Issue with unknown address on the blockchain

Hey everyone, just joined here. I’ve got a bit of an issue. I sent some BTC from my Ledger to Binance using the address they provided. The thing is, only half of the BTC actually showed up. When I checked the blockchain with the TxID/TxHash, it shows that my transfer split into 2 addresses. Half went to the Binance address (1MLF...) and that part made it to my Binance account. But the other half ended up at some address I don’t recognize (bc1qdz...) and that’s where the rest of my bitcoins are. I’m really confused and don’t know how to retrieve them. It’s stressing me out... Thanks for any help and apologies if I posted this in the wrong section.

No need to panic because the second address actually seems to be a change an address which was automatically selected by the wallet itself. What happened is you might have used tried to send out bitcoin to your binance address and with the total used UTXO (bitcoin) been too excess for what you intended, the remaining balance is sent to an address on that same wallet which is the change address. What you need to do is to check that second address you have on the TXID with all the address left on your wallet you will see that the bitcoin is there and can also be spent again in another transaction

thank you for your answer. But I'm not sure I understand. it's been now two hours. And where the btc will go ? Do you mean that the Ledger "decided" to send half of my transfer to the good address (Binance, btc arrived) and the other half to some random unknown address, so where will this second half of btc go ? Thank you again for your answer, it's the first time I see that and I don't know how to get this btc back

I'm sorry I don't know how to do that it's actually a ledger hardware key, and there are no more btc...

Are you saying the entire wallet (ledger) is empty and no bitcoin is there currently? Because as a change address this is suppose to be added to your wallet back. What I ask is check all the bitcoin address on your ledger wallet and look for the one that match the address you said is on the TXID or you share the TXID here

no more btc in the wallett here is the TXID https://blockstream.info/tx/de5dbf578f6d92606f1d58472a6ea8f2e67706ac7f9d5675430d02944ecd4468 thank you again for your much apreciated help

omg, as we talk here, the ammount sent on the second unknown address, the (bc1qdz...) one, is now back and credited on my ledger ! just right now... wew !! Thank you very much, by the way. But if I may ask, how did you know it's a specific wallet address ?

That's magic, right? Kidding aside, that's how HD wallet[1] works . Whenever you transfer an amount. Example you have 0.5 btc in your wallet, you want to transfer 0.2 btc, the difference of 0.5 - 0.2 which is 0.3 btc will be automatically transfer to your own wallet (other owned wallet address on that HD wallet) regardless how many UTXO (unspent transaction output ) inputs you have on that transaction. [1] https://www.ledger.com/academy/crypto/what-are-hierarchical-deterministic-hd-wallets

You didn’t sync wallet that’s why you didn’t see it reflect, if not it was there all along and not yet arrived. I knew it was a change address because you didn’t include a second address yourself to suggest it was changed due to any malware but rather the wallet picked the address from one of your wallet change address to return your balance. It is just a simple way that bitcoin works, you wanted to send some amount of bitcoin to the binance address and your total amount was more than that then the wallet has to send that to a different and new address (unless you specify the address) and that’s why the output was two, one for your prefer binance address and the other for change address. You can read on bitcoin change address to understand better

That's exactly what I thought, ha ! thank you for the ledger link and your explanation I had no idea, thank you a lot for make it clear. I will read on that. And again, thank you a lot for your kind help and having spent this time to explain.

^ Any excess balance from the combined UTXOs that needed to make the output value will be sent as change balance that you either pick or let the wallet to pick on its own. If you want to sent the entire amount then make sure you clicked the Max before hitting send to avoid over paying fees and also you can connect your hardware wallet with electrum like software for better accessibility.

Here's a better Ledger article link that best explains change addresses. Link: support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/360033802154-Change-addresses-for-UTXO-based-crypto-assets The "Hierarchical Deterministic" article mainly tackles the wallet's ability to generate addresses linked to a single seed and even some non-hd wallets have some sort of implementation of change address for privacy purposes.

I should mention that you will most likely end up seeing the remaining bitcoins if you import the seed phrase into another wallet, and wait for it to sync. Or even better, get the master public key and type (or scan) it into a BIP39-compatible wallet, so that you can be sure that the address and funds are in one of the change address, without there being a possibility of spending them from the other wallet by accident.

As you don't seem to know how the UTXO transaction model of Bitcoin works, I highly recommend to spend some time reading the provided links or learning more in general how Bitcoin operates. My go-to site for that is https://learnmeabitcoin.com/ Take your time to work through the beginners and later also the more technical sections. I find it all very well explained and nicely presented there.

You need to add addresses to your ledger and the missing (chaange) BTC will show up. Good luck /KX

to clear this out you can (try to )export this derived address with its private key like single wallet . if it's yours you'll have success . and then can use it.