Talk:Address reuse

Seems like another page, which is meant to be a vent for zealots' propaganda:

- "Address reuse harms the privacy of not only yourself, but also others - including many not related to the transaction ..."

without explaining what is this all about bears similar amount of informational value as "address reuse will cause you and others burn in eternal fire"

- "Bitcoin does not, at a low level, have any concept of addresses, only individual coins. Address reuse, at this layer, requires producing multiple digital signatures when you spend bitcoins. Multiple situations have been found where more than one digital signature can be used to calculate the private key needed to spend bitcoins"

Some solid references, examples? Or just a blah-blah meant to scare people away? Please back such strong statements with solid facts and references. Yes, they can be found.

- "... situations for finding the private key from signatures have been fixed, it is not prudent to assume there aren't more such situations yet unknown."

Non sequitur? It is not prudent to assume there aren't more "situations" in *ANY* part of the Bitcoin protocol AND its implementations. I wouldn't be very surprised if one day those who used "damned" address reusing wallets were left with their coins and one or another address changing wallet became compromised for very different reasons. Not that I wish. It is just not prudent to assume.

- "Accidental loss - In Bitcoin abstraction, an address is an invoice for a specific payment."

Not true. We want it to be like that and we encourage people to use it this way but we can't say that "it *IS*".

- "Even if someone does not choose to discard that data, it may have since been lost in an accident or compromised. In any of these situations, any future payments to the same address would go in to a "black hole", and be forever lost through no fault of the recipient."

True. Just - how different it is from the situation when one loses his holly-address-ever-changing wallet and all his /past/ payments go to a "black hole", and be forever lost through no fault of the recipient? In either situations coins are gone. Except that a prudent user could make a cold storage private key copies for his address and still be able to recover. While this kind of FUD propaganda could lead him to believe that he will be always safe because he never reuses the address.. this argument holds as much water as the previous one. Or if you lose your wallet and restore it from the backup, but... oops!! Suddenly *BECAUSE* of changing address all payments are in the "black hole" and lost forever. Please mind that we talk here about "Address reuse", not about "HD Wallets"!

- Confusion - "Users who see addresses reused may incorrectly be led to believe they function similarly to [...] bank accounts.

Because they do. Go to the "offending" blockchain.info, enter an address, which has more than one transaction attached to it and no matter how much we want to bend the reality - the similarities are there: all transactions sum up to a final balance. No matter how it all works deep down (if you go deep enough it is all about moving photons and electrons) looking from a higher perspective they do work "similarly to bank accounts" whether we like it or not and no matter how much we say that they don't.

- "Often this is manifested in people talking about nonsense like "address balance""

Definitely! They know nothing and talk nonsense... :-(

I don't feel like spending a considerable amount of time correcting all these, only to see the changes reverted. For the good of Bitcoin in general, please don't create more confusion than is needed. Tell the truth and explain things instead of telling half-truths or even plain non-truths. This kind of FUD and misinformation is a good way to create even more confusion in new users and scare them away. Tell them true. Show them both sides instead.

What should be there:

1. Address reuse lowers the level of privacy and anonymity 2. In certain situations address reuse may lead to increased risk of compromising the private key(s) etc.

Wouldn't hurt mentioning good sides either. Like that address reuse can actually *prevent* loss of coins in cases like losing a non-HD wallet, which kept changing addresses. And adding that rather than reusing addresses, people should switch to HD implementations, etc.

Still - with what I read originally on that page, I am afraid this kind of unbiased information is far too much to expect.

If you'd like to add references, feel free. Please don't modify the content to fit your erroneous understanding how Bitcoin works, however. Thanks. --Luke-jr (talk) 00:14, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

I would first remove offensive and untrue elements. Only then I would focus on adding appropriate references to those, which are in fact true, valid and important. I just don't want to lose much time doing this if this is going to be reversed by you anyway. But one thing.. could you be so kind as to explain which parts of my understanding how Bitcoin works are erroneous? Silverdr (talk) 04:43, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Since you don't seem to provide any support for them, can we eventually remove the false statements? luke-jr? Silverdr (talk) 14:50, 30 October 2014 (UTC)