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I know you can create label / address pairs to receive coins and also that a wallet automatically generates a new address when you need change from a transaction for the receive operation.

Will there only ever be one send address for any given wallet?

So on the blockchain all my send transactions will only ever have the one address even though I can and will have multiple receive addresses?

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Bitcoins spend in a transaction come from an output of a previous transaction. As such a spent output is always associated with the address that received the coins.

The address that is identified as the sender is usually one of the addresses that spent outputs. As such there are as many sending addresses for each wallet as there are receiving addresses, adding a few addresses for change that the wallet will automatically create.

For details see the protocol specification.

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It doesn't work that way.

Any address can send and receive. Since you'll receive coins on multiple addresses, sooner or later you will have to use those addresses to send too, in order to spend those coins.

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  • Is there any way to know what address's have been genereated by a wallet or is the only way to do a forensic on the blockchain so that you could build a profile etc ??
    – BitCoin New Guy
    Jan 27, 2013 at 9:06
  • Is there no way you can view these send address;s either via the UI or by the API on the client ??
    – BitCoin New Guy
    Jan 27, 2013 at 9:07
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    bitcoind listreceivedbyaddress 0 true
    – o0'.
    Jan 27, 2013 at 12:48
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    i think the author was also looking to understand how one might choose which address (or funds on which address) to send from for his client
    – gesell
    Jan 29, 2013 at 1:04

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