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It is said that we should never reuse addresses, so I think one time into the address, and one time out, and that address should be abandoned.

So the top holders of bitcoins should know that too, but the news is having headlines:

So why aren't they following this simple rule?

Murch
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nonopolarity
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1 Answers1

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This is mostly about privacy

  1. Because they don't care about their privacy

  2. Because they don't care about their clients/customers/friends' privacy

  3. Because they want to keep their code simple

  4. Because they don't want to keep a database of their addresses

  5. Because their identity is already obvious: This is the case for exchange wallets

  6. Because multisig addresses whose transactions require mulitple private keys to be signed are one each and I'm not aware of a "multisig hierarchical deterministic wallet" system. Multisig addresses are intended for reuse, at least until someone finds a way to solve this

MCCCS
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  • For "Because their identity is already obvious: This is the case for exchange wallets", even if it is exchange, wouldn't they want to divide their wallets into 20 or 33 of them, so that if they get impacted for any negative reason, only 5% or 3% of their asset is affected and is not end of the world. If it is one address and it is impacted, it is 100% – nonopolarity Feb 12 '21 at 18:42
  • Instead of using multiple addresses, they might be using addresses where the signatures of multiple people are needed which are even more secure. – MCCCS Feb 12 '21 at 18:44
  • And yes they do use multiple addresses. Some are cold addresses like the multisig ones and some are hot addresses. – MCCCS Feb 12 '21 at 18:46
  • You may see the self-named holders of Tether ERC20 here: https://etherscan.io/token/0xdac17f958d2ee523a2206206994597c13d831ec7#balances The numbers after exchange name show the wallet number – MCCCS Feb 12 '21 at 18:48
  • Come to think about it, it may even be "They want to give the signal that, me (such a big guy), is buying, folks" – nonopolarity Feb 12 '21 at 18:55