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According to BIP32 we can have a seed from which we derive all our private and public keys, so in theory we can have an "infinite" number of child and grandchild keys so why does BIP44 limit that idea of infinity and limits HD wallets to only derive keys from the address_index the "fifth generation"
m / purpose' / coin_type' / account' / change / address_index
So in practice Bitcoin wallets following BIP44 can only generate 231 keys, furthermore only 231 possible Bitcoin addresses. Why is that the case when we can have an infinite amount of addresses?
2 billion keys within one wallet ought to be enough for everyone.
There haven't been even that many transactions in all of Bitcoin's history.
That is only the limit per account. Just increment your account# by one, and you get another couple billion.
Which may as well be infinity in practice.
xPub for their public key derivation because in theory someone could discover all their public addresses
All addresses are public, anyone can see the coins balance there. That is why each address is only used once. And of course the master xPub is kept secret, same goes for Account level and below.
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