37
votes
Accepted
The Bitcoin.it wiki says addresses do not carry balances...but all info suggests otherwise
The wiki is correct, it is a technicality. Bitcoin "balances" are actually just unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs, from previous transactions) which you have the ability to spend. In most cases, that ...
- 11.4k
17
votes
Accepted
Is my account balance publicly visible?
If your business partner knows your address, they can learn the transaction history and balance of that address. Often it is possible to guess or deduce that other addresses also belong to you, but ...
- 64.5k
16
votes
The Bitcoin.it wiki says addresses do not carry balances...but all info suggests otherwise
Bitcoin addresses do not actually exist on the Bitcoin network. They are an abstraction for humans to be able to easily send money to each other.
What Bitcoin actually uses are transaction outputs. A ...
- 62.3k
15
votes
Is my account balance publicly visible?
If I'm sending someone my wallet-address, am I making my account balance visible to him?
Yes.
all transactions are public, means if I know the wallet address, I
can reconstruct the current ...
- 966
8
votes
How to check Bitcoin wallet balance without any API
If you are not going to use a 3rd party API, you'll need to run a node and add each address you want to query as a watch only address. If you are looking to create a database with all addresses, ...
- 5,233
8
votes
Accepted
How can I have friend to send me money without possibility to see my balance?
You are correct that anyone can see the balance of bitcoins in any address at any time.
So a better way to keep your total balance private is to make a new address and ask your friend to send the ...
- 22.8k
8
votes
Accepted
Where is my bitcoin balance stored in the blockchain?
The blockchain defines your balance, but it doesn't have a specific field in which your balance is stored.
Yes, it needs to be analyzed to find your balance. However, it doesn't have to be analyzed ...
- 3,154
7
votes
Accepted
Bitcoin-cli how to get balance of a wallet on different node?
You cannot because Bitcoin Core does not store such information. Bitcoin Core does not store all information for all addresses, it only stores information for its own addresses and the lower level ...
- 62.3k
6
votes
How do miners determine if a wallet has sufficient funds
The blockchain does not see wallets at all. It only sees spent and unspent transaction outputs (txouts). A txout is either completely spent or completely unspent - it cannot be "partially" spent and ...
- 22.8k
6
votes
Accepted
API for large number of queries to different addresses every few minutes
You can use a self-hosted (but low-burden!) instance of Esplora.
Blockstream is also exposing an instance for free (at the moment) at blockstream.info.
Disclaimer: if you take part of Bitcoin as an ...
- 4,189
6
votes
Accepted
How is the balance of a Bitcoin address quickly calculated?
At the protocol level, Bitcoin has no concept of "balances" or "addresses", and their common interpretation isn't relevant during verification.
Every transaction spends "coins&...
- 86.1k
5
votes
Where is my bitcoin balance stored in the blockchain?
Your balance is the sum of UTXO (unspent transaction output) values in the blockchain since genesis block (block#0).
UTXO is the coins that the addresses' you control (by having their private keys) ...
- 863
5
votes
Accepted
What is the Big-O complexity to retrieve the balance for a user?
It depends on what data structure you have put the UTXO set into. Different implementations do this in different ways, there is no one way to have the UTXO set.
For instance, one implementation may ...
- 62.3k
5
votes
Accepted
Is there a maximum balance that a single address can hold?
Nope. Not 1 bit. A balance (in this context) is the sum of all UTXO's for a given address. There is no limit on the number of UTXO's or their total amount (from the perspective of how the blockchain ...
- 365
5
votes
Accepted
Where is the change from the output stored in?
When a sender creates a transaction, they explicitly define which pieces of bitcoin they spend. We call such pieces of bitcoin Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXO) and you can think of the UTXO set as ...
- 64.5k
5
votes
Accepted
What is the difference between wallet balance, local balance and remote balance in the Lightning Network?
Walletbalance is showing your on-chain balance of a lightning wallet.
Regarding channel balances (locked on layer 2 and not available onchain):
local balance is your local balance that you can spend ...
- 1,584
4
votes
Accepted
Regtest: One node nullifying other node's balance
You only see the balance of blocks that have at least another 100 on top. This is because coinbase outputs only become spendable after 101 confirmations (the maturity period).
After the nodes ...
- 86.1k
4
votes
Accepted
How to get balance from a specific address in bitcoinj?
I found the solution for this question. I used this class:
/**
* This class implements a {@link org.bitcoinj.wallet.CoinSelector} which attempts to select all outputs
* from a designated address. ...
- 412
4
votes
How to get balance of tens of thousands of addresses?
I think your should consider that using an API could result in fakes, wrongly-validated data. Using an API means you fully trust the API service,... which is kind-of against bitcoin no-trust model.
I ...
- 5,902
4
votes
Accepted
Is it possible to use xpub address to monitor balance from previously generated addresses?
Certainly. If you use the master public key (the xpub that you have), you can enter it into a site like blockchain.info to get the balances of many of the addresses derived from that key. Generally ...
- 62.3k
4
votes
Is it possible to use xpub address to monitor balance from previously generated addresses?
That's exactly what the Sentinel app does: imports a read-only XPUB key in order to passively watch the balance of an offline wallet, be it paper wallet, trezor or ledger.
For use with Ledger Nano S ...
- 267
4
votes
How to check about 10 million bitcoin addresses?
You don't need to check the whole 62*62*62*62 addresses online through API. That would be an insanely long journey, and you'll get blacklisted at any free service before finding what you seek, no ...
- 159
4
votes
How to get historical balance of a Bitcoin address at a particular block number or date?
Account/address balance are higher level constructs that are built on Bitcoin's low-level transaction scripting language and cryptography. As such, data related to funds 'belonging' to a particular ...
- 6,978
4
votes
What is the difference between wallet balance, local balance and remote balance in the Lightning Network?
In each of your channels, you have a local balance. This is the balance that is yours in that channel. The counterparty of the channel has the remote balance. All lightning transactions change these ...
- 62.3k
4
votes
Accepted
How many BTC addresses have balance in them?
There are approximately 800,000 unique addresses on the blockchain with some Bitcoin held at those addresses at the present time according to blockchain.com.
Let's assume these addresses are all ...
- 10.5k
4
votes
Lightning channel decrease capacity
If you mean decreasing the capacity of the channel to 1.5BTC in order to withdraw 0.5BTC onchain, it is possible in theory but not yet part of the Lightning Network protocol nor its implementations. ...
- 4,189
4
votes
Lightning channel decrease capacity
As mentioned by Antoine, Alice and Bob could make a transaction to close the channel, Alice could use her payout to make the payment, and then Alice could use the change of that payment reopen the ...
- 64.5k
3
votes
Is there any tool available that can tell me the balance of bitcoin address on specific date?
Blockchain.info does provide this information on their explorer.
Just update the address property in the below with the bitcoin address you are interested in.
https://blockchain.info/charts/...
- 5,233
3
votes
Bitcoinj always gets 0 balance
Okay, so it's been a while since I've played around with BitcoinJ but the problem might be that you need to rebuild your BlockStore file. A BitcoinJ application is essentially made up of four main ...
- 161
3
votes
Accepted
Calculating "total received" and balance by an address
As the other answer has noted, balances don't technically exist for a specific address. This is because there may be many outputs that are addressed to an address you own, but you can only spend these ...
- 13.7k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible