Archive for the ‘General Info’ Category

How to Export and Import Private Keys from Local Wallet

25, Mar 2018

The craze for many forks from the Bitcoin blockchain has resulted in people trying to claim their free coins in various ways, the easiest one is to keep a local wallet and just export your private keys from the Bitcoin wallet and import them to the wallet of the fork. As a security measure it is always advised to first move your Bitcoin (or other coins) to a new address before trying to claim any kind of forked coins, this way you can be safe that your private keys used for the claim cannot be used for stealing your actual BTC. With the recent addition of official support for SegWit addresses it might be a good time to update your Bitcoin Core wallet, generate a new SegWit wallet address and move your coins these and then start claiming some forked coins with the old private keys.

How to export the private keys:
– Start your Bitcoin Core or other QT-wallet
– Click on “Help” in the menu bar of the wallet
– Click on “Debug window” from the menu
– Select the “Console” tab to be able to type commands
– Unlock your wallet (if it is locked) with: walletpassphrase “your wallet password” 600
– Export the private key with: dumpprivkey “your Bitcoin address”
– Copy and keep safe the private key you will get for the respective wallet address you have typed
– Lock the wallet again with: walletlock

How to import the private keys:
– Start your Bitcoin Core or other QT-wallet
– Click on “Help” in the menu bar of the wallet
– Click on “Debug window” from the menu
– Select the “Console” tab to be able to type commands
– Unlock your (if it is locked) wallet with: walletpassphrase “your wallet password” 600
– Import the private key with: importprivkey “your Private key”
– You can check to see that a new receiving address has been added in the wallet
– Lock the wallet again with: walletlock

Make sure you import your private key(s) as soon as you start the local wallet for the fork in order to claim all of the coins properly, otherwise you might have to do a resync of the blockchain. Alternative solution would be to just copy the Bitcoin wallet.dat file, but then you might need to do a zapwallettxes and it can take longer time to claim if you have multiple wallets. Again, make sure you keep your private keys safe and do not share them or use them to try to claim coins unless you have already moved all of the coins to a new address prior to initiating the claiming process, otherwise there is a risk of loosing your BTC or other coins as there are scams out there posing as real forks that are trying to steal your coins. Even with legitimate forks it is always a wise idea to be on the safe side and never share or use a private key for a wallet that still have coins in it, just to avoid possible security risks.

The Brave Browser Adds Support for Twitch Streamers

2, Mar 2018

Brave has announced that now Twitch streamers can also start to earn revenue in connection with the Brave browser and the Basic Attention Token (BAT). Brave has seen strong growth of new users and creators (including thousands of YouTube channels) after recent announcements and now it seems that it is time for Twitch streamers to join in with a new way to get supported by their viewers. For those new to Brave, it is a faster, more private browser that also includes Brave Payments, a built-in method of supporting content creators. The Brave browser is integrated with the Basic Attention Token (BAT) using the Brave Payments feature, so that audience members can give to support their favorite publishers unrelated to self-publishing companies, YouTube creators, and Twitch streamers using the crypto tokens.

The Brave browser lists the viewed Twitch channels in the Payments list, so that fans can donate tokens every month. Twitch streamers simply register as Brave Publishers to start receiving BAT contributions from Brave users. Twitch streamers can register their channel alongside other properties they may have (Web site, YouTube channel) as part of Brave’s multi-property support. Brave uses the Twitch.tv API to authenticate Twitch channels, after the streamer’s email is confirmed by the system. Once the verification process is complete and the streamer opens an account with Uphold, they can start receiving BAT contributions every 30 days.

– To give the Brave browser a try and to check out the Brave Payments feature…

How to Easily Recover Old wallet.dat Private Keys With PyWallet

27, Feb 2018

From time to time people tend to remember that they have minded BTC, LTC, DOGE or another of the earlier cryptocoins back in the day when they suddenly find an old wallet.dat file and then the problem with recovering the private keys and the coins in the wallet arises, we often get questions on how to do that. The easiest way would of course be to just copy the wallet.dat file in a new installation of Bitcoin Core or the respective local wallet and wait for the blockchain to sync in order to have access to any coins stored in the wallet. Int he case of Bitcoin however this is a slow process requiring you to download 150 GB of data (the whole blockchain), so alternative ways are being looked into and there are some that can be easier. One such way is to use the PyWallet Bitcoin wallet importer/exporter Python script that has been available for ages and that works great for giving you all your public and private keys from a wallet.dat file.

PyWallet however is a Python script that does require you to have Python installed and it requires an older version 2.7, so it will not work with the latest 3.x releases as there are changes that will prevent you from running the script. We are going to go through a short guide on how you can export your public/private keys from a wallet.dat under Windows here, the procedure for Linux is very similar as well. So you need to download and install Python 2.7 first, this is a Windows package of Python, there are no other dependencies to run the script under Windows. Then you need to install it in an easy folder like C:\Python27 for example, copy the pywallet.py script and the wallet.dat files in the same folder and then run the following command:

python pywallet.py --dumpwallet --datadir=.

If you have used the wallet for mining you may have more than just a few addresses inside, so you can use the below code to save the output into a wallet.txt file for easy use instead of just outputting it in the console window:

python pywallet.py --dumpwallet --datadir=. > wallet.txt

Just open up the text file and you will see a list of exported public keys (addresses) and private keys that were inside the wallet.dat wallet file. If you had the wallet encrypted you will also need to provide the password you used for the encryption in order for the data to be decrypted first. If you do not remember that password you have used to encrypt the wallet.dat file, well that would be a serious problem as recovering any coins inside the wallet has just become much harder that you though it could be.

You can use any block explorer for the respective coin to check if it has any balance inside by pasting your address (public key), so that you can be sure if there are coins or not in an address. If there are you can then just import the public/private key in a new wallet and then do whatever you want with the coins inside. Importing the key pair can vary depending on the wallet you choose to use, so check what is the procedure and make sure that you can import a wallet using the public and private key(s) you have just obtained using the PyWallet script.

There is also a more up to date fork of PyWallet available as well that offers some useful additional features, so you may also check it out if the original one does not do what you want it to, although the original one is perfectly fine for recovering the keys.


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