address reuse within Electrum

[bitcoin talk]

I don't totally understand what you are asking here, but if you send BTC, the recipient will surely see the address or addresses that were used as input in the transaction, take note that the BTC blockchain is public and transparent, so info about every tx made can be found on the blockchain. However, if you want to hide your address from the recipient in the tx, you can use a mixer, deposit the funds into a mixer and use the recipients address as your receiving address.

So it wouldn't matter how many sending addresses you had populated in Electrum it would be transparent anyway? just use mixers and stick to one address to send from, that's all you need for privacy?

[1714996680]

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[bitcoin talk]

Coins tab displays your coins and the address associated with each of them. The coins you own are associated with two of your addresses and all addresses are empty. That's why you see two address in Coins tab.
Once a new address of your wallet receives fund, you will see the third address in coins tab.

In electrum would I need to pick under the tab Receive>expires> never expires (address)
or
is it ok to pick 1 week expires and would that mean I still get a 3rd address under Coins tab of electrum if the money was received within 1 week?

[blockman]

So it wouldn't matter how many sending addresses you had populated in Electrum it would be transparent anyway?

You can use and generate as much as you can. If one of the address received btc then the other end, the sender, will know that it came from you and it will recorded on the blockchain.

just use mixers and stick to one address to send from, that's all you need for privacy?

If you value your privacy except from using mixers then just use new addresses whenever you do transactions.

[hosseinimr93]

In electrum would I need to pick under the tab Receive>expires> never expires (address)

The expiry time doesn't matter at all.
Take note that addresses do not expire and you can still receive bitcoin even after the expiry time. The expiry time is for the request, not for the address.

is it ok to pick 1 week expires and would that mean I still get a 3rd address under Coins tab of electrum if the money was received within 1 week?

Whenever you receive bitcoin (even after the expiry time), you will see the new coin in your wallet.

[bitcoin talk]

The expiry time is for the request, not for the address.

Why is it critical for the request to expire? Who I am requesting it from? I don't see it's utility.

[ranochigo]

Why is it critical for the request to expire and not the address? Who I am requesting it from? I don't see it's utility.

Address doesn't expire and cannot expire. It is irresponsible for any wallet to discard the private key of an address because of an arbitrary expiry time.

The reason for having requests with a fixed expiry is for record keeping. In certain cases, it would be important for people to keep track of the time when funds are being transferred and hence it would be good for users to know when they should receive the funds by and if it has been transferred within that timeframe. For example, if I'm a merchant trying to sell an item, I would want the buyer to transfer the funds within 24 hours, and after which the transaction becomes voided (because my rates are only valid for 24 for example). Having an interface which tells you if the funds has been transferred within a certain time helps me to track my payments from my buyers.

[nc50lc]

Why is it critical for the request to expire? Who I am requesting it from? I don't see it's utility.

It's saved in your wallet only, so it's up to you who to send the request.

And the invoice's expiration is for unused address tracking.
Once the invoice is expired, Electrum will assume that the address associated with that invoice wont be receiving bitcoins any further.
So in the next invoice that you'll create, it may show that address again since it's not used yet and the invoice where it's first shown is expired.

Its utility beside the above is to prevent users from leaving too many unused addresses.
Because if a user somehow created 20 unused addresses in a row that didn't received any bitcoins
but generated another in the 21th that is funded, it wont immediately show if the user restore his seed to a new wallet (e.g. wallet recovery) because it's past the default gap limit.
It's a minor issue since he can increase the gap limit or manually generate addresses beyond 20, but an issue nonetheless.

[NotATether]

The expiry time is for the request, not for the address.

Why is it critical for the request to expire? Who I am requesting it from? I don't see it's utility.

Actually, request expiration is a cosmetic feature. It lets you e.g. make a request in your wallet that basically says "Description: Person A needs to pay my utility bill, Amount: 0.008 BTC, Expires: 2024-03-01" and the idea behind it is that you can basically copy it and send it to the other person in an email. You can send it as either a Bitcoin URI or a Lightning URI.