Thanks for the tip about the change addresses.
Im using bitcoin core full node with bitcoin-cli its running from my server which has no screen.

Can I modify the change address settings so it doesn't fragment my coins from bitcoin-cli. ?

Now Im really confused.

Why is it a terrible Idea to create a wallet and use it for my business ?.

If I was worried about privacy id use Monero.

Cant I just make a wallet. Create an address and then let it be well known that this is where you send bitcoin to pay me ?
And then pay my out goings out of that same wallet.

A bit like having a bank account ?

Am I supposed to create a new address for every new person who wants to pay me ?

If I want to buy coins on an exchange to top up my wallet am I supposed to create a new address for receiving and then go through the drama of white listing
that address every single time ?

Also,

It sounds like if I want to put some bitcoin away for later I need to create a new wallet, create an address, send coins to the address, export the private key and then delete the wallet.dat file. Thats the only way I can be sure that my coins will stay at the new address and I can access them later with the private key ?

Ok,

I forgot to mention I made a couple of transfers out of the wallet.
It looks like this is what caused the balance to be spread across multiple "change" addresses.

So Im still trying to understand exactly how bitcoin-core works.

Its important Im completely on top of this because I plan to use the wallet for my business.

It looks like if I want to put some bitcoin aside for later I can make a new address send the coins there, export the private
and hide it somewhere safe. As long as I don't try any send coins from that address and just leave it alone they will all stay where
they are and I can get access to them later with the private key no wallet.day needed. Is this correct ?

The problem here is that my main wallet address will be doing lots of sending and receiving every day. It seems that bitcoin core creates lots of extra
"change" addresses and fragments the balance across many addresses. So in this case I must create a cronjob that backs up the whole wallet.dat file as often as possible and sends it to a safe place. I read that the wallet.dat has 100 spare address and creates 100 more when it runs out ?.
This means that if the wallet was hit with a lot of transactions between backups and the server died coins may be lost forever. Is this correct ?

Is the solution to this issue just a very high frequency of wallet.dat backups ?

Also, Instead for managing the wallet myself I could use some other companies wallet service and pay. Companies typically give you a seed phrase to remember when you create your new wallet with them. I am assuming the phrase is only useful to restore my wallet via their website. If for example one day that company and all its servers vanished there would be no way to recover my coins with their seed phrase ? Is this true ?

All advice appreciated.

I want to have full control of my bitcoin so I install bitcoin-cli and wait a couple of days for it to sync

I create a new wallet address.

Then I use bitcoin-cli dumpprivkey "MYNEWADDRESS" to dump the private key and make a copy of it.

My understanding is that now any coins that I send to that address can be recovered with that key if my computer blows up.

I log onto a couple of exchanges and buy some bitcoin and send it to my new address.

bitcoin-cli getbalance reveals that it is all there.

so far so good.

Then I take my new address and put it into a blockchain explorer. It shows a much lower balance than getbalance.

Now Im very confused and worried.

I type bitcoin-cli listaddressgroupings

It shows 4 addresses only one of which I created. My coins are all there but spread between the addresses.

Now Im really worried. Looks like I dont understand how this thing works.
In my mind I expect that if I send all my coins to an address they would arrive there I didn;t ask to have them spread across different addresses.

Can the private key that I dumped from the original address be used to recover %100 of the coins or only the ones located on that address.

Can someone please explain to me whats going on ?
How can I backup my coins.

Ive been using the full node  monero wallet recently and its great. As long as I write down my seed phrase I can sleep at night. My coins are protected.
What is the Bitcoin core equivalent of this ?

Thanks for responding ...

Here are my unconfirmed transactions.

Transaction id :

a181de55bcc613170f3c99be8f0648dd55febf911f5adc2ac11e8697dbd1efce

for 0.011 Bitcoin

And

e97dd729dd979e87630fa4a1d65692f1c5ac944d208be49ea8ae6deb74f331b0

for 0.30 Bitcoin

And advice is much appreciated.

Sounds like my best plan is to wait 3 weeks let them return to my wallet, upgrade electrum to the latest
and try again. Does that sound fair ?

Hi,

I recently bought a ledger and set up a new google chrome wallet I choose segwit when I created it.
As a test I tried moving a small amount of bit coin from my old electrum wallet (version 2.6.3) to my new wallet.
This transaction has been unconfirmed for 5 days.

The transaction was for 0.011 BTC
The link to block explorer shows the transaction as unconfirmed but the fees as 0.060475 BTC

Which makes no sense. The actual amount that left my electrum wallet is showing as 0.011112 BTC

The funds have appeared in my ledger wallet but have been showing as unconfirmed for 5 days.

Then yesterday. I did a much larger transaction to a third party company I have been dealing with.
This transaction is also unconfirmed but only for a few hours so far.
In the case of the second transaction the fees and the amount that left my wallet are the same.
But Im really really stressed now.

Questions.....

1) If someone got my electrum wallet seed restored my wallet and spent the coins what would it look like ?
     Could this be whats happened?

2) Could sending the coins to my new ledger wallet with the segwit capabilites have caused this ?

3) What do I do now ?. If I just wait and do nothing will the transactions eventually be returned to my electrum wallet ?

Thanks...