[teod]

I don't think that's how it works. From my understanding, a new address is typically used for every new transaction. What you are interested in is their wallet which would be the sum of their addresses.

On the other hand, it appears that they are using Coinbase. In that case I'm not sure Mozilla would have direct access to a wallet. Instead I imagine that Coinbase keeps track of their balance which is divided among Coinbase's wallets (sort of like a bank). I'm not too well versed however, so maybe someone else can clear this up.

[kordless]

You can use your Coinbase wallet in a variety of ways, including having it build a cart and payment address for you for each transaction or simply using a single address for receiving multiple ongoing payments. The address will be permanently assigned to your Coinbase account once you create it.

Here's some Python code for creating addresses on Coinbase, if anyone is interested in how it works: https://github.com/StackMonkey/utter-va/blob/master/webapp/l...

That said, I don't think there is a way to get the private keys for these addresses so you can use them on your own wallet software. Not that you would want to, given Coinbase is currently holding (and aware) of said addresses keys.

[exo762]

> I don't think that's how it works. From my understanding, a new address is typically used for every new transaction. What you are interested in is their wallet which would be the sum of their addresses.

Single address can be used as an output of many transactions. There is nothing preventing it in the protocol. More - it's a "natural" thing. Generation of address per transaction is a very convenient but not enforced by anything.

[MiguelHudnandez]

An address can receive multiple payments, but the most likely use case from that is mining output, or recurring payments from the same sender.

A wallet owner is able to generate new addresses at any time, and generally does so in order to verify that a payment is coming in for a specific transaction. For example, a Bitcoin ATM operator wouldn't generate a payment address until a patron is standing at the kiosk. As soon as a transaction is verified, the machine would dispense whatever amount of money and future payments to that address would probably be ignored.

You are right that Mozilla probably isn't even operating a bitcoin wallet in this case. They are probably just getting USD from Coinbase.

[Arnavion]

Correct. Bitcoin addresses are more like invoice numbers than account numbers. You're expected to use a different one for each transaction so that you can tell them apart.