Where does the address I send my coins to come from and why does it look different each time

07 September 2026

The address you send coins to is generated on the spot by the exchanger, specifically for your single swap. It looks different each time because a new, unique address is created for every transaction, and it is never reused.

How the address is generated

When you start a swap on wswap.site, the system does not hand you a permanent wallet address that belongs to an exchange. Instead, it creates a fresh address using the cryptographic keys of a temporary wallet. This wallet exists only for the duration of your swap. The exchanger controls the private keys for that wallet, but the address itself is derived from those keys in a way that is functionally indistinguishable from any other address on that blockchain.

The process is automated. You submit your order, and within seconds, the server generates a new key pair - a private key and its corresponding public address. That address is displayed to you as the destination for your deposit. Once the swap completes, the private keys are discarded. The address effectively becomes unusable because nobody retains the ability to spend from it.

Why it changes every time

The primary reason is privacy. If the exchanger used the same address for every swap, anyone examining the blockchain could see all transactions flowing into that single address. They could correlate deposits, infer trading patterns, and potentially link multiple swaps to the same person. By giving each swap a fresh address, the exchanger breaks that chain of visibility. No two swaps share a destination address, so an outside observer sees isolated transactions rather than a pattern.

There is also a practical reason. Reusing addresses creates operational risk. If an address were used repeatedly, two users might accidentally send funds to it at overlapping times, causing confusion about which deposit belongs to which swap. A unique address per swap eliminates that ambiguity. The system knows exactly which swap a deposit is for because that address was assigned to exactly one order.

What happens after you send

Once your coins arrive at that temporary address, the exchanger monitors the blockchain for the transaction. It confirms the deposit, executes the conversion, and forwards the output currency to your final destination address - the one you provided when you started the swap. The temporary address is then left empty. If someone later sends coins to that same address (perhaps by mistake or by reusing an old order), the funds would not be retrievable because the private keys are gone.

The bigger picture

This address generation is one step in a larger process. The hub page "What a swap actually does with your coins" walks through the entire sequence from start to finish, including how the exchanger finds a counterparty for your trade and how it handles network confirmations. That page is the natural next place to go if you want to understand what happens before and after the deposit step described here.

The key takeaway is simple: the address is temporary, unique, and purpose-built for a single swap. It is not a wallet you can reuse, and it is not connected to any account. It exists for one transaction, and then it is gone.

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