You're quite right - I was mistaking the description field in the wallet as an integral part of the transaction record in the blockchain. It isn't.

Similar to the password to your bank account with a zillion dollars, you are crossing borders with a key that gives you access to fiat currency,  but no currency or currency instrument is on your person. But good question.

Also I think the IRS doesn't treat bitcoin like a currency?

Cex.io is UK based and is listed on the BitcoinCash.org page.

ViaBTC tells you a bit about itself and where they are based....
Yobit doesn't disclose any of that in an easy to find way....

I think I need to just try it out by paying myself and see what happens!

I will explore Bitblender and, not that I am trying to pay anyone but if I were paying two people, and don't want either to know how much the other was paid, the simpler way from what I gathered in this forum/discussion is to pay in two separate transactions using two different 'from' addresses.

Generating customized addresses at the press of a button for each payer/donor, may be optimal from a transactional POV, and the technical know-how to do so may exist, but if I am not mistaken, today, it would be beyond the reach of an average fundraiser or barista.


My understanding was that the blockchain is all about the chain of transactions themselves, not what the transaction's purpose is? You could easily accomplish the business needs of identifying payers and transactions by asking them to include their invoice or customer ID number in the 'description' when sending a payment. Maybe that increases bytes and the transaction fee but not by much. If they forget, they don't get pie or get very stale pie after sorting out the oversight.

My sense is that the level of granularity that you are describing is typical of a smoothly functioning business, but trying to achieve that at the level of addresses would make it unattractively complex and unworkable, I would think, if anyone tried to do it today. For starters, there seem to be some very smart people here on this site, but I am pretty sure the bitcoin address on their profile page is not customized for each visitor to their page; it's exactly like Julie's flyer with a single address being served up to all visitors.

While I see the privacy enhancements that can come with adopting single use addresses, I would imagine there is a balance to be struck with effort+cost of privacy. If Julie were selling sex toys, say, then privacy becomes that much more important to her and to her customers. But if she were just passing around a collection plate, she may get nothing if the process is much more complicated than pulling out your wallet (the cowhide kind) and grabbing a coin or two (the metal kind) and tossing them in. Same for the go-go boys and topless dancers of tomorrow - scanning a QR code and picking a suggested donation amount on their phone is within the capacity of most people who are still not too intoxicated to walk and talk. Add more clicks to the process - there go the tips.


Most of that flew over my head, but I do recall reading some years ago about private keys being deciphered with sloppy wallets.  This has been an enlightening discussion, thank you, I learned a lot.

Yes, I was talking about a new cryptocurrency issued by a governmental authority. I believe the Bank of England studied or is studying the practicality of issuing one. If BCH ends up being predominantly a Chinese cryptocurrency, it's not a far stretch to see the authorities coerce a "replacement" cryptocurrency that also builds in an individual ID trace. Or even if the US Fed issues one, if it ever gets there, any input from DHS and NSA will, I think, likely lean very heavily towards stripping anonymity out of the cryptocurrency - just the nature of the beast.

Thank you, yes, I see the last part is where the veil can get lifted - when you can match an address to a person. So, in theory, you can break the anonymity if a digital currency is issued by governmental authority  and allows/requires embedding unique individual IDs into the receiving addresses as they are generated.

Wow, that is a very meticulous, detailed, and thought-out reply!  To my embarrassingly sloppy and semi-articulate question. Nevertheless, your reply answers my question (and then some)  - which was if two people can see the components of a bundled transaction; yes, they can, and they can piece together more, based on who knew what and when.

I have a follow-up:

Why should Julie have used a separate address for each payment she received?  Julie is raising funds to pay for the education of people who ask silly questions about Jack and Jill, and while she may post flyers around campus, each with a unique QR code, each of those addresses will, she hopes, wind up getting multiple donations/payments.  

This is neither intuitive nor does it make sense. An address was created and never used and is empty; or if used, it has a transaction history that nets out to its current contents (0 or greater). What you are saying is that an address can hold greater than 0 but can be masked to show 0?

Thanks. Yobit certainly has the snazziest website of the lot.... but you maybe right, ViaBTC may be the better option;  even though the Terms of Use have a Seinfeld  "No soup for you" finger-wagging quality to them!  Took a bit of Googling to find out that Yobit was based in Russia

Say Julie pays Jack and Jill 0.10 BTC each in the same transaction, from an address with 2 BTC in it. Can Jack and Jill both see that the another address got paid, and that Julie has ~1.8 BTC left over? Am I understanding that right?

Thanks, I'll take a look at BitcoinABC - I saw a couple other people mention using it. That way I can hang on to the BCH and not have to rush to sell it. Speaking of - is there a BCH to BTC exchange you use?

Thanks. This is exactly what I am half-way through doing. I'll have to move Electrum back again but ...

I'm the admin and user and hey-you all rolled into one... Have no idea why Electrum works on the desktop but Electron Cash doesn't but it's beyond my capacity to figure it out

You will not see any Bitcoin Cash/BCH  in Electrum only regular Bitcoin/BTC. You have no BTC in your Electrum wallet, as you seem to have moved it all out on Aug 2; so you will see nothing under Coins.

That said, if you click on the "Addresses" tab, you will see the addresses that you can right-click on and select the option to explore on the blockchain. The wallet itself has no "address" - the wallet contains the addresses that hold/contain coins. HTH

EDIT: Sorry - right-click on the transaction in the History tab and check "Details" - you will find the address under "input" - take that and look it up on a blockchain explorer if you know where one is. Blockchain.info will only give BTC balance which will be 0 since you moved it out of there. Google 'BCH blockchain explore' And post here please if you find one where it works....

I have a Mac MBA which has my Electrum wallets, old and new. I also have a hackintosh desktop on which I tried to install Electron Cash but it crashes on launch. Googling it results in pages of hits about BCH crashing on launch! Anyway, my question:

1. As precaution, I copy me Electrum wallets to a USB, delete them off my main user account.
2. Create and login as a new user and install Electron Cash there, and import the seeds/keys holding the BCH.

I'm guessing that should be safe? I tried accessing my main user directories from the secondary user account but, of course, I cannot. I'm wondering if that's only because I don't know how to really scan everything on a drive outside of a GUI, or is that pretty difficult even for super-smart malware hackers?  Any other alternatives?

Go to the "Coins" tab in Electrum. If you don't see a Coins tab, look under the "Wallet" drop-down menu. (This is on a Mac, should be the same/similar on Windows too) You will find your coins listed there with the addresses and balances.

Two things can come up false-positive for entirely different reasons unless you have taken out the suspect variable and determined that that is the only one causing false-positives? I don't know anything about AVs but if it reports the specific lines of code that are raising malware flags on both....

If it is not too complicated, can you explain why letting the wallet choose is better?

Also held down CMD (on a Mac) and selected the coins to spend, and both showed up in a "From" box on the send tab as you said. I stopped there. Address A was 2 coins and (change) address B was say 0.84 and I wanted to send you 2 coins even.  If I did go through with the send, would it automatically send you 2 coins from address A and take the fee from the change address B? If Electrum starts by taking out the fees first, I would end up with change in A and B would be empty. A little arcane... and a tad OCD perhaps!

Would it be possible to send a whole coin from one address and the fee comes from the change purse?