Converted Segwit address (YPUB) to Legacy (XPUB), but balances differ

I'm trying to convert a Segwit YPUB address I got from a Ledger Wallet to a Legacy XPUB address in order to query the transactions from the wallet. I've yet to find a reliable API that supports YPUB and I'm using Blockchain.info to fetch the information for Bitcoin.

While I've tried multiple methods to convert a YPUB to XPUB (getting the same addresses with every method I've found - changing the header with the network specific magic key), I don't see the balance on the resulted XPUB address. It shows 0 balance.

Is it possible that a converted address would display the balance of the original address?

Thanks, Rares

Rares H.

Posted 2018-06-26T12:24:05.317

Reputation: 13

To prevent confusion, in this question YPUB stands for BIP 49 Derivation scheme for P2WPKH-nested-in-P2SH based accounts

– MCCCS – 2018-06-26T15:35:18.253

Answers

It's not possible access funds in SegWit addresses (actually UTXOs) as if they were in legacy addresses. A SegWit address and a legacy address with the same public key map to different addresses, hence they don't share the same funds.

MCCCS

Posted 2018-06-26T12:24:05.317

Reputation: 5 827

You can use an explorer like blockonomics that supports segwit xpubs and also has an API
If you want to use blockchain.info only, you need to derive the segwit addresses from the ypub and then lookup these addresses to get the balance. Here is a script. Converting ypub to xpub won't work because bc.info will still generate legacy P2PKH addresses from xpub, whereas it should generating segwit in P2SH addresses.

dark knight

Posted 2018-06-26T12:24:05.317

Reputation: 1 532