Change Address

Definition

A change address is a wallet-controlled destination used to receive the portion of transaction inputs that is not being sent to the recipient or paid as fees. Bitcoin transactions spend complete unspent outputs rather than subtracting an amount from a conventional account balance. When selected inputs exceed the payment and fee, the wallet usually creates a separate change output. For example, spending an output containing more bitcoin than the intended payment normally returns the difference to the sender's wallet. A fresh change address can make casual address reuse less revealing, although public transaction patterns may still expose relationships. Change is not necessarily shown as an incoming payment from another person. Users reviewing a transaction should verify that both the recipient output and the change destination are correct, especially when using offline signing workflows or software they do not fully trust.