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As I was testing my new bitcoin core HD wallet through the bitcoin-qt interface (v0.13.0), when using Receive > Request payment I realized that I was presented with the a payment address which had already been used (despite the checkbox Reuse an existing address not being checked). Looking more closely into this, it seems that this happens if you restore your HD wallet from a backup file (specifically delete your wallet.dat file and replace it by the wallet.dat which you had saved just after creating your new wallet and encrypting it). So it seems if you need to restore an HD wallet from an old backup file, it will be reusing prior addresses (unless you are being careful and click on Request payment several times until you obtain a brand new address). Is this a known feature of bitcoin-qt? I am guessing this is not a desirable behavior, but is it avoidable? I am not sure HD wallets can be implemented without it, as we no longer simply randomly generate.
Sounds like you should write a bug report. – UTF-8 – 2016-09-10T19:34:43.377
@UTF-8 my apologies I failed to follow your suggestion out of ignorance. I think I know what to do now, and will take care of it. – Sven Williamson – 2017-02-11T06:49:00.933
1@UTF-8 I have now written a bug report – Sven Williamson – 2017-02-11T07:47:20.860
@SvenWilliamson: I hope I do understand correctly that both these questions report the same problem? Otherwise, please flag for reopening! – Murch – 2017-02-12T16:05:36.497
1@Murch I have the feeling the two reported problems are different: One is address reuse, the other is failure to pick up an incoming transaction. However, it seems that future wallet improvements will solve both problems at the same time, and you may wish to regard two problems with a common solution as identical. And yes, you are correct to say that the answer provided applies to both in my opinion. – Sven Williamson – 2017-02-13T12:13:36.900
1Yeah, we usually go by answer, not exact text of the question. :) Thanks for the assessment! – Murch – 2017-02-13T13:01:52.343