stevejoseph
New member
Using the same receiving address over and over again reveals your whole balance to the public. Remember, the blockchain is publicly visible. So everyone can figure out how much you have. Like if your bank account was publicly available for everyone to see. It doesn’t necessarily easily connect to your name but it’s a delicate issue to have your balance known to everyone. Bad actors can and will find out about you one way or another. Using a new bitcoin address or different addresses each time is better for privacy.
Since there is no main address/account. All addresses are derived from one secret private key.You put that into a wallet and it finds all the addresses that were ever used and let’s you conveniently view them. An attacker would need your private key to look up all your addresses and an immensely technical knowledge.
Crypto held on exchanges is not accessible to you. Exchange wallet is non-custodian wallet. You do not have the private key, which means you are at their mercy if they do not decide to withdraw for whatever reason. Hence the saying "not your keys, not your coins". whatever crypto is held on a private key that you and only you own will have no restrictions whatever you choose to do with it.
You have to distinguish between custodial and non-custodial wallets. Exchanges give you custodial wallets, meaning that you can use them to store your funds within the exchange BUT you do not get a private key for your wallets, which means that technically the funds do not even belong to you since you do not hold the key to them. The key belongs to the exchange and the exchange safeguards your funds as good as it can. This is very risky since we’ve seen platforms (Celsius/Voyager…) go bankrupt and locking users out of their accounts. That’s why everyone is saying “not your keys not your coins”. This is why you always set up your own private wallet outside from the exchange to withdraw your funds after you make a purchase, because …
A private non-custodial wallet gives you a key (seed phrase) to control your funds. At the exchange you can only use 1 address the exchange has assigned to you. All funds get stored within the same address. With the private wallet you can use a new receiving address for each new incoming transaction, making your wallet secure and more private (even though each transaction is publicly visible on the blockchain).
You cannot “combine” addresses from different exchanges into one main account. What you can do is setting up a wallet and send all funds from the different exchanges to your wallet, each time using a new receiving address. This way all your funds will be visibly combined inside your wallet (they are still sitting anywhere on the block chain, but since you sent them all to addresses derived from 1 private key, your wallet can conveniently find them and show them to you as if it was 1 account).
So, naturally how all of this should be set up from the start is: First Install a private non-custodial wallet, then open up an account with a reputable exchange. Send funds to the exchange, make a buy and immediately transfer the coins back to your wallet to always maintain ownership.
Would these new addresses feed into some main address/account?
Using bitcoin means you need something called a private key. Imagine it as your email login's password. You can derive multiple public keys from this (public email addresses people can send bitcoin to you through). your one password can own multiple addresses with different amounts of bitcoin on it. and you control all of them.Since there is no main address/account. All addresses are derived from one secret private key.You put that into a wallet and it finds all the addresses that were ever used and let’s you conveniently view them. An attacker would need your private key to look up all your addresses and an immensely technical knowledge.
if you have wallet at exchange
Crypto held on exchanges is not accessible to you. Exchange wallet is non-custodian wallet. You do not have the private key, which means you are at their mercy if they do not decide to withdraw for whatever reason. Hence the saying "not your keys, not your coins". whatever crypto is held on a private key that you and only you own will have no restrictions whatever you choose to do with it.
Custodian and non-custodian wallets
You have to distinguish between custodial and non-custodial wallets. Exchanges give you custodial wallets, meaning that you can use them to store your funds within the exchange BUT you do not get a private key for your wallets, which means that technically the funds do not even belong to you since you do not hold the key to them. The key belongs to the exchange and the exchange safeguards your funds as good as it can. This is very risky since we’ve seen platforms (Celsius/Voyager…) go bankrupt and locking users out of their accounts. That’s why everyone is saying “not your keys not your coins”. This is why you always set up your own private wallet outside from the exchange to withdraw your funds after you make a purchase, because …
A private non-custodial wallet gives you a key (seed phrase) to control your funds. At the exchange you can only use 1 address the exchange has assigned to you. All funds get stored within the same address. With the private wallet you can use a new receiving address for each new incoming transaction, making your wallet secure and more private (even though each transaction is publicly visible on the blockchain).
You cannot “combine” addresses from different exchanges into one main account. What you can do is setting up a wallet and send all funds from the different exchanges to your wallet, each time using a new receiving address. This way all your funds will be visibly combined inside your wallet (they are still sitting anywhere on the block chain, but since you sent them all to addresses derived from 1 private key, your wallet can conveniently find them and show them to you as if it was 1 account).
So, naturally how all of this should be set up from the start is: First Install a private non-custodial wallet, then open up an account with a reputable exchange. Send funds to the exchange, make a buy and immediately transfer the coins back to your wallet to always maintain ownership.