balance shrinking after unconfirmed spending

[pompus]

So i tried to send an amount of 0.001433 BTC with 0 fee .
The amount being 0.001433 BTC as you can see . The transaction is not really important to me , so i just left it being unconfirmed .
2 days later i suddenly notice my wallet balance has shrunk by an extra 0.01000503 .


I have no idea what this extra 0.01000503 BTC next to the original amount (0.001433 BTC) is doing there .

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me has a guestimation of what's going on .

[Lutpin]

That's a change address.
You can't spend parts of inputs to your address, you will always have to use up the whole input. If you're sending a payment that is smaller than your input, this results in some leftover bitcoins.
You can send this "additional bitcoins" either back to the sending address or to a newly generated address, which usually is the better option, as it provides more anonymity.
The private key to your change address should be saved in your wallet.dat and hence give you full control over that change.
You can read a more in-detail explanation about the principle of change over at the bitcoin wiki.

[pompus]

Hi Lutpin , thank you for your help . Very interesting .

I'm not sure I fully understand the principle , even after reading that wiki page .
Does this mean every time i sent money i have to keep an eye on the added amount so i can recover it ?
I have done a transaction in the past where also funds were added : https://blockchain.info/nl/tx/df10ea0023eac09f2c6f3a95387119b3a463bfc175066ade8227c4957f45d74e

It was an extra 0.01000034 BTC . So i need to recover those myself ?

[Lutpin]

What wallet software are you using?
Change addresses should be automatically added to your wallet, and you should not need to manually "recover that amount".

[achow101]

Hi Lutpin , thank you for your help . Very interesting .

I'm not sure I fully understand the principle , even after reading that wiki page .
Does this mean every time i sent money i have to keep an eye on the added amount so i can recover it ?
I have done a transaction in the past where also funds were added : https://blockchain.info/nl/tx/df10ea0023eac09f2c6f3a95387119b3a463bfc175066ade8227c4957f45d74e

It was an extra 0.01000034 BTC . So i need to recover those myself ?

There is nothing you need to recover. Your wallet software automatically generates those addresses for you. It then sends the change to a newly generated address that is still in your wallet. Those Bitcoin are still yours and you can still spend them.

Please keep in mind that addresses are not the same as wallets. Rather a wallet is a collection of addresses.

[pompus]

What wallet software are you using?
Change addresses should be automatically added to your wallet, and you should not need to manually "recover that amount".

I am using the original bitcoin core 12.1 .

The wiki sais : "However, the GUI in the default client does not display them in the address book, therefore a recommendation is to backup wallet.dat every 50 transactions"
I guess I am using the default client (?) and this is probably why I don't see these transactions in my transaction history , hence the confusion ?

[achow101]

What wallet software are you using?
Change addresses should be automatically added to your wallet, and you should not need to manually "recover that amount".

I am using the original bitcoin core 12.1 .

The wiki sais : "However, the GUI in the default client does not display them in the address book, therefore a recommendation is to backup wallet.dat every 50 transactions"
I guess I am using the default client (?) and this is probably why I don't see these transactions in my transaction history , hence the confusion ?

Change is not another transaction, it is another output of a transaction. The wallet automatically manages the change for you, so you do not need to manage anything. However, you should back up your wallet every 100 transactions since the wallet pregenerates 100 new addresses and after one hundred transactions without address reuse, your old backups will not have any new addresses so you may lose Bitcoin.

[pompus]

I completely understand now . Thank you .