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Alice owns three addresses A1, A2, A3. She decides to collect the coins held by these addresses into a single coin so she generates a fresh new address A4 for that.
She has the following two options:
1. Single transaction
+--------------+
|A1 A4|
|A2 -> |
|A3 |
+--------------+
2. Multiple transactions
+--------------+
|A1 A4|
+--------------+
+--------------+
|A2 A4|
+--------------+
+--------------+
|A3 A4|
+--------------+
She does not want people to know that A1, A2 and A3 are owned by her. And she does not intend to use any mixing services. She also don't mind paying more transaction fees as in option 2.
Option 1
A1, A2 and A3 can be linked together assuming she did not use any Coin Join technique.
Option 2
It can be seen that A4 is reused to receive payments. However A4 has never been seen before this transaction.
Questions on Option 2:
Can someone observing the Blockchain deterministically figure out
A1,A2andA3belong to same user?If Alice now spendsA4to Bob (sends all amount, she never usesA4again), can Bob ever figure out thatA1,A2andA3belonged to Alice?What privacy will Alice (or someone down the trail, like Bob) lose if she goes for option 2?
Is reusing addresses to only receive payments and spending that address only once okay?
You are right, I did made a terrible mistake in forming my question. I ought to remove the second question, it's confusing. Although in my mind I meant what you just described in your answer - spending individual UTXOs. – Vijay Chavda – 2019-02-11T09:00:41.227
Could you kindly elaborate on the fourth point, regarding reusing a fresh address to only receive payments and spend it only once? – Vijay Chavda – 2019-02-11T09:05:28.723