Bitcoin Forum

Hi guys,

I searched the whole internet for hours now and I didn't find an answer to my question. But as I looked everywhere, it might be just a small issue, I am just not getting.

In order to get a first idea of paper wallet, I created one and stored a very small amount on it, let's call this paper wallet P and my original public key (so the one, where I want to send the money to) A. I only used one wallet in total (I will chance to 2 wallets, once I got this point here to have one only on a USB drive and start it from a livecd).

In order to redeem it, I read in several tutorials to import the public key in my wallet. So I imported it with with the use of the console. The problem is now, that I cannot send anything from a public key, that is in the "adress" section. It seems I can only use the public keys in the adress section to send bitcoins to. So it would be for example like an adress book of friends, to which I often send money and it is therefore convenient to store their adress.

As the import in the "adress" section lead to no result, I created a new public key in the "receive" section of my original wallet. In the receive section I am not able to generate a public key as I want, but only a label and a random public key is generated. So I cannot put in the public key I created for my paper wallet either.

The last section is the "send" section. Here I can only put adresses in, where I want to send bitcoins. If I would put in A now, I think I would only send coins from A to A, but no coins from P to A, as I am still in my original wallet.

So in total I actually don't get how to send bitcoins from my account and would be very happy, if someone could explain it to me. Thanks.

To get access to your funds you must have the private key associated with you bitcoin address. If you lose this private key consider your funds gone for good. The private key is used for signing transactions involving inputs from your address.

When your ready to spend your paper wallet ballance, import your private key and start bitcoin-qt with -rescan. You should then see the updated ballance

Or, since you aren't particularly technical, use https://blockchain.info/wallet/ which is a little more newbie friendly! Once you've imported your paper wallet (private key) to there you can send your coins wherever you like, perhaps to your bitcoin-qt wallet, or maybe just keep them on blockchain.info if it's not a large amount.

By the way, public key is not the right term and is something different, your Bitcoin address is your Bitcoin address, your private key is kind of like a password to that address and the public key (which is the longest of them all) you should never need as a normal user.

You should have used "importprivkey" in the console.  Is that the command you used?

If you did, then you should have seen the total balance displayed by the wallet increase by the amount that you imported.


With Bitcoin-Qt, you don't send "from a public key" or "from an address".  You send from the wallet.  The wallet chooses which of the various unspent outputs that you've received in the past it will spend, you don't get to control that.  As long as the total balance increased after your ran importprivkey, then the paper wallet has been imported.

If the total balance did not increase, then it is possible (likely?) that you included the rescan=false parameter. This parameter prevents the wallet from scanning the blockchain looking for your unspent outputs.  It allows you to import multiple private keys faster, but then when you are done, you have to run the rescan yourself.

The easiest way I've found to redeem a private key is to use the "cold storage" feature in the Mycelium wallet (Android) app. 

It's dead simple.

1.) Select Cold Storage
2.) Scan (or paste) private key
3.) Scan (or paste) a Bitcoin address (to redeem the funds to).
4.) Click send. 

Seriously, it's that simple.

Use private key
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/How_to_import_private_keys

I find importing the private key very intuitive and simple on block chain
I just scan in the QR code

Blockchain online wallet is one of the easiest options imho.
Just create a new wallet or use your current wallet.
Then, under "Import/Export" section, just put your private key and click "Add Private Key". You will have the option to import the private key directly into the wallet or to sweep the corresponding key.
Blockchain will tell you to be very careful, but you can't really screw up with this...

hope this helps!

scan the qr code or import the private keys ;)

google on one of these to find more info how to do it :)