<blockquote>
<p>Technically speaking, is it possible to reuse a change address from a previous transaction and make it a receive address?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Technically that would be possible. The network rules have no concept of change or receive addresses - it's just a scriptPubKey that coins are sent to.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What are the pros and cons of doing so?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I see no reason why you'd want to do that. It's bad for privacy as it's gratuitously exposing linkage between transactions.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Are there any wallets that currently support this functionality?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I hope not.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-10-29T18:51:43.997Z
2020-10-29T18:51:43.997Z
Pieter Wuille
<p>Technically speaking, is it possible to reuse a change address from a previous transaction and make it a receive address?</p>
<p>What are the pros and cons of doing so? This does look like a bad privacy practice, but I wonder whether there would be any rationale for doing this.</p>
<p>Are there any wallets that currently support this functionality?</p>

<wallet><address><privacy><address-reuse>
Re-use change address as a receive address
glowang
# Re-use change address as a receive address

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-10-29)

Technically speaking, is it possible to reuse a change address from a previous transaction and make it a receive address?

What are the pros and cons of doing so? This does look like a bad privacy practice, but I wonder whether there would be any rationale for doing this.

Are there any wallets that currently support this functionality?

**Tags:** wallet, address, privacy, address-reuse


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2020-10-29. Score: 5 | Accepted answer

> Technically speaking, is it possible to reuse a change address from a previous transaction and make it a receive address?

Technically that would be possible. The network rules have no concept of change or receive addresses - it's just a scriptPubKey that coins are sent to.

> What are the pros and cons of doing so?

I see no reason why you'd want to do that. It's bad for privacy as it's gratuitously exposing linkage between transactions.

> Are there any wallets that currently support this functionality?

I hope not.


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