Bitcoin Forum

Hi everybody.
I was not aware of realesing multibit HD at all.
I used multibit classic for several months till yestrday that I decided to referesh my windows (7).
I thought I would be able to import my wallet using the private key as usual.
But now i see that the classic version doesn`t exist longer.
I insalled HD version an created a new wallet.
But what about my  bitcoins in my classic wallet?
are them gone forever? if yes, it is multibit`s authors ` fault.
because they must warn me before eg via e-mail or any other way.
now All thing I have , is a key file belong to my classic version`s wallet.
Thank you for your help.

Multibit HD (MBHD) does not allow you to import private keys, because its working with a seed. The seed would not cover the imported keys.


Still here -> https://multibit.org/releases.html


Install the classic version and make a transaction to your new wallet. Its the safest and easiest way to migrate to a new wallet software. Keep the old files around in case someone is still using one of your old addresses.

MultiBit Classic is still available on the multibit.org site.
If you click on the Downloads link and look at the bottom of the 'Releases and signatures' there is a link to take you to the MultiBit Classic downloads.
We expect to support MultiBit Classic for quite a while.

Hi, Jim.

I hate to be a pain, but do you (or someone at Bitcoin Solutions) plan to re-sign the Windows 0.5.18 binaries sometime in the future to fix this certificate expiration issue (http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/37778/download-of-multibit-windows-64-bit-has-corrupt-signature#37786)?

Your not being a pain !

Yeah, we plan a refresh of MultiBit Classic over the summer (0.5.19) which will be resigned with the latests certs.

Thanks for the update!

Good news. I have been using it for quite a long time and still love using it.

Really hope MultiBit Classic can still last for long. :)

Any chance that MultiBit HD will allow us to import private keys in the future, knowing that we would need to manually backup those keys? For example, Armory allows us to use both a seed and gives us the ability to import private keys as well.

We don't intend to add this no.
Being able to recover your bitcoin, in extremis, from your wallet words is a real life saver.

With Classic support calls we would always ask if the user had made backups. I only ever recall ONE person saying that they had, normally the reply was a deafening silence.

We call it the 'wallet words promise'. As long as you write down your wallet words and keep them safe, you can get your bitcoin back.

Thanks so much! That makes a lot of sense. Two questions:

1. Do you have any suggestions for where to store our old non-HD-generated private keys that were generated in Bitcoin Core for public addresses that are still posted publicly (such as within our YouTube videos)? These private keys will still be valuable to us for a long time into the future. Should we just export to a paper wallet?

2. Someone asked me the other day, "How can MultiBit HD be trusted if it isn't open source?" I was under the impression that MultiBit HD was open source, but it seems like I was incorrect about this?

Thanks!

Why don't you do like Electrum does? You can not import private keys to a wallet created with seed, however you can import private keys to a seedless wallet. We can easily switch between these two wallets.

Isn't there a 'sweep' option?


https://multibit.org/blog/2014/08/13/multibit-hd-is-now-open-source.html

https://github.com/bitcoin-solutions/multibit-hd/.

1) We don't want to support the import of random private keys because it means that your wallet words cannot be used to recover your bitcoin in all cases. We call this 'the wallet words promise'. There were multiple occasions with MultiBit Classic over the years where random private keys were lost, even after rolling backups and encrypted private key exports were added. We don't want people to lose bitcoin.

Because of how we connect to the Bitcoin network sweeping an arbitary private key, of unknown age, is very inefficient to import. We have to resync from the genesis block which is not user friendly.

2) MultBit HD is all open source. Your friend is somewhat correct in that the very early beta code was kept in a private github repo for a while. We were doing a lot of experimental work/ large refactors so didn't want people forking in the very early days.

Also, the executable jars have no obfuscation in them - they are very easy to decompile and even have all the comments in.

Thank you for your replies!! And thank you for all the amazing work you guys do!!! :)

I understand your concern, but I don't want to be unable to see my transaction history.

Could I suggest a "spend at import" feature, you add the possibility to import an old key (for see its transaction history and don't loose future payments) but you "force" to send all unspent money to a "Multibit HD address" when you import it.

With future transactions to those addresses, you could use "that money" first in any future transactions always sending the "change" to a Multibit HD address

Cheers
  MC

If you can sweep or spend at import then you necessarily have to have the private key (otherwise you cannot sign the transaction).
Thus you have the same problems with managing random private keys.

Deterministic wallets are just better. Write down 12 words and you can recover your bitcoins.
It's a simple powerful message.

I understand that, but if you loose the private key is not not a big issue anymore, because all the money in the addresses related to those private keys is spent

I agree that Deterministic wallets are better and I'm asking just for "read only support" as a migration path if you come from a "classic wallet", I have a big "bitcoin history" that I don't want to leave behind

Cheers
 MC

So it's better to import multibit classic private keys into another wallet in order to preserve the old addresses, right?

or just keep multibit classic around should you ever need to access your old keys.