keys used for verifying transactions, you cannot proceed a transaction if you didn't have the private key for the confirmation of sending the address.

The possible risk on your side right here is exposing the number of bitcoin or other coins you are holding to the public, even though we are using as a PUBLIC key it does not mean that you need to expose yourself too at the same time that you are the holder of that amount, this time sharing information in the internet can make a risk on your life because people know that you are holding a large amount of money..  People now can easily track the history of transaction of your bitcoin address through blockchain, but they cant identify whos address it is unless you expose you are the owner of it.

You'll be safe as long as you only post your public address regardless of whether it's one-time use address or one you use regularly in forum. The problem is when you post your storage address publicly anywhere which in turn can harm you if someone wants to hack and rob your money.

Some people who care about privacy would probably never make the mistake of posting and tell the public about the amount of bitcoin they have, it's just risky and invites a lot of threats either directly or indirectly. Being concerned about privacy is great, but I don't think there's really a threatening risk to posting our public address on forum.

True. Bitcoin is designed to be anonymous only if you are responsible enough to secure its complete anonymity. Otherwise, exposing it in social media will trigger some bitcoin hackers to start eyeing on your account as the next possible victim. And even people who are complete strangers once they know that you are a bitcoin owner, then you must have the wealth that most of the people will get envy of.

As much as possible, keep them private and stay away from online exposure. It will not make you less of an investor if you keep it to yourself and only yourself knows it exactly. Sharing bitcoin address online may not trigger your bitcoin account but maybe for some crypto experts, they might find a lead to access your account.

Bitcoin address is not a bank account that has one permanent details. You can create a whole host of new addresses for yourself and use them for a variety of purposes. One is for online purchases, the second is for donations, the third is for something else. The main thing is that there is no connection between these addresses and then there will be no danger. No one will be able to identify with the addresses unless you do it yourself. You can post the bitcoin address online. For example, to participate in the bounty campaign. But it is better not to use it again anywhere, but to generate a completely new one. New tasks - new addresses.

No one can access the cryptocurrency in a wallet by simply knowing its wallet address and if it was possible then the wallets with thousands of bitcoins will be vanished so its not a direct threat to our assets but the danger may come in other form like if someone track down our personal information with the wallets connected via KYC can bring physical dangers.

No it is not a public key. It is the hash of your public key, and a hash by definition cannot be reversed. Sure, your transactions using that address can still be tracked, but you can mitigate that by using a mixer or CoinJoin service to obfuscate the coins in that address, sending them to another address of yours in the process.

Also, it is good practice to use an address one time and then discard it for a new one afterwards.

Wrong, if Bitcoin address is like my bank account, if I make a transaction I should already know the real name of the person.

To access a Bitcoin address you don't have to know both public and private key, just a private key.

It's why you shouldn't use an email address where the username contain your real name, just use a temporary email or second email.

There's no danger if you post your Bitcoin address online, as long as you're not submit any KYC to online sites and link with your real identity. But of course it's much better to not posting anything because there's no benefit.

I will speak from the topical sentence. I don't think there is any danger when giving out bitcoin public address to people to transfer bitcoin. That address is meant for the public uses. I understand the part that you said bitcoin address is like Fiat number well there are similarities and dissimilarities. One thing in bitcoin address is that, one can change the address at anytime but that is not the same way with the bank account number. And also one thing I discovered in bitcoin address is that, changing of the address when constant inflow is in the wallet. Don't use only address through out the period. Change the address in some time. Or sell to on the people as p2p

Yes. The public key is used to receive funds to your Bitcoin address, while the private key is needed to unlock access and control the funds held at that address. These two keys are a related pair and cannot be ignored if you wish to securely access and control Bitcoin addresses. Important keep your private key secret and not share it with anyone to protect the security of we crypto assets.