X-Pubs
While using the same public keys to receive Bitcoin may sound like a good idea for convenience, it’s actually a very bad idea for privacy due to address re-use. This is where extended public keys or X-Pubs come in.
X-Pubs allow you to generate a group of different public keys that are related by that one specific X-Pub. So you can think of X-Pubs as the parent and the public keys that the X-Pub generates as children in a family tree. This means that you can use different Bitcoin addresses that are derived from your X-Pub and maintain your privacy every time you want to receive Bitcoin.
It goes without saying that you don’t really want to be giving people your X-Pub address!
All this talk of the pub is making me thirsty, shall we go for a pint?Â
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