Bitcoin Forum

Hi, I'm new to cryptocurrency.
I recently opened a wallet on electrum and bought bitcoins on paymium.
when I try to withdraw, he tells me that the address is not correct, what should I do?
Thanks for your help.

You probably have an address starting with bc1, don't you? Unfortunately, many services still don't support this kind of addresses even though users would benefit from lower fees. You can either create a new wallet and select Legacy type of wallet or follow this guide (https://bitcoinelectrum.com/creating-a-p2sh-segwit-wallet-with-electrum/) in order to generate addresses starting with 3. You will save a little bit on fees if you do the latter one. If you don't mind it and don't want to mess up anything, do the former one.

The guide above is not the right link to guide you to make a legacy wallet.

Anyway, if your wallet starting from bc1 or this is what it looks like bc1qjv3h4sasl6cll6vyzxxmlxqz2n29vlfata4quw
If that's your address you need to make a new wallet as suggested above.

You can make a new wallet by clicking file>new/restore then rename and choose standard type:

You have two option to choose. look at this image below.

https://i.imgur.com/ARqgu0t.png

You should choose the standard one to be able to generate a legacy wallet. Legacy wallet addresses starts from 1 it's look like this "1Fh2GwdSfSDpfB5PpYjscB9u2inCoTmumX" this is mostly accepted to all merchant online who accept bitcoin as payment.

However, if your address is standard and it keeps showing "it's not correct" maybe there are extra spaces on the first or end of the address make sure to delete them.

That's because Legacy addresses are more expensive (fees) and have no advantages over nested Segwit, only advantages. So maybe we should stop telling people to create a Legacy address over the 3 segwit ones?

I still have not tried to create a Nested Segwit (starting with 3) address using Electrum. I think one needs a file for github and use it with Electrum to create the address. Not convenient for regular users.

In this kind of situation like OP, I use Legacy address to get the fund and then move it to a native SegWit address.

You mean this: https://iancoleman.io/bip39/ (https://iancoleman.io/bip39/)?
It quite easy really, all they need to provide is the BIP39 Mnemonic Phrase from that link/code and select "BIP39" in the option below the "I already have a SEED" input box.
After that Electrum will provide options for the user if he want any of the three address types of a standard wallet (not available for old versions).
Pretty same difficulty as creating a standard wallet.

The only "sensitive" part is the part when the user create the BIP39 SEED (S...E..E...D....  ;D).
Not rocket science, but a security risk if not done right.

That is not for newbies. Let him create a legacy p2pkh wallet instead or use some other wallet software that offers p2sh segwit wallets without having to resort to hacks.

Yes, I meant this.
But out of curiosity I just did this.

Create new wallet
Standard wallet
I already have a seed
I typed some random words and checked BIP39
p2sh-segwit (p2wpkh-p2sh)

I got Nested Segwit wallet.

My question now is that why do I need to generate seed using https://iancoleman.io/bip39

The thing is that you don't have to. I have already linked a guide (https://bitcoinelectrum.com/creating-a-p2sh-segwit-wallet-with-electrum/) in the first post which shows how to obtain a nested SegWit wallet with any Electrum seed. Even if this method stops working in the future, it will be possible to use old versions to export private keys.


It was not supposed to be that.



Sure, that's why I pointed it out (quote below). Still, this 'hack' is a much better choice than using niche wallets or legacy addresses.

It's a shame but this thing was new for me but after creating my first Nested SegWit address it seems very easy LOL
Thank you BitCryptex and nc50lc

Humans are not a good source of entropy so what you've done is set yourself up to be robbed in the future. I also don't recommend generating a seed from any website out there.

I suggest you create a normal legacy wallet in electrum and use that. Let electrum generate a suitable seed for you.

I wrote that guide (https://bitcoinelectrum.com/creating-a-p2sh-segwit-wallet-with-electrum/) on bitcoinelectrum.com and it clearly says it's not for newbies. It also doesn't tell you to use any website to generate the seed because that advice is totally wrong. If you want to follow the guide then follow the guide. Don't go mixing and matching things from different sources without understanding the implications of it.

The thing is, you've mentioned "you have to use a file from GitHub" and that's the first thing that I remember (&it was, I guess)
That's why the example was about using that mnemonic generation tool.

Additionally, Electrum doesn't guarantee that "BIP39 support" and it might be depreciated in the future,
If that happened, you can still use your BIP39 Mnemonic in other tools/clients that support BIP39;
something you cannot do with set of random words that has an invalid checksum.
(though you can download the older version that still support it)

I think you missed to read one of my last post. I did not use any seed from that website. I figured that just by typing random words and make a seed it works. You then use that random seed with recover wallet.



I hear you here brother. Thanks for the information you have provided.

I did read that and that's why I said "Humans are not a good source of entropy". You may think its random enough but it's not.

It is a shame that electrum doesn't allow to create a nested segwit wallet.

Using legacy is counter-productive. If there is no need to sign messages and bech32 is not accepted at some outdated service, nested segwit is the way to go.
There is no reason to use an old format which is more costly to spend from, just to use electrum.

OP, i'd recommend you choose a different wallet for nested segwit (transaction malleability fixed and lower fees compared to legacy), e.g. Wasabi (https://github.com/zkSNACKs/WalletWasabi).

you can still create a master private key using something else (like Ian Colman tool) and then import the yprv into your electrum and have the nested SegWit wallet type with addresses that start with 3.
you can also always open an issue on Electrum's Github repository and ask them to add this option with Seeds that Electrum generates itself so that you could choose it in initial step.

- it is worth knowing that nested SegWit transactions are a lot bigger than legacy transactions although you would pay less fee because of their smaller weight.

Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should! The problems with this approach are:

1. Your "random" words are terrible entropy... making for a very weak seed that could potentially be bruteforced
2. Your "random" words won't adhere to the BIP39 standard, making it completely incompatible with 99.9% of wallets
3. Your "random" words won't be compatible with the BIP39 (or Electrum) checksum system, so you'll be unable to tell if you've made any mistakes when entering it/writing it down correctly.
4. If your words are not part of the wordlist, it'll make it harder to identify which word is "bad" if have written/entered it wrong.


In short, you are basically side-stepping ALL of the safeguards of the Electrum and BIP39 seed mnemonic systems! :o :o It should be fairly obvious at this point that this is a "Bad Idea"™

If you absolutely must have a Nested-SegWit wallet and you absolutely must use Electrum, then follow Abdussamad's guide (https://bitcoinelectrum.com/creating-a-p2sh-segwit-wallet-with-electrum/) properly... it's your best bet to get the solution you want, while minimising the risk of not being able to recover/restore the wallet in the future.