<p>The Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind client computes the balance as you describe, by summing up all the transactions for all the Bitcoin addresses in the wallet.dat.</p>

<p>The blockchain contains all transactions since the genesis block (block 0).  So the balances are simply all the unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs).</p>

<p>There are third party services which will monitor the blockchain to provide balance info for a specified address or addresses.  <a href="http://btcbalance.net" rel="nofollow">BTCBalance.net</a> is one.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-04-21T18:20:35.947Z
I see, so there are no balances as such, only transactions. If I use the same address to receive / send the money 3 times, what will be recorded for that public key is, +20, -4, +7. These will be summed up along with everything else in the blockchain that corresponds to my wallet.dat when calculating the total balance.
Strychnine
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-04-21T21:44:04.173Z
And of course, the system rejects any transaction which would cause the balance for the public key used to become negative.
Strychnine
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-10-23T05:40:07.447Z
How do you go from a public address to a block?
user1870400
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-04-21T08:07:59.907Z
2013-04-21T08:07:59.907Z
Stephen Gornick
<p>Is it the case that the blockchain has information on the balance associated with each public key-address, such that the client on my PC, say, will look at every public/private keys pair in wallet.dat, find all public keys in the blockchain for each of my private keys, sum up the balances for each, and show me the overall balance?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-04-21T06:19:31.827Z
Essentially, yes.
Nick ODell
<blockchain><address>
How balances are calculated?
Strychnine
# How balances are calculated?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2013-04-21)

Is it the case that the blockchain has information on the balance associated with each public key-address, such that the client on my PC, say, will look at every public/private keys pair in wallet.dat, find all public keys in the blockchain for each of my private keys, sum up the balances for each, and show me the overall balance?

**Tags:** blockchain, address

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Essentially, yes.  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2013-04-21. Score: 1 | Accepted answer

The Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind client computes the balance as you describe, by summing up all the transactions for all the Bitcoin addresses in the wallet.dat.

The blockchain contains all transactions since the genesis block (block 0). So the balances are simply all the unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs).

There are third party services which will monitor the blockchain to provide balance info for a specified address or addresses. [BTCBalance.net](http://btcbalance.net) is one.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: I see, so there are no balances as such, only transactions. If I use the same address to receive / send the money 3 times, what will be recorded for that public key is, +20, -4, +7. These will be summed up along with everything else in the blockchain that corresponds to my wallet.dat when calculating the total balance.  
> **username_0**: And of course, the system rejects any transaction which would cause the balance for the public key used to become negative.  
> **username_3**: How do you go from a public address to a block?  

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