Bitcoin Forum

I imported a private key to a wallet that was confirmed (by me and a third party) to have some Bitcoins in there, so when I went to import the private key for that address, it worked because now in my wallet, Bitcoin QT, under the receive tab, the address that corresponds to the private key that I imported was there, but the bitcoins that are still in the address are not showing up in my wallet..

Any idea what is causing this to not show up?

Post the public address and I will tell you.

~BCX~

Try running it with -rescan.

1LhtrS7bqh5qUeVb7rDJTwhiVKDDLPZzzg


That is my public address Express.....This was my very first time importing a key.....I mean, all it is going to do is add money into my wallet right? It won't delete the bitcoins I already have in my wallet, will it?

I assume it will just add the Bitcoins that are in the address that I just imported into my wallet that has bitcoins in it already.

Have you tried reloading the wallet?

Yes you assume correctly. Your wallet will never "delete bitcoins" (i.e, delete your password that gives you access to the bitcoins) unless you explicitly tell it to. Still, its generally a good idea to take a backup of your wallet once you finish importing your key.

There is 0.04240537 BTC in the address you provided, or about $28 worth. So long as you have the private key for that address, your Bitcoins are safe, so don't worry about that.

Here are some reasons why your BTC wouldn't be showing up in your wallet:

(1) You haven't finished synching with the blockchain. Are you using the Bitcoin-QT client? If so, does it say "synching" when you open it (and display a box saying X days/weeks remaining on the bottom of the window)?

(2) You haven't imported the private key correctly. Just try again.

(3) You need to -rescan the block chain (this is the process where your Bitcoin client re-checks for transactions to your address).

Thanks a lot, I do have the private key......But I have a question about the Rescan.....How do I execute a rescan?

Do I have to do it from the Debug Command, as if I were importing or dumping the private key?

What is the steps for doing the rescan?

Ok I'm gonna be honest right now: I've never actually ran Bitcoin-QT on a windows system (I run bitcoind on my servers, though), so I don't know exactly how to do it. (I use Electrum for my wallet on my personal computer, which doesn't ever need to rescan). I THINK this is the way you'd do it:

(1) Find the directory your Bitcoin QT is installed to (ex: C:\Program Files (x86)\Bitcoin)

(2) Open up cmd.exe (command prompt) and type in cd <directory here> (ex: cd  C:\Program Files (x86)\Bitcoin)

(3) type in bitcoin-qt.exe -rescan

And then let it run. Not 100% sure that'll work though, so don't quote me on it.

Also for future use I've gotta recommend electrum especially for those not hugely into running a full bitcoin node all the time. Its WAY lighter weight and doesn't run into these kinds of complications.

@OP

The user "Theonethatwaskazu" gave an excellent answer.

Here is some explanation

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1249/how-exactly-does-rescan-work/1251#1251

Your coins are there, don't sweat it.


~BCX~

Hey, thanks a lot man.....I appreciate the help.....It worked, well, the -Rescan trick worked, but the method that you gave me did not work for me (like you said, you had never done this on a Windows 7 OS before, so you were just speculating)....But if there are other people that is going to read this, here is how I did the rescan.

I right-clicked on the Bitcoin QT, the main file.....And where it says Shortcut, go down to Target and just add "-Rescan" to the Target at the end with a space in between the original and "-rescan".

Mine looked like this....


"C:\Program Files (x86)\Bitcoin\bitcoin-qt.exe" -rescan



Anyways, I just wanna say thanks a bunch for steering me in the right direction and hopefully this thread will help some people in the future as well. Thanks again.


Just a quick question about Electrum.....You said it is more user-friendly.....The Electrum Wallet. If I were to use the Electrum wallet and had done a private key import, would the balance immediately been updated right after the import or would I have still had to restart the wallet program?

Just curious....I might switch over to that if it is smoother to use.

Yea, after I did the Rescan, the balance updated itself.

Yes, I closed and reloaded the wallet right after the import of my private key....I did the -rescan on it and it did the trick....Worked like a charm.

That's how I would have done it. ;)

Don't Forget do remove "-rescan" after you have finished(if it is the shortcut you usually use to start Bitcoin-QT) or your Wallet will do a rescan every time you start it.

Strictly speaking, your bitcoins is not added to your wallet, they are stored on millions of computers all over the world, and have been so since you got them.
All your wallet has to do is to sync with the network  ;)

The coins are now gone. I hope it was the OP spending them and not the third party he talks about in the OP.

For future reference, never reveal the private key to anyone .