This is actually a really important point that most novices probably don't really understand.

The addresses where Bitcoin are sent are derived from your private key (or more than one private key) However, they are derived in a way that does not reveal your private key.

Your seed phrase is also derived from your private key. But it is derived in a way that can be reversed, so your private key is encoded into a seed phrase, which can be decoded into your private key.

Taking an address from a bitcoin transaction, you are not able to use it to derive a private key, or to derive any other addresses that may be able to be derived from your private key.

You can make assumptions about related addresses, based on transactions between them, and even more assumptions if addresses are used in multiple transactions. This is why many privacy-minded folks try to NOT re-use addresses.

If you use a coin-join or whirlpool or ither coin mixing service that moves your coins from one address to one or more other addresses, it doesn't really matter if those addresses are derived from the same private key(s) or not, as long as the addresses are new.

If you are trying to remove the KYC stink from your transaction history, and build the story that those KYC coins are no longer under your control, and you accidentally dox an address that you used previously in your hidden wallet by sending some KYC transactions to it, you can send the contents of that wallet back through mixing to new addresses under your same private key. You haven't doxed thr private key, or any other addresses derived from it.

I had this scare once when I accidentally withdrew from Strike to the wrong wallet. It was to a new address, though. Took me a long night of thinking to realize I was fine. My only danger would be combining that utxo with other utxos in my secure wallet when creating future transactions, so I just swept that utxo (by itself) into a new address of the wallet it was supposed to go to, where I normally collect KYC withdrawals.

How did I learn all this? I largely credit Sparrow Wallet, which separates a lot of this stuff out and shows you a lot about how everything works and the steps involved.

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

No replies yet.