Once upon a time, I read something somewhere that indicated that change addresses had additional information posted in the blockchain vs third party addresses. I had long since forgotten about this, so I am hoping someone else can confirm whether this was ever true and whether or not it has changed. Sadly, this newbie post reminded me because it triggered my urge to want to correct the poster:
Actually the transaction only shows the public key of the address you are sending the coins from. That's why some coins are likely lost forever because they were sent to an address which are unlikely to be associated with a public/private key pair.
They are named something like "1DontSendBitCoinsHere"...
That urge was quickly replaced by the same question asked by another newbie that the aforementioned post was supposed to answer:
OK, newbie here but please bear with me because I'm sure many people reading this thread would like to ask this same question but are afraid to look noob. You keep saying not to reuse addresses and keep balances on new addresses. Now as I understand it, in order to send coins to any address the network needs to be made aware of it by means of a transaction which will be forever recorded on the blockchain with the public keys of the addresses. So what's the point in tranferring the coins to a new address if its public key is going to be made public by the transaction anyway, even if the address owner only made that single transaction using that address?
Obviously the "don't re-use addresses" advice would be garbage if transactions work the way I remember reading that they work. I find it hard to believe (but not impossible based on some other things I have seen) that garbage advice would be quite so rampant, so I have to believe that either A) I am remembering wrong or B) bitcoin core wallet was changed to not broadcast public keys for change addresses in transactions.
Anyone who has been around here long enough to know what I read happen to remember it and know how to find it?