Does Electrum have Coin Control similar to Bitcoin Core?

[notocactus]

You can even freeze individual coins from the coins tab if you want (bear in mind that this will also freeze the address as well so that Electrum does not use it for sending transactions).

With Electrum wallet, there are two places to do freezing, and there are two freeze options.

Two places

• Address tab: right click on an address, choose freeze.
• Coins tab: right click on an UTXO, choose either Freeze coin or Freeze address. Note that if you already "Freeze" an address before, you will see two options there as Freeze coin or Unfreeze address.

Coins tab is hidden by wallet software default setting, to show it, click on View, choose Coins.

[d5000]

I have heard some people say, "you can't, so you have to create one wallet per address" which is annoying.

Maybe this is a misunderstanding. The "use one wallet per address" method is a recommended privacy technique, because with Electrum you leak your address list to the server you connect to, even if it's via Tor. If you have the bad luck that you're connecting to a chain analysis node, then all your addresses will be aggregated to a "wallet" (on sites like walletexplorer.com, Arkham etc.).

This means: using Coin Control on Electrum is not enough to hide the connections between the addresses of your wallet, unfortunately (see also this thread about a possible solution).

[LoyceV]

The "use one wallet per address" method is a recommended privacy technique, because with Electrum you leak your address list to the server you connect to, even if it's via Tor.

If you replace your "one wallet per address" by a watch-only wallet, you can add random addresses to your wallet to make it look like they belong together. It would be even better to make this a hidden feature, so you can add watch-only addresses to your normal hot wallet.

[notocactus]

If you replace your "one wallet per address" by a watch-only wallet, you can add random addresses to your wallet to make it look like they belong together. It would be even better to make this a hidden feature, so you can add watch-only addresses to your normal hot wallet.

I am a little bit confusing with your post.

I know with a watch-only wallet, it's allowed to add many Bitcoin addresses to it, and watch transaction history of an address, and many addresses too. It's simple to understand.

With your post, I feel like you meant that I have a hot wallet with private keys, that can be spent, and I can add an address or addresses to that wallet, and have  such addresses as watch only only. It's quite strange with me, the first time I read about it.

I tried to test with Electrum wallet and there is no way to do that with a hot wallet.

Seems like I misunderstood your post because afaik, there is either spendable wallet or non-spendable wallet, there is no hybrid wallet.

Before testing, I thought that it can make a hybrid decoy wallet but I also imagined it only escalates risk for users because adding a new or some Bitcoin addresses with watch-only and have balance into a hot wallet will possibly bring more danger of more severe physical attacks.

[d5000]

If you replace your "one wallet per address" by a watch-only wallet, you can add random addresses to your wallet to make it look like they belong together. It would be even better to make this a hidden feature, so you can add watch-only addresses to your normal hot wallet.

In principle this is an interesting idea, but I think you would have to be very strict and knowledgeable to game the chain analysis companies with this strategy, to prevent them to apply clustering techniques. If this became a widespread privacy technique, they could for example only take into account connections where an outgoing (broadcasted) transaction was received from the client.

In older Electrum versions you could import private keys also into "normal" wallets, but this feature was removed afaik.

It can perhaps be used if you already leaked your list once (by mistake) and then try to "correct it" by creating several watch only wallets and connecting them several times over time, hoping that it connects to the same chain analysis server ...

A problem is of course also the practical aspect: you would have to set up an "alternative" strategy to use your wallet normally, at least if you transact and not HODL only.

[LoyceV]

I tried to test with Electrum wallet and there is no way to do that with a hot wallet.

My post was hypothetical: "it would be nice to make this a hidden feature". It doesn't exist (yet).

In principle this is an interesting idea, but I think you would have to be very strict and knowledgeable to game the chain analysis companies with this strategy, to prevent them to apply clustering techniques. If this became a widespread privacy technique, they could for example only take into account connections where an outgoing (broadcasted) transaction was received from the client.

That would be a huge win for privacy, as it means they can't assume any addresses synced by a wallet belong together anymore. Add the fact that Electrum frequently connects to a different server, and thus they won't see the majority of all broadcasted transactions, so they can't possibly know what belongs together anymore. But again, this is pure hypothetical. Loading random watch-only addresses would also add an increased load on the Electrum server.

In older Electrum versions you could import private keys also into "normal" wallets, but this feature was removed afaik.

I get why they did it, but for someone who considers himself to be an advanced user, I would like to get back that feature.

A problem is of course also the practical aspect: you would have to set up an "alternative" strategy to use your wallet normally, at least if you transact and not HODL only.

That's easy: on your watch-only wallet with imported addresses to mix with your own addresses, freeze the ones that aren't yours.