Why publicise your wallet address

[Mr.right85]

What necessitates wallet address publicity?

I know the bitcoin address is a public one compared to its key that appears to be private but then,

Is it really necessary to put it up in your profile?
Doesn't it feel like putting yourself in harms way?

I've seen a couple of posts talking about brute forcing a wallet by hackers and scammers in a bid to open it up. I'm yet to hear a success testimonial in the complaints of an affected user though i wish not for such thing but,

Isn't it best not to put yourself in harms way by not publicising it without due course?
Aside from brute forcing and other means of attempted hack, should your identity be compromised and the contents of your wallet is known, it makes you a target and that shit isn't fun.

So, what really is the reason behind wallet address publicity, is there a transparency to be proved or something else?

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[bitmover]

What necessitates wallet address publicity?

I know the bitcoin address is a public one compared to its key that appears to be private but then,

Is it really necessary to put it up in your profile?
Doesn't it feel like putting yourself in harms way?

There a few reasons to put a BTC address in your profile here in bitcointalk:

1 - You can sign a message from this address to recover your account, in case you lose it or it gets hacked.
just like this topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=996318.0

2 - Someone might give you a donation, in case you helped someone.

I've seen a couple of posts talking about brute forcing a wallet by hackers and scammers in a bid to open it up. I'm yet to hear a success testimonial in the complaints of an affected user though i wish not for such thing but,

Isn't it best not to put yourself in harms way by not publicising it without due course?
Aside from brute forcing and other means of attempted hack, should your identity be compromised and the contents of your wallet is known, it makes you a target and that shit isn't fun.

In any way that address should be use to put your life savings into it. Usually people just use an address with zero or very low balance for that.
So, there isn't really a privacy problem in putting an address in your profile.

It is also impossible to brute force a bitcoin address just by knowing the address.

[NeuroticFish]

So, what really is the reason behind wallet address publicity, is there a transparency to be proved or something else?

Putting the wallet publicly in the profile helps for:
* people seeing an address of yours in case they want to tip you
* people seeing an address of yours for doing business

Although I do have an address in my profile, if/when I receive money in that address I change the address. And I advise everybody do the same.

Even more, it's advised to put an address of yours (and a signed message) in this thread to help recovering your account in case it gets hacked.

[Smartvirus]

Mainly, I think its because of the tips and sometimes in campaigns,  it proves payment for the managers following the transparent nature of the wallet address. There is any harm in having it publicised, thats why its called a public address.

With regards to the forum, it provides additional advantage in cases of a possible hack of your account. Should a signed message be provided, it goes far to prove your in control of the address attached to the account and makes the recovery steps from the hacker the more easier. Thats one advantage of being able to sign a message on an address and having it published as well.

Again, compromised identity is barely possible on btt as, the forum holds no tieds to your outside life private details except for your mail which is always hidden by default. So, a compromised identity is most likely not to be forum related except its you compromised yourself.

[examplens]

Now we had a lot of tools that pick all Bitcoin (also some other currency)addresses and their relation to forum profile. Check https://loyce.club/ or https://ninjastic.space for example. So, it is enough to write a post with your address once, at least deleted immediately afterwards, it is already written in the log somewhere.
If someone thinks it is, therefore, more subject to hack or brute force, even if it’s that simple you can hide your address. For example List of all Bitcoin addresses with a balance

Changing BTC address in the profile is okay if the change occurs on a monthly basis. But if I need almost every day to make that change, this is completely pointless and a waste of time.

[Findingnemo]

What necessitates wallet address publicity?

I know the bitcoin address is a public one compared to its key that appears to be private but then,

Is it really necessary to put it up in your profile?
Doesn't it feel like putting yourself in harms way?

I've seen a couple of posts talking about brute forcing a wallet by hackers and scammers in a bid to open it up. I'm yet to hear a success testimonial in the complaints of an affected user though i wish not for such thing but,

Isn't it best not to put yourself in harms way by not publicising it without due course?
Aside from brute forcing and other means of attempted hack, should your identity be compromised and the contents of your wallet is known, it makes you a target and that shit isn't fun.

So, what really is the reason behind wallet address publicity, is there a transparency to be proved or something else?

You no need to put your primary wallet address which is holding millions worth of BTC under your profile, even though if you did then no one is going to find you who actually you in real world because no one is going to use their actual name in the bitcointalk. And bruteforcing the recover seed is almost impossible because I read somewhere that even the super computers needs hundreds of years to brute force it.

[dkbit98]

Is it really necessary to put it up in your profile?

No it's not necessary, but some members are using that address as a safety measure for their forum accounts with signing a message and posting it in this topic Stake your Bitcoin address here.
This address doesn't have to be used for any transactions and you are using it just as a proof of ownership.

Important thing for Bitcoin privacy is not reusing addresses as much as possible to increase your privacy, and you can have many btc addresses without any connection between them.

[Welsh]

Although I do have an address in my profile, if/when I receive money in that address I change the address. And I advise everybody do the same.

Your advice is good advice if not a little bit extreme. The majority of people would probably just benefit from putting an address in their profile specifically for this forum, rather than changing it every time they receive Bitcoin. Maybe, if the amount begins to stack up, and its more money than your comfortable showing to the world, then you could change it.

Basically, my advice would be to never post your addresses where you store a significant amount of Bitcoin in, unless you are aware of the risks of publicly showing what you hold, because as soon as you do you'll likely be a bigger priority for malicious attacks. Of course, you could make sure that your Bitcoin is stored on a offline computer or something equivalent, but you would still be a target in other ways. Attackers might want to steal your Bitcointalk account if you value it, and try to ransom it.

Other than bragging rights, there's no real reason to publicly post your "main" addresses. There are a few exceptions maybe, when its a requirement to prove you own said funds before purchasing something.
 

[sheenshane]

Is it really necessary to put it up in your profile?

No it's not necessary, but some members are using that address as a safety measure for their forum accounts with signing a message and posting it in this topic Stake your Bitcoin address here.
This address doesn't have to be used for any transactions and you are using it just as a proof of ownership.

I tend to agree and I also have a Bitcoin address on my profile for the purpose of proof of ownership, we don't know what will happen next when our valuable account in the forum will get hacked.  So, in able to recover, you can simply sign a message on that address as proof of ownership besides on the staking address thread mentioned above.

If you're concerned is privacy while holding a big fund, you can create your cold storage wallet for the purpose of saving a huge fund separate to the address that you've used in the forum, to avoid not being linked from the Bitcoin address that you've used in forum, you may able to use mixer service to increase your anonymity.

There's nothing wrong IMO, putting Bitcoin address on our profile, which we know not all of our fund saving there.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

I tend to agree and I also have a Bitcoin address on my profile for the purpose of proof of ownership, we don't know what will happen next when our valuable account in the forum will get hacked.  So, in able to recover, you can simply sign a message on that address as proof of ownership besides on the staking address thread mentioned above.

Address on your profile can easily be changed by your or hackers. It does not make any sense to prove your ownership if your account is hacked. The signed message and the post was quoted by someone else with your staked address help you.

Your signed message won't make much sense if it was not quoted by any others. You or hackers can delete or edit that post. Data scrapers can have their unofficial data but it belongs another thing. The forum has its trash can that can help too. However, for public eyes, a signed message that is quoted makes more sense.

If you're concerned is privacy while holding a big fund, you can create your cold storage wallet for the purpose of saving a huge fund separate to the address that you've used in the forum, to avoid not being linked from the Bitcoin address that you've used in forum, you may able to use mixer service to increase your anonymity.

It is a leak and take care of yourself if you do so. Leak when be seen or archived, can not be deleted. So make sure that the address you add to your signature or profile won't harm you at any levels.

[Scripture]

So, what really is the reason behind wallet address publicity, is there a transparency to be proved or something else?

To easily copy and paste my address every time I apply for a campaign or if someone asked me about my address.

Maybe we can consider to update the system just like the option on email where we can hide it to the public.
I don't know if this is possible, but it can be consider for sure.

[lovesmayfamilis]

I am not inclined to wait for any donations and therefore support the OP that there is no need to publish wallet addresses. However, any member who participates in the subscription campaign shows their wallet addresses when registering.
Thus, if someone is interested in the quality of this wallet, he can easily check it in the spreadsheets of managers. Probably, most often scammers are interested in the wallets of the participants in the Chipmixer subscription.
Also, I know of many cases of recovering hacked accounts, when information about the existence of a wallet was taken not from a personal page, but from a profile history.

[webtricks]

Just putting the address on the profile doesn't increase the chance of brute force by any mean. Blockchain on whole is publicly available. Hacker would be better off searching the addresses loaded with bitcoins on Block Explorer rather than lurking the profile pages to target one.

About compromising identity, yeah, I agree to some extent but again how is this different from posting your address on facebook or twitter profile? It's a public forum and others will only know what you wanna share with them. Adding an address to the profile can be a good practice if you only want to use it for your forum identity and stuffs but can be a very bad practice if you use the same address to hold your all bitcoins or withdraw directly from it to the KYCed-Exchange.

[jseverson]

I've seen a couple of posts talking about brute forcing a wallet by hackers and scammers in a bid to open it up. I'm yet to hear a success testimonial in the complaints of an affected user though i wish not for such thing but,

You can't brute force a private key from just a Bitcoin address, so publicizing it doesn't come with any significant risks apart from associating it with your identity.

A quantum computer theoretically could brute force the private key with the public key (revealed whenever you spend with that address) though, which is one of the reasons why address reuse is frowned upon.

If you want to be completely safe from brute forcing and at the same time use a public address, you can simply get a new address every time you spend from it -- you can safely use the same address for receiving for years as long as you don't touch the coins in it.

[Upgrade00]

A quantum computer theoretically could brute force the private key with the public key (revealed whenever you spend with that address) though, which is one of the reasons why address reuse is frowned upon.

Isn't the address also revealed whenever one receives into it?
Address reuse prevents people looking in from outside to be able to link multiple addresses to a single identity, but I do not think it could practically help in a scenario where quantum computing becomes a reality. All transactions are publicly available on the blockchain and even if one used an new address each time, they would need to have received bitcoins into the public key already, which would have already exposed it.

[jseverson]

-snip-

Isn't the address also revealed whenever one receives into it?
Address reuse prevents people looking in from outside to be able to link multiple addresses to a single identity, but I do not think it could practically help in a scenario where quantum computing becomes a reality. All transactions are publicly available on the blockchain and even if one used an new address each time, they would need to have received bitcoins into the public key already, which would have already exposed it.

Nope, simply receiving doesn't expose it:

Only unused addresses are quantum secure, but in reality, there are a lot of people, who reuse addresses. (To clarify: with unused I mean an address that has only been used to deposit funds on, and not used to make transactions from. Because if you make a deposit, or if others transfer funds to your address as payments, your public key stays hidden, but if you make a transaction from that address to another address, your public key will be revealed. See for a detailed explanation, part 2.)

Using a new address each time you spend does help in this case.

[Mr.right85]

On the bases of account recovery, it might seem right but then, it doesn't really feel safe to me to have the wrong people know of what comes in and out of a wallet. Worst still, having a compromised identity.

There once existed a thread on this this board, I think it was created by Charle-Tim if I recall correctly and it was about thefts of this nature. Where a Chinese citizen was harassed and have her wallet emptied by previous peer 2 peer business associates. This is possible because of compromised identity and it could as well happen t anyone in the forum on maybe a different ground.
Compromised identity could result in a lot of things, breaking and entry, death threat and others. So, I still don't feel safe. That the wallet can't be brute forced isn't all the safety that is to warrant such publicity.

[hd49728]

So, what really is the reason behind wallet address publicity, is there a transparency to be proved or something else?

To easily copy and paste my address every time I apply for a campaign or if someone asked me about my address.

Maybe we can consider to update the system just like the option on email where we can hide it to the public.
I don't know if this is possible, but it can be consider for sure.

OP discussed about the bitcoin address, not email address. Your idea requires a system upgrade that can be impossible with SMF forum and only one coder, theymos.

Besides limitations of SMF forum and resources, security is another problem. Your account can be hacked and it is not smart to save your bitcoin address in your profile page. Even you decide to hide it from public vision.

You can save your bitcoin address on your computer, encrypt the file. The idea to store it in profile page, in email, in browser or unencrypted file is bad.

[hatshepsut93]

Your Bitcoin address is not like your bank account, you can create as many addresses as you want. Publicly showing your not yet used address is not a big risk, you just have to remember that you did this and be careful not to link it with your other addresses, by using them in a single transaction or sending coins from them to the same address. Most wallets allow adding notes to your addresses, and you can also "freeze" certain address to not use it in transactions - this is known as coin control, and it's an important skill to learn, if you're concerned about privacy.

[CryptocurencyKing]

There are two sides to the codes generated by a wallet. One is for general publicity and thats the public address  while the other is for private purposes and that's the private key or seed phrase. The choice as to how one chooses to deal with the publicity of there address is very much up to that user and it isn't in itself harmful otherwise, it won't have been referred to as a public address. Besides, a new address could be generated at every point so, if your to be cautious, using an empty wallet address could provide some sense of comfort.