very interesting read…helps to know best ways to store keys
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This was hard af to understand.
Why not just create a new address each time to receive btc with?
Is that wrong?
Is that wrong? No, it is not - and you should.
To simplify the article: if you have a $5 bill in your pocket, and you want to buy a $1.75 candy bar, you give the $5 bill to the cashier and you will get $3.25 back in “Change”. Same for bitcoin, an input (a previously received amount of bitcoin) has to be spent completely - even if it was 0.0123 bitcoins - the network threats it like a “bill”. From it, the value you want to spend, minus transaction fees, will return bitcoins to a “Change” address in your bitcoin wallet.
The problems described in the article above are due to the litecoin/bitcoin-core random generation of addresses - which forces you to backup your wallet file at almost every transaction… a pain-in-the-as… The reason: the private keys of the main addresses and the change addresses are randomly generated… Therefore, at every dice throw, you need to backup the wallet - because a new private key has been generated!
If you select a HD wallet, like Electrum-ltc, you only have to safely store 12 seed words on a piece of paper (for normal wallets), or 24 words for Trezor wallets - and that’s it. Those seed words can generate infinite Litecoin addresses (not really infinite, only 10 exp 78 addresses - the same amount of atoms in the universe…). No other backups required.
Pizza anyone?
so let me get this. . .
when you can’t send more than 1 btc or a whole btc amount, your wallet does something retarded like splitting the amount into a change address?
So basically, if I used the wallet as normal: made new addresses for receiving payments, and sending payments to addresses. . . if I don’t “wipe” the wallet, somehow all my btc could disappear because the change address messed it up?
if you have 3 inputs all for separate amounts and they all add up to 5 LTC and you send 3 LTC to someone…all the inputs totaling to 3 LTC gets sent to the network…now your inputs are going to total to be more than 3 ltc…this is why you will see a pending amount after you send a transaction majority of the time so the inputs totaling to more than 3LTC gets sent out…the 3 goes to the address you sent it to and your change goes back to the initial sending address by default or to the change address you provide
which is why bitcoin /litecoin and most cryptos is technically are like digital cash because every input has change unless it is swept
if you dont specify a change address then it returns your change back to the initial sending address by default and you would only loose them if you sent the change to an address you don’t have in your wallet…or its not backed up and that computer containing the wallet crashes (core wallets)