The long addresses are really annoying with all the letters and numbers...

[Blazr]

Bitcoin addresses should only be used ONCE.

Bitcoin addresses are designed to be single use addresses for sending payments to your wallet. Though technically they can be reused as many times as you want, doing so significantly impacts your privacy and the security of your coins and it has a signifcant impact on the privacy of everyone you directly transact with and a small impact on the privacy of everyone using Bitcoin. Therefore you should never reuse an address and always use a fresh address for every transaction. You may notice many wallets (such as Bitcoin Core and the new beta version of electrum) are now "hiding" used addresses and now have a receive tab that gives you a new address each time you want to receive coins, this is to discourage address reuse.

Such a solution as you are describing will only encourage address reuse, which is bad for the above reasons. However there are things like genjix's stealth address implementation which essentially allows the sender to generate a new address in the receivers wallet, that when combined with a keyserver of some sort could implement this in a safe way, and I believe one day we will be using something like this and Bitcoin addresses will no longer be a thing the user even sees. The whole idea of a Bitcoin address is very flawed.

[redsn0w]

Bitcoin addresses should only be used ONCE.

Bitcoin addresses are designed to be single use addresses for sending payments to your wallet. Though technically they can be reused as many times as you want, doing so significantly impacts your privacy and the security of your coins and it has a signifcant impact on the privacy of everyone you directly transact with and a small impact on the privacy of everyone using Bitcoin. Therefore you should never reuse an address and always use a fresh address for every transaction. You may notice many wallets (such as Bitcoin Core and the new beta version of electrum) are now "hiding" used addresses and now have a receive tab that gives you a new address each time you want to receive coins, this is to discourage address reuse.

Such a solution as you are describing will only encourage address reuse, which is bad for the above reasons. However there are things like genjix's stealth address implementation which essentially allows the sender to generate a new address in the receivers wallet, that when combined with a keyserver of some sort could implement this in a safe way, and I believe one day we will be using something like this and Bitcoin addresses will no longer be a thing the user even sees. The whole idea of a Bitcoin address is very flawed.

Yes only for the question of anonymity , but maybe some person doesn't want to use every time a new bitcoin address and prefer to keep/use only one (like a merchant).

[BitcoiNaked]

Is this the messaging app everyone has been talking about? You can send actual bitcoins with this? I thought it just used its own gems currency?

No bitcoin transactions is possible it has its own wallet, gemz tokens are used for rewarding users for participating within the network through airdrop (to be released soon along with iOS) and payments for different advertisement purposes. Android has been released, i suggest reading the community Q&A.

this is good for non tech peeps to send btc

[ChuckBuck]

If you use Coinbase, you can send to email addresses instead of Bitcoin addresses, if the recipient is a fellow Coinbase user.

That said, what's so hard about copy and paste?  

Anyone in an office job, does it at least once a day.

[Drummer]

new technologgy we can use camera to detect barcode of address
smartphone 2fa

[Blazr]

Yes only for the question of anonymity , but maybe some person doesn't want to use every time a new bitcoin address and prefer to keep/use only one (like a merchant).

Not exactly for anonymity, anonymity is a different issue altogether, it's for preventing someone from very easily figuring out who you are transacting with.

It would be a bad idea for a merchant especially to reuse an address, how would they know which payment is for which order? if you give each customer a unique address, then you can assume if a payment arrives to a specific address it should be attributed to that order, but if you are using the same address for every customer, then it becomes difficult to figure out who has paid and who hasn't.

The other problem is security. Once you send money from a Bitcoin address, you expose it's public key. If in theory a quantum computer capable of running Shor's algorithm was ever invented, it would then be possible to crack the private key. Of course such a quantum computer is science fiction, but if somehow someone happened to build one, they would only be able to spend coins from reused addresses. So in this sense reused addresses are less secure.

Bitcoin addresses aren't supposed to be reused, there are many downsides.

[ronaldo40]

yes it would be simpler if the address can we remember, do not have to always copy and paste

[cambda]

yes it would be simpler if the address can we remember, do not have to always copy and paste

But the problem is the same as with passwords: if average person uses password he can safely remember, he can assume the password is possible to bruteforce in reasonable time

[Jace]

Exactly WHAT is the problem with all the letters and numbers? You NEVER have to remember or manually type an address. You can always:

• copy/paste
• share (from mobile apps)
• scan a QR
• click a bitcoin payment link
• import/export complete wallets
• etc

Besides, typing addresses or names or IDs manually will typically result in typing mistakes. With the options above you can't go wrong. So it's faster, easier, and safer.

[ronaldo40]

yes it would be simpler if the address can we remember, do not have to always copy and paste

But the problem is the same as with passwords: if average person uses password he can safely remember, he can assume the password is possible to bruteforce in reasonable time

yes sometimes they also create the same username and password, almost all websites. let alone a website that is not clear

[zetaray]

Addresses are not meant to be remembered. I think Satoshi expect us to copy and paste into emails and messages. Address shortening is nice, it can't be used if the address has no previous transactions.

[zimmah]

Could there be a way for someone to 'reserve' a name for a little while? So I can go into the bitcoin wallet on my computer and make it so anyone who sends to "Durdleman" for example will actually send to my address?

Edit: Actually, if there's a domain name service, is it possible for the bitcoin.org people to have a bitcoin name service as well?

not in the blockchain itself obviously but you could make some kind of program that does that.

If you would really want that though is another story, as it will be quite easy to trick people into sending it to the wrong address. Or something as simple as a typo could really screw you up.

What if I registered dudrleman, Durdlemen, Durdlemam, Durdelman, Durdeleman, Durdlleman, etc. (you get the point). and someone wants to send you money and they mistype and I get your money instead.

It would be quite profitable to create accounts for all common typos of big companies.

But sure, you can make something like a DNS, if we want it is an entirely different story.

On the other hand, you could link one of your addresses to some kind of app (like whatsapp, but obviously not whatsapp itself) and send small amounts through there. But for large amounts I personally would not risk it.

I believe they are making an app called sendcoin or something like it which is meant to be a whatsapp like thing with bitcoin integrated in it.

[zimmah]

You can use vanity addresses as well, but some say it can compromise security somehow.

security no, privacy yes.

if someone knows one of your addresses, and if you ever pay with or get paid to that address everyone who knows that address belongs to you might figure out where you are spending your money.

But you can easily avoid that by using several addresses for several purposes, or just generating a new one every time.

It's not like there is a finite amount of addresses or anything (technically there is, but we can act like they are infinite).

[Bitcoinexp]

You can use vanity addresses as well, but some say it can compromise security somehow.

security no, privacy yes.

if someone knows one of your addresses, and if you ever pay with or get paid to that address everyone who knows that address belongs to you might figure out where you are spending your money.

But you can easily avoid that by using several addresses for several purposes, or just generating a new one every time.

It's not like there is a finite amount of addresses or anything (technically there is, but we can act like they are infinite).

Just use a vanity address for official purposes and disperse the coins you want to use through other addresses. Nobody will be able to see how you spend them (easily).

[Kazimir]

but maybe some person doesn't want to use every time a new bitcoin address and prefer to keep/use only one (like a merchant).

Why would a merchant prefer to keep/use one address? Remember: technically, he keeps all his addresses. Once an address has been used in the past, or sent to a customer for later payment or whatever, it can always be used later on, even if the merchant's wallet has generated new addresses in the mean time.

You don't 'discard' an address and switch to a new one, but rather you generate an additional, new address for every new payment (with the old ones remaining active as well). The balance of your wallet is not the balance of your last or newest (or any one particular) address, but all addresses combined.

[zimmah]

well personally i have dozens of addresses, it's more easy to see where a payment is from that way.

makes it much easier to see if it was a donation (and from which website) or a payment of some sorts (and who paid me) etc.

i dont really worry about privacy that much (i mean yes i dont like people knowing everything about me but i dont worry about it to a pointof changing addresses every single time), but convenience is nice.

by the way most merchants use automated systems which do use a different address every time, so they know which payment is from which order.

[avw1982]

The long address is maybe annoying but just copy paste it or use QR codes.

[Kazimir]

It would have been better if the addresses were 1577 characters long, and contained random gibberish characters. 

That way, we'd be sure that NOBODY would be as stupid to manually type an address, or even try to remember it.

Remember folks, ALWAYS use copy paste / share / QR / links!

[Crypto9er]

I am sure that in few years we will see other form of addresses (shorter?). I personally had an issue, where I met a buyer (For physical goods) and he wanted to pay in BTC. He didn't have any QR code reader and I wasn't able to connect to the network (to mail him my BTC address) He had to copy it manually to send the funds (he used his BTCe account to do so). Was a bit annoying

[rememberme]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=880647.0