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What was your goal in downloading the entire chain versus using a light client? Or why didn't you just download the last few blocks plus UTXOs? Either way you n

What was your goal in downloading the entire chain versus using a light client? Or why didn't you just download the last few blocks plus UTXOs? Either way you need a trust anchor, so starting from something recent makes sense if you don't want to wait days to verify the entire chain. And if you need to view specific blocks or transactions, use an online viewer or download that specific block and check the hash of the block. 10 years of 10 minute blocks is only 16MB of hashes (32 bytes per block). So it's trivial to get all block hashes and then freely use other sources to check specific parts. Storage is cheap. 2TB drives are a bit over $50.

yebyen 9y ago
I had a wallet.dat from a regular Core client, full node. I wasn't able to find a client that seemed to be able to import that wallet.dat. If you know a way to handle that, great! I don't know if I'd trust some arbitrary client to still be around and maintained when I need to retrieve my funds from the latest version of the block chain. I'm marginally afraid of what will happen if the person maintaining Electrum died, or disappeared, and protocol changes made a need for some mandatory code updates. Because the appearance to me is that private keys may be technically portable, but wallets are basically not transferrable between different clients. I have a 14TB array that I bought with those Bitcoin I cashed in. It was cheap. But the next time I want to sync the whole chain, I'm really sure I'm gonna have to use it... Thanks for your comments though, I will look up UTXO as it's another one I have not heard of before!
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transferring_coins_from_Bitcoin-Qt_to_Electrum https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transferring_coins_from_Bitcoin-Q...
  - yebyen 9y ago
    Yep. > Before reading this page, users should note that directly manipulating ECDSA private keys is dangerous and can result in losing bitcoins[1][2]. Hmm. > Use the dumpprivkey command to get the private key. Repeat for as many bitcoin addresses as have money in them. OK, so how many bitcoin addresses do I have with money in them? examining 3.5 year old wallet.dat, checking Oh, THAT Many? And are you sure that is all of them? (It was quite a lot of addresses, and not sure how I would know if the listing was complete.) So, is there some way to safely automate this? Try it... the command outputs are all in JSON (configurable?), so you most likely won't be solving this with just pipes, awk, and grep. I tried exporting a few private keys this way and they are not exaggerating when they say: > This guide is [not] for the impatient or time-stressed, it is recommended that users of Bitcoin Core simply wait out the blockchain synchronization. There are many benefits to running a Full node including trustlessness, security and privacy which lightweight wallets cannot match. I have to use Bitcoin-Qt to get the keys out, and it does not appear to be fool-proof at all. Might as well just sync the whole blockchain then.

yebyen 9y ago

I had a wallet.dat from a regular Core client, full node. I wasn't able to find a client that seemed to be able to import that wallet.dat. If you know a way to handle that, great! I don't know if I'd trust some arbitrary client to still be around and maintained when I need to retrieve my funds from the latest version of the block chain. I'm marginally afraid of what will happen if the person maintaining Electrum died, or disappeared, and protocol changes made a need for some mandatory code updates. Because the appearance to me is that private keys may be technically portable, but wallets are basically not transferrable between different clients. I have a 14TB array that I bought with those Bitcoin I cashed in. It was cheap. But the next time I want to sync the whole chain, I'm really sure I'm gonna have to use it... Thanks for your comments though, I will look up UTXO as it's another one I have not heard of before!

MichaelGG 9y ago
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transferring_coins_from_Bitcoin-Qt_to_Electrum https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transferring_coins_from_Bitcoin-Q...
- yebyen 9y ago
  Yep. > Before reading this page, users should note that directly manipulating ECDSA private keys is dangerous and can result in losing bitcoins[1][2]. Hmm. > Use the dumpprivkey command to get the private key. Repeat for as many bitcoin addresses as have money in them. OK, so how many bitcoin addresses do I have with money in them? examining 3.5 year old wallet.dat, checking Oh, THAT Many? And are you sure that is all of them? (It was quite a lot of addresses, and not sure how I would know if the listing was complete.) So, is there some way to safely automate this? Try it... the command outputs are all in JSON (configurable?), so you most likely won't be solving this with just pipes, awk, and grep. I tried exporting a few private keys this way and they are not exaggerating when they say: > This guide is [not] for the impatient or time-stressed, it is recommended that users of Bitcoin Core simply wait out the blockchain synchronization. There are many benefits to running a Full node including trustlessness, security and privacy which lightweight wallets cannot match. I have to use Bitcoin-Qt to get the keys out, and it does not appear to be fool-proof at all. Might as well just sync the whole blockchain then.