STATIC ADDRESS

[yetski]

Hi my apologies coz I am rather new in this community. Anyways here's my question.

I needed a STATIC ADDRESS where people sending me bitcoins would just use one bitcoin address from me and I won't have to give them a new address everytime.

I have both electrum in my cellphone and my laptop.

I went to RECEIVED page on my electrum (in my laptop) and click NEVER in the "expires at" drop down menu.

I am waiting to received my bitcoin then when I tried to check on my electrum on my cellphone, it shows EXPIRED on the receiving address that I mentioned that I've clicked NEVER expires.

Just want to ask if I would still be able to receive my bitcoin, coz I read in the net that addresses assigned to your wallet would not expire and is assigned to you for a long time and can be re used.

Please help and stay safe everyone.

Thank you. 

[1715611909]

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[1715611909]

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[1715611909]

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[1715611909]

1715611909

[NeuroticFish]

Hi my apologies coz I am rather new in this community. Anyways here's my question.

I needed a STATIC ADDRESS where people sending me bitcoins would just use one bitcoin address from me and I won't have to give them a new address everytime.

I have both electrum in my cellphone and my laptop.

I went to RECEIVED page on my electrum (in my laptop) and click NEVER in the "expires at" drop down menu.

I am waiting to received my bitcoin then when I tried to check on my electrum on my cellphone, it shows EXPIRED on the receiving address that I mentioned that I've clicked NEVER expires.

Just want to ask if I would still be able to receive my bitcoin, coz I read in the net that addresses assigned to your wallet would not expire and is assigned to you for a long time and can be re used.

Please help and stay safe everyone.

Thank you.  

1. Please move your thread to Beginners and Help. (bottom-left, move topic)

2. The addresses don't expire. Only the related receipts may expire, but that doesn't matter in your case.
So just use that receive address you've got, it's just fine and as long as your wallet exists it won't expire.
You can also do Show->View addresses and you'll see the current (they may be more in the future) addresses in your wallet. You can also copy one of those if it feels safer  

3. Since you are new with Electrum, I also recommend you make sure you use Electrum downloaded from https://electrum.org and verified: https://bitcoinelectrum.com/how-to-verify-your-electrum-download/

4. Keep your wallet and seed safe, anybody having the seed can spend your funds, so you better save it to paper and clearly not into mail, Dropbox and such.

[decodx]

Just want to ask if I would still be able to receive my bitcoin, coz I read in the net that addresses assigned to your wallet would not expire and is assigned to you for a long time and can be re used.

Yes, all the addresses assigned to your wallet can be used again. They never expire, and you can see them by choosing the "Addresses" tab in the Electrum user interface (desktop version). You'll find that in some addresses it says "receiving" and in some "change", but that doesn't mean anything, and you can use "change" addresses to receive as well.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

4. Keep your wallet and seed safe, anybody having the seed can spend your funds, so you better save it to paper and clearly not into mail, Dropbox and such.

OP have some options to back up.
- The best solution: back up the seed phrase. Double test the validity of back up before sending bitcoin to that wallet. It is to make sure that OP writes down seed phrase correctly and will be able to recover the wallet with the back up in the future.
- Other solutions:
+ Back up the wallet file: copy it and save it to multiple files. Save those files offline. Back up the password of wallet file if OP encrypted it. Without password, OP won't be able to access the wallet file. If OP has seed phrase, the wallet will be able recovered. It is the reason the first solution is best.
+ Back up private key of one address: In Electrum, click on Receive tab, choose one address to use, right click and choose Private key. Enter password of wallet and OP will get the private key for that address.
+ Back up 42 default receiving address: in Electrum, click on Wallet, Private key, Export. Enter the password and wait a few seconds to get list of default 42 receiving address. Two options to save the file: in CSV or JSON. Click Export to finish.

[ranochigo]

I am waiting to received my bitcoin then when I tried to check on my electrum on my cellphone, it shows EXPIRED on the receiving address that I mentioned that I've clicked NEVER expires.

That's weird. Electrum shouldn't do this by itself.

Right click the requests, click Copy Requests and paste it into a text editor/notepad and check what is the exp=. It shouldn't be there. It wouldn't matter if it expires or not as you're going to be receiving multiple payments to the same address. Fair warning, this will result in both your and your sender's privacy being compromised as it is easy to tell apart the transactions when the address is reused.

[hugeblack]

You can reuse your bitcoin address as you like, but many wallets try to make users use several addresses for reasons the most important of which is privacy, you can read more about this ----> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A3urPFkx8g

You can get STATIC ADDRESS in two ways:

 - Import a paper wallet with one private key. you can read more ---> https://bitcoinelectrum.com/importing-your-private-keys-into-electrum/
 - Change the gap limit

you can change the gap limit by open Console tab and type:

Code:

wallet.change_gap_limit(1)
wallet.storage.write()

[DireWolfM14]

I am waiting to received my bitcoin then when I tried to check on my electrum on my cellphone, it shows EXPIRED on the receiving address that I mentioned that I've clicked NEVER expires.

Electrum allows you to create "Requests" or invoices, which can expire.  I'm not a huge fan of the feature, it's lead to confusion in the past.  The address itself will never expire, and can be used any number of times for as long as you care to use it.

One thing I suggest, pick a unique address for each of your customers.  They can can keep making payments to the same address, it'll make it easier for you to track each customer's payments.  The payments all end up in the same wallet, and can be merged when moving the funds.

You can get STATIC ADDRESS in two ways:

 - Import a paper wallet with one private key. you can read more ---> https://bitcoinelectrum.com/importing-your-private-keys-into-electrum/
 - Change the gap limit

Why would he need to do either of those things?  Any address from the standard HD wallet's address tab can be used an indefinite number of times.

[nc50lc]

you can change the gap limit by open Console tab and type:

Code:

wallet.change_gap_limit(1)
wallet.storage.write()

This will only make the already-generated next-19 receiving addresses out of your new gap limit (with red highlight).
But that wont stop the receive tab from changing the address when creating new invoices while there are still non-expired ones, it will still use the next address for the next invoice.

What will change is when you've used the last address, Electrum will only derive one more key pair (=one address) instead of 20.

[HCP]

If you're desperate to have exactly one and only one address in Electrum... I would suggest creating a new "standard" wallet with the 12 word seed backup... then export the private key for one of the addresses created at start up... and use that to create an imported wallet.

After creating the "Standard" wallet and writing down the 12 word seed, you just click the "addresses" tab ("View -> Show Addresses" if you can't see the tab), then right click on any of the addresses shown as "receiving" and select "private key".

Then create a new wallet:
- "File -> New/Restore"
- "Import Bitcoin Addresses or Private Keys"
- Enter the private key you copied above

You will now have an "[imported]" wallet that only contains 1 private key... but can be "restored" at any time by using the 12 word seed backup. You can even delete the "Standard" wallet file so you don't accidentally open it in the future and get given a "new" address.

For the record, I don't recommend doing any of this... but if you have a real requirement for a single key wallet, it'll still give you the simplicity of a 12 word seed backup.


If you just need to be able to "re-use" addresses... then just use a "standard" wallet in Electrum, give people one address and go for it... Electrum doesn't care if someone sends coins to the same address multiple times... the addresses don't "expire".

The whole "payment request/invoice expiry" thing is confusing and unintuitive... just ignore it.