Bitcoin Forum

I'm new in the crypto community and so far I'm understanding everything pretty well, apart from one thing.

Sometimes I read on site that you need to update your wallet to the newer version or your wallet expires.
What happens if you just HODL and forget to update your wallet? Will everything be gone?

Thanks in advance

That's wrong. Where did you read this? Neither Bitcoins or a wallet can "expire".

No. A wallet is just a "client" to help you see and spend your Bitcoin balance.
Your coins will stay in the blockchain until you spend them. And if you know your private key, you can just use the wallet software you want to spend them.

(but of course, it's probably better if you always try to keep your wallet up to date)

It wasn't with bitcoin in this particular case, but with LINX
It stated this on their website:

TIME LEFT TO UPDATE YOUR LINX WALLET*
25days
22hrs
15mins
28secs
*Old LINX wallets will no longer be able to connect after Jan 1st 2018

Found this very curious and I remembered reading it on other websites too

Oh... in this case it might be true (I don't know this "LINX", so I can't confirm).
But it still sounds weird. I believe that the only problem is that you won't be able to use the old version of the wallet anymore.

Your coins will probably still be there but not accessible by the old wallet version. If you update to the newer version, everything should be ok.

Pfew, thanks for the reply
I thought the coins might vaporize or something, what the fuck do I know  :D

Your BTC isn't stored in the wallet programm.
It is stored in the Blockchain. You can use whatever program you wish in order to use them, you just need to own the private key.
So make backups, write down your seed and be careful.

My advice would be to
1) update your "LINX" wallet
2) either download bitcoin core, electrum or buy a cheap hardware wallet
3) move your funds from "LINX" to core, electrum or your hardware wallet

Eventough, you bitcoins can never "evaporate", it's still possible that this (to me unknown) wallet uses some kind of encryption or derivation scheme to encrypt or derive private keys, and when you don't update, you might not be able to manage our unspent outputs anymore.
An other possibility is that it's a centrally managed SPV wallet, if the central servers go down, you might have problems spending your funds.

These are only 2 theory's, i don't know "LINX", so i have no idear how they work, but if they tell you you have to update your wallet, i would take it very serious (seriously: consider moving to a trusted wallet)..

AFAIK Linx is an Altcoin. And the OP has already been answered by me (based on that).


Let's read the whole thread before posting something folks ;)