What the deposit address is and why it changes

07 September 2026

The deposit address is the temporary wallet that the swap site generates for you to send your coins into. It changes for every swap because the site uses a fresh, unique address to keep each order separate and trackable.

When you initiate a swap, the site needs a way to know that your specific coins have arrived. If everyone used the same deposit address, the site would have no reliable way to match incoming funds to the correct order. A new address per swap solves that problem cleanly.

The deposit address is not your personal wallet. You do not own it. You have no private key for it. It belongs to the swap site's internal system. You are simply sending coins into a temporary holding spot that the site controls. Once the site sees the transaction reach the required number of confirmations, it forwards your coins (minus the swap fee) toward the receiving address you provided.

Why does the address look different each time? The site generates a new address from its master wallet for every order. This is standard practice for any service that handles many transactions. A reused address would create confusion. If two people sent to the same address at nearly the same time, the site could not reliably tell which incoming payment belonged to which user. A fresh address avoids that ambiguity entirely.

There is a second reason. Using unique deposit addresses makes it harder for an outside observer to link your swap to your identity or to other activity. Someone watching the blockchain could see that address A received coins and later sent coins to address B. But they would not automatically know that address A was a deposit address used once and then abandoned. The site typically sweeps funds from that address into its own reserves after the swap completes. That further breaks the visible chain. This is not anonymity - blockchain analysis can still connect patterns - but it raises the cost of tracking.

The deposit address you see on the swap page is almost always a new address that has never been used before. The site generates it at the moment you create the order. If you close the browser and come back later, that same address remains tied to your order until the order expires or completes. After that, the address is retired. The site will not use it again for a different customer.

A common misunderstanding is that the deposit address is permanent or that you can reuse it for a second swap. Do not do this. If you send coins to an old deposit address from a completed swap, the site has no order tied to that address. The coins may arrive, but nobody will process them. Recovery is possible but requires contacting support and proving ownership of the sending wallet. It is avoidable trouble.

The deposit address is the first step in the swap process. After you send your coins there, the site watches for the transaction. That is the moment when the swap actually begins. The hub page titled "What a swap actually does with your coins" explains what happens next - how the site moves your coins, converts them if needed, and delivers the result to your receiving address. That page is the natural next place to read if you want to understand the full chain of events after you hit send.

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