In the Ethereum yellow-paper, it's specified that creating a new account costs 25000 gas (Appendix G, entry for Gnewaccount).
We can see this if, for example, we call a function that makes a transfer:
function test (address receiver) public payable {
receiver.transfer(msg.value);
}
It costs 30356 if sent to an existing address and 55356 if sent to a new address.
The question is, why don't we see the same behavior if we make a regular ether transaction? Just calling receiver.transfer(msg.value); costs always 21000 gas no matter if the transaction is to a new or old address.
A new account is created, the same way as the function call, since is storing a new account on chain, shouldn't the cost be 46000?
