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Bitcoin => Bitcoin Technical Support => Topic started by: WishIStartedSooner on May 26, 2013, 05:56:54 AM



Title: brainwallet question about reuse [SOLVED]
Post by: WishIStartedSooner on May 26, 2013, 05:56:54 AM
Okay I have been using this brainwallet and I really like it. It's a strong password that I don't use for anything else and it's thoroughly ingrained into my memory.

But oh shit, I feel the need to get into it and use some of its contents.

Now, the way I understand it, thanks to this "change" thing, a brainwallet is supposed to be used like a piggy bank.


Here's my question: suppose I import the brainwallet into a client, the way I have other brainwallets, at this point would I lose my coin if I sent it back to the address generated by my brainwallet password?

What if, instead of doing that, I sent ALL the coin to BTC-E, did what I need to do, and sent the remainder back to the old wallet address?

Is it possible to reuse a brainwallet without losing coin?

Or should I just come up with a new password?

Problem Solved:

For anyone interested, I ended up importing my wallet, sending what I needed, then encrypted the wallet.dat with truecrypt, backed it up and deleted the original wallet.dat with eraser.

For the time being. When the time comes I will iterate all my brainwallets at once, as suggested here. Thanks guys!


Title: Re: brainwallet question about reuse
Post by: calian on May 26, 2013, 08:12:59 AM
Better add something you can iterate to your brainwallet and use it to generate new addresses each time. 512 qubit quantum computers are in the wild and theoretically could easily steal from reused addresses. SHA-256 has good waterfall effect so just changing a single character of your passphrase will generate a secure new address each time.


Title: Re: brainwallet question about reuse
Post by: calian on May 26, 2013, 08:14:31 AM
Also I noticed you said password. I hope for your sake it isn't just a password or that is likely to get cracked too. Check out Electrum for an idea of the minimum length of a secure passphrase.


Title: Re: brainwallet question about reuse
Post by: WishIStartedSooner on May 26, 2013, 01:54:17 PM
Also I noticed you said password. I hope for your sake it isn't just a password or that is likely to get cracked too. Check out Electrum for an idea of the minimum length of a secure passphrase.

It's not it has pretty decent "entropy,"

not just a word, I assure you

Better add something you can iterate to your brainwallet and use it to generate new addresses each time. 512 qubit quantum computers are in the wild and theoretically could easily steal from reused addresses. SHA-256 has good waterfall effect so just changing a single character of your passphrase will generate a secure new address each time.

interesting, I'll take that suggestion seriously.

Just is kind of a pain because I had settled on the same seed that I liked for my litecoin and ppcoin


Title: Re: brainwallet question about reuse
Post by: nimda on May 26, 2013, 02:04:41 PM
You can re-use addresses, but you'll need a client that supports it.
- Blockchain.info has a "custom send" which allows sending change back to the original address
- Bitcoin-qt has a "debug console" where you can use createrawtransaction