How do Bitcoin transactions work, and what does one need in order to send or receive one?

I am trying to understand how Bitcoin works and whether it is possible to manage a bitcoin transaction anonymously.

If someone transfers a bitcoin, what do I need to sign it with?

Can it be signed using another bitcoin? What is the id that is used to sign the bitcoin over to me? Is that not an identifier?

How many identifiers can one have and how to do you get such an identifier/wallet?

Problem is that if you have one wallet then all related transactions can be found, so to stay anonymous you actually need many wallets. How do you get a wallet?

Can you create a wallet per bitcoin transaction?

momomo

Posted 2014-09-24T19:20:21.947

Reputation: 121

Welcome to Bitcoin.SE. You seem to be getting ahead of yourself by jumping to conclusions that aren't correct. The "identifier" you are looking for is [tag:address]. Perhaps it would be best, if you do a bit more research and then ask a new question with a focussed topic. I think you may be interested in: What's the difference between a wallet and an address?, I am new to Bitcoin, how can I get started?, How anonymous are Bitcoin transactions?

– Murch – 2014-09-24T20:00:58.963

I've edited the title of your question and hope that it is along the lines of what you had in mind. – Murch – 2014-09-24T20:20:50.500

Answers

You are using some Bitcoin vocabulary, but you are jumping to conclusions that aren't correct.

Quick vocab session:

Addresses can be used to receive payments.
Wallet is a term used for a collection of addresses.
The sender needs to sign a transaction using a private key

When you receive a Bitcoin transaction, you don't have to sign anything. In a transaction the recipient is passive, similarly to receiving a letter in the mail he doesn't have to do anything at all. Whenever he looks at his mailbox at a later point in time, the letter will wait for him; whenever you check the blockchain your address will have a balance associated with it.

The recipient of a Bitcoin transaction doesn't even have to be online at the time of the transaction. However, he does need to have a Bitcoin address, where the payment may be directed.

The identifier you are asking about seems to be such an address. The good news is, you can have as many addresses as you want.

Wallets are essentially an abstract construct to talk about a collection of addresses. It cannot be discerned from the addresses alone that they belong to the same wallet, so you don't necessarily give up a lot of information when you have several addresses in the same wallet. However, by analysing interactions between addresses it is possible to guess that they are controlled by the same entity, e.g. guessing which transaction output is the change from a transaction, or funds being spend from different addresses in one transaction.

See What's the difference between a wallet and an address? for more information about that.

Concerning anonymity, I'd suggest having a look at How anonymous are Bitcoin transactions? and the tag anonymity.

Murch

Posted 2014-09-24T19:20:21.947

Reputation: 41 609

In an instance such as this. It sounds like you are talking about the physical software wallet. Unless you are a programmer you definitely do need this. The vanilla wallet takes too long to get up to date with the blockchain. Something such as multibit (which you can google) is a lightweight client that downloads only a part of the blockchain instead of the whole.

Multibit is relatively easy to use.

To learn more about wallets you should look towards some youtube videos as there are many of those that have visual walk-throughs that would be much faster to understand than plain text.

LuaPod

Posted 2014-09-24T19:20:21.947

Reputation: 1