Newbie question - send bitcoins to myself to tidy my payments and addresses use.

[Geraintjdotcom]

Hi all.

I'm looking to tidy up the mess i've made if my wallet since starting bitcoin - I was using the same public address for all my transactions but I now know better, I hope!

Can i create other addresses in bitcoinQT and send the correct amount to that?

My question is can I send bitcoins to myself in the same wallet? Will they arrive safely? (I basically want to have an address each for the 3 different services I have used and pay the correct amount of my total to each address, to keep track of where my money has come from.)

Apologies if this is a trivial/pointless/long/stupid post, just trying to learn!

Thanks!

GJ


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Edit: title topic.

[DarkLegacy]

I have no idea if this is possible but it probably is... maybe...

[K1773R]

wrong strategy, give 1 unique address per client/user, give them a option to renew this address too. the wiki covers such situations.

[lassdas]

You can send bitcoins to ANY other bitcoin-address.
So yes, you can send bitcoins to yourself and they will arrive safely (to be honest, bitcoins don't arrive, they don't move at all, only access to them moves from address to address).

[casascius]

You can send coins to yourself, it works as expected.

I do this regularly myself to consolidate small incoming transactions into larger ones, and then break them up into paper wallets with round denominations that make it easy to count any arbitrary amount out of a handful, just like with paper dollars.

[Geraintjdotcom]

Thanks casascius!

Glad to see it's not just my ocd on keeping records!

I'm really surprised you've replied! The real bitcoins you sell (with the code inside) are the reason I'm trying out mining. I fancy owning a real bitcoin in that form, and as you only accept bitcoins I thought I'd try and mine enough to buy one!

Doing well so far I have almost enough to buy the 1btc! (But still after more to pay shipping!)

Thanks again!

GJ


P.s. I'm not too proud to ask for donations! Please note they will be spent on the casascius real bitcoins  

1FLc17px3riPeERGPWtiWmGxLfKjv1CCgP

[DeathAndTaxes]

Well to answer you direct question ...  Yes you can send coins from one address to another address in a wallet.  The network has no concepts of wallets.  Everything is an address and any coin can be sent to any address from any address (even itself).

However it likely isn't going to do what you want it to do.  You said the purpose is to keep balances straight.  When you send coins they are going to be sent from any address (the reference client doesn't provide ability to select the tx source) which means the balances are quickly going to get "messed up again".

[Johnathan]

You can send coins to yourself, it works as expected.

I do this regularly myself to consolidate small incoming transactions into larger ones, and then break them up into paper wallets with round denominations that make it easy to count any arbitrary amount out of a handful, just like with paper dollars.

When combining small inputs into a single output this way, the ownership of the previously used addresses gets linked together.  Do you have any experience with using e-wallet mixing services such as that of blockchain.info to overcome this?  I've read several of your posts in other forums regarding ways to implement a mixing service, but I'd like to hear what you think are the best ways of accomplishing this with what exists now.

[slavko]

You can send coins to yourself, it works as expected.

I do this regularly myself to consolidate small incoming transactions into larger ones, and then break them up into paper wallets with round denominations that make it easy to count any arbitrary amount out of a handful, just like with paper dollars.

When combining small inputs into a single output this way, the ownership of the previously used addresses gets linked together.  Do you have any experience with using e-wallet mixing services such as that of blockchain.info to overcome this?  I've read several of your posts in other forums regarding ways to implement a mixing service, but I'd like to hear what you think are the best ways of accomplishing this with what exists now.

the blockchain.info mix is charge 1-2% for the service.  i tried myself with 200 coins

[Johnathan]

When combining small inputs into a single output this way, the ownership of the previously used addresses gets linked together.  Do you have any experience with using e-wallet mixing services such as that of blockchain.info to overcome this?  I've read several of your posts in other forums regarding ways to implement a mixing service, but I'd like to hear what you think are the best ways of accomplishing this with what exists now.

the blockchain.info mix is charge 1-2% for the service.  i tried myself with 200 coins

Sure, that's on their site.  But I still don't know if it's possible to combine multiple outputs in a way that doesn't link them.  If you are holding balances in several addresses in their wallet, then send an anonymous (their word), larger transaction to another address, does it create a transaction to their mix wallet for each address you hold, or does it combine them into a single transaction and thus again link them together?  I guess I could try it with some small amount to find out.

[K1773R]

When combining small inputs into a single output this way, the ownership of the previously used addresses gets linked together.  Do you have any experience with using e-wallet mixing services such as that of blockchain.info to overcome this?  I've read several of your posts in other forums regarding ways to implement a mixing service, but I'd like to hear what you think are the best ways of accomplishing this with what exists now.

the blockchain.info mix is charge 1-2% for the service.  i tried myself with 200 coins

Sure, that's on their site.  But I still don't know if it's possible to combine multiple outputs in a way that doesn't link them.  If you are holding balances in several addresses in their wallet, then send an anonymous (their word), larger transaction to another address, does it create a transaction to their mix wallet for each address you hold, or does it combine them into a single transaction and thus again link them together?  I guess I could try it with some small amount to find out.

if you combine then they are linked, logic?

[Johnathan]

Sure, that's on their site.  But I still don't know if it's possible to combine multiple outputs in a way that doesn't link them.  If you are holding balances in several addresses in their wallet, then send an anonymous (their word), larger transaction to another address, does it create a transaction to their mix wallet for each address you hold, or does it combine them into a single transaction and thus again link them together?  I guess I could try it with some small amount to find out.

if you combine then they are linked, logic?

If you combine multiple addresses as inputs to a new transaction, then blockchain analysis can see that the original addresses are all controlled by a single entity.  I'm trying to figure out if one can use the blockchain.info mixer in a way that doesn't do this.  It doesn't look like it.

Let's say I have 15 individual addresses with random amounts that I want to merge up to make a larger, single output.  It would be useful if I could spend each of these addresses *in separate transactions* to the mixer incoming address, so they don't become linked.  Then the mixer would do its thing to transfer the total amount from the mixing wallet, as one or more inputs, to my requested destination address.  From what I can see, this can't be done.

Anyway, I've sort of hijacked the OP's thread, so I should just start a new topic in the relevant forum.

[K1773R]

Sure, that's on their site.  But I still don't know if it's possible to combine multiple outputs in a way that doesn't link them.  If you are holding balances in several addresses in their wallet, then send an anonymous (their word), larger transaction to another address, does it create a transaction to their mix wallet for each address you hold, or does it combine them into a single transaction and thus again link them together?  I guess I could try it with some small amount to find out.

if you combine then they are linked, logic?

If you combine multiple addresses as inputs to a new transaction, then blockchain analysis can see that the original addresses are all controlled by a single entity.  I'm trying to figure out if one can use the blockchain.info mixer in a way that doesn't do this.  It doesn't look like it.

Let's say I have 15 individual addresses with random amounts that I want to merge up to make a larger, single output.  It would be useful if I could spend each of these addresses *in separate transactions* to the mixer incoming address, so they don't become linked.  Then the mixer would do its thing to transfer the total amount from the mixing wallet, as one or more inputs, to my requested destination address.  From what I can see, this can't be done.

Anyway, I've sort of hijacked the OP's thread, so I should just start a new topic in the relevant forum.

well u can, if u send every input to a mixer in a single transactions and the mixer sends them back to a specific adress, they wont be linked.

[Krax]

Why not set up a VM with bitcoinQT and send the coins there?