Comment by moduspol

18 hours ago

> creating and using single-use wallets, addresses, or accounts, and sending [cryptocurrency] through such wallets, addresses, or accounts through a series of independent transactions

One could argue that's how normal Bitcoin wallets work. The addresses are deterministic based on your passphrase (or derived private key). The addresses don't need to get reused because there's no real value in doing so, and no real cost of just using a new address each time.

Though yes--even if that's the exact meaning and design, presumably one could still use the simpler wallets that DO just reuse the same address over and over. And obviously that'd reduce privacy quite a bit.

8 comments

moduspol

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krunck  13 hours ago

Yes. Single-use addresses protect me. If you store your entire balance under a single address then anybody you transact with can see your entire balance by lookup up the transaction. Single-use addresses protects you from people snooping around looking for worth while $5 wrench attacks.

elif  18 hours ago

What you quoted is regarding the use of a SERIES of single use wallets. What is the "normal Bitcoin" use case for funneling money through a chain of throwaway wallets?

  • moduspol  18 hours ago

    The quote is "single-use wallets, addresses, or accounts." If you download any normal Bitcoin wallet today, it'll use a series of words to derive a series of private keys that are used by the wallet. Each one gets a different address.

    Then your wallet software is smart enough to treat all the addresses derived as a single wallet. When you go to make a payment, it makes it from the various addresses owned by the wallet. When you want to accept money, you can generate the next address in the series and give a fresh address to someone new.

    The net result is that it's not clear from someone looking at the blockchain which addresses actually belong to YOUR wallet and which transactions are you sending money to someone else or yourself.

    AFAIK this is how basically all Bitcoin wallets have worked for years. Electrum and Base (formerly bread wallet) as well as Ledger's wallet are the main ones I've used.

    EDIT: Just to address this:

    > What is the "normal Bitcoin" use case for funneling money through a chain of throwaway wallets?

    It makes it so that someone publicly looking at the blockchain can't provably tell how much Bitcoin you have.

    We still have to give addresses to people to receive money, so if we were only allowed to have a few, it wouldn't be hard to trace which people own which wallets. And then now you've got a big physical security risk because the world can see how much money you are able to give if they invade your home, kidnap a family member, etc. It'd be like having to put a sign out in front of your house that says, "$600,000 in cash is in here." And they could see the cash.

  • jrmg  17 hours ago

    People are interpreting the ‘and’ here as meaning ‘either of these things’ rather than ‘these things in sequence’ as you (and I) do.