removing bitcoin addresses

[SheriffWoody]

Is there any way to remove bitcoin addresses that you have generated for yourself? What about if you have received payments to those addresses? Are they needed to show ownership for the coins after they have been transferred?

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[sirius]

A question to Satoshi: have you tested the program with thousands of own addresses in the wallet? If I make a new address for each automated transaction, it's going to be a big amount. Or maybe I could reuse the addresses, given a big enough pool.

[satoshi]

SheriffWoody:
Bitcoin addresses you generate are kept forever.  A bitcoin address must be kept to show ownership of anything sent to it.  If you were able to delete a bitcoin address and someone sent to it, the money would be lost.  They're only about 500 bytes.

sirius-m:
Thousands of own addresses should not be any problem at all.  If you've generated 50000 BTC, then you already have 1000 own addresses, one for each 50 generated.  Those are hidden, they're not shown in the UI.

It would be a good idea to add a little code that keeps giving the same address to the same IP.  Here's what I did in C++ to keep giving the same key (aka bitcoin address) until they use it:

    // Keep giving the same key to the same ip until they use it
    if (!mapReuseKey.count(pfrom->addr.ip))
        mapReuseKey[pfrom->addr.ip] = GenerateNewKey();
    
    ...sends the key mapReuseKey[pfrom->addr.ip]

...later...

    // Received something with this key
    mapReuseKey.erase(pfrom->addr.ip);

If it's not convenient to know when you've received, just clear the cached keys every 20 minutes.

I want to add a parameter to getnewaddress for number of days to expire if nothing is received with the address.

[tsr]

Hi,

since i haven't found a similar thread to my problem i think maybe my problem has something to do with the "autogenerated not shown addresses" Satoshi mentioned before.

Well, for some time i noticed that sometimes an autogenerated receiving-address is added to my addressbook with no description at all.
Today just after noticing the (already second one of this) i closed the addressbook and reopened it again and suddenly there was a new one. Now i have three of those. 

I'm not sure if it was because i got bitcoin in the timeframe or there is just a bug in the GUI of the addressbook window.

Anyone else experienced this bug, or maybe this is a "normal" behaviour which i haven't found in the docs yet?

[theymos]

I'm not sure if it was because i got bitcoin in the timeframe or there is just a bug in the GUI of the addressbook window.

Anyone else experienced this bug, or maybe this is a "normal" behaviour which i haven't found in the docs yet?

It is expected behavior, though probably those addresses should be labeled more descriptively. Bitcoin automatically generates one of these no-label addresses whenever you receive BTC at the address listed in the "your Bitcoin address" area. The new address replaces the old address in "your Bitcoin address" to encourage you not to re-use addresses.

[tsr]

It is expected behavior, though probably those addresses should be labeled more descriptively. Bitcoin automatically generates one of these no-label addresses whenever you receive BTC at the address listed in the "your Bitcoin address" area. The new address replaces the old address in "your Bitcoin address" to encourage you not to re-use addresses.

Ohh ok, thanks! Was already worried that maybe my wallet file was broken.