The Bitcoin.it wiki says addresses do not carry balances...but all info suggests otherwise The Bitcoin wiki states, "Addresses are not wallets nor accounts, and do not carry balances."

Yet, there's a zillion articles online about Bitcoin address balances, the Bitcoin blockchain explorers show balances, and so on.

Can you explain the Bitcoin wiki's statement to me?
The wiki is correct, it is a technicality. Bitcoin "balances" are actually just unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs, from previous transactions) which you have the ability to spend. In most cases, that means knowing the private key corresponding to an address which the transaction was sent to. But the address itself doesn't have a balance, it just "locks up" the UTXOs corresponding to it, requiring a private key.

The important point is that the blockchain doesn't store a "total balance" of an address anywhere, to find the "balance" of an address requires looking through the chain to find the unspent transaction outputs sent to that address and summing their amounts.

Then to spend bitcoins, you spend specific UTXOs, you do not just subtract the amount from your "balance".