Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Technical Support
Re: What does this mean on blockchain.info
by
TryNinja
on 23/08/2017, 00:58:15 UTC
Sorry (again) but what is a change address?
Quote
When the output of a transaction is used as the input of another transaction, it must be spent in its entirety. Sometimes the coin value of the output is higher than what the user wishes to pay. In this case, the client generates a new Bitcoin address, and sends the difference back to this address. This is known as change.

Say you want to buy a candy bar ($1) from a store. You open your wallet (fiat wallet) and inside there is a single $20 bill. What is the min amount you can pay? It isn't $1; you can't rip up 1/20th of the bill and give it to the cashier. You need to pay $20 and since you only owe $1, the cashier gives you back $19. Now in fiat nobody except the central bank can make new bills so bills are in fixed denominations and thus your fiat transaction may look something like the following.
e.g: If you receive a transaction of 1 Bitcoin in your wallet and wants to send 0.3 Bitcoin to someone. You will send 0.3 to your receiver's address and the other 0.7 remaining will be sent back to you, because your whole 1 Bitcoin received before needs to be spent.

More info: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Change