Based on a certain amount of addresses, is it possible to find out how many bitcoins a specific wallet includes/owns?

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Based on a certain amount of addresses, is it possible to find out how many bitcoins a specific wallet includes/owns?

E.g. I have a blockchain.info wallet. If I create 1000 bitcoin addresses, fill them with 1 bitcoin each. The blockchain.info wallet, will show me the total balance of 1000 bitcoins on my wallet. If I share one of this addresses with someone, will he be able to find out that I have a wallet with an overall amount of 1000 bitcoins?

henk

Posted 2015-09-21T11:55:27.123

Reputation: 168

Answers

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Short answer: No. Long answer: It depends.

The addresses themselves are independent (unless blockchain.info has bugs that prove otherwise*) and no one can tell just by looking at them that they are contained in the same wallet.

However, the way you sent 1 BTC to each of those addresses and/or the way you will be spending that money later on, might betray you! For example if you buy one Ferrari for 1000BTC, combining all those bitcoins in the wallet in one transaction, then others looking at that might conclude that you were the owner of all those addresses afterall. Similar if you have 1000BTC in 1 address and then split that up and send 1 each, onlookers might suspect they're still yours.

*) Note that blockchain.info has a horrible track record of generating bad private keys, causing many bitcoins to be simply stolen.

Jannes

Posted 2015-09-21T11:55:27.123

Reputation: 5 823