Bitcoin Forum

I have a bitcoin address with some funds inside and a private key of it. How exactly can I access the wallet and transfer the funds? Any instruction is highly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

1. Download Electrum  (https://electrum.org/#download)from the official website.
2. Create a standard wallet (https://bitcoinelectrum.com/creating-an-electrum-wallet/).
3. Sweep the funds by going to Wallet - private keys - sweep  (https://i.imgur.com/BEyb8EW.png)and then paste the private key.

Or, if you prefer using a mobile wallet, you can download Mycelium  (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mycelium.wallet&hl=en)and follow the instructions given on this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUS6Nrff5qY).

Hi. I honestly didn't expect to be replied by a staff. Thanks for your time. I'll try both of the methods right away, will drop the results later today. Thanks again.

You can also download electrum, create a new wallet (import bitcoin addresses or private keys), then import your private key without sweeping.

If you're going to spend these funds anyways, sweeping will result in extra fees... The method OmegaStarScream has provided has the added benefit of sweeping your "old" funds into a HD wallet, but the sweeping itself will create a new transaction moving your funds to the new HD wallet, so a miner's fee will be added. If you spend the funds afterwards, a second transaction will be created and a second miner's fee will have to be payed.

If you're not 100% sure the private key was stored securely, and you're not going to spend your funds right away, following OmegaStarScream's instructions might be better. If your private key was stored as secure as humanly possible or if you're going to spend your funds right away, my method will do the trick, and it'll cost you less in miner's fees (imho)

You forgot to advise mediaBuzz to not forget to keep his private key in a safe place if he imports it instead of sweeping it.
@mediaBuzz when you import a key, it won't join the other keys of your HD wallet. The seed won't be able to recover it because there is only a mathematical dependency between keys and seeds. So you must keep your private key in a safe place with the seed of your wallet.

You can go to https://login.blockchain.com/#/signup make a wallet, then go to settings, then Wallets and Adresses, then click Import Bitcoin address, then choose Existing Address generated outside this wallet. then scan/enter your private key, and you can then send it to another address, or send to your blockchain.com address. No need to download anything here ;)

Any of the above methods are fine - basically they are all saying that if you have the private key you can install it into any PC or android etc version of the bitcoin wallet and in the case of vanilla bitcoin core, just type


hit enter and wait a while for the funds to be found on the blockchain.

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/16/blob983f80255e4ec535.jpeg

You can then use "coin control" to either sweep them to a new wallet address, or, spend in increments.

I would just say that I used to recommend Mycelium because it was one of the first wallet for smartphone and gave great options to sweep private keys.
However, on my iPhone mycelium crashed every time I want to consult past transactions.

Nowaday I use Coinomi  (https://www.coinomi.com/en/) to sweep private keys. It allows you to sweep WIF, BIP38 and Mini private keys  and to be fair, I like their User Interface better.

I also recommend you to import your private key into Electrum.
If you are going to spend a part of your balance, don't forget to check the change address.
If you have 1 BTC, import your private key into a wallet and spend 0.5 BTC, the other 0.5 BTC might be sent to a new address.
As far as I know, Electrum send back the remaining amount of your balance to the previous address. But some wallets might send the remaining amount of your balance to a new address. Don't forget to export the private key of the new address.

Just to add a little if your wallet is in Bech32 SegWit address format if you import it for example on mobile choose the option for segwit if not you will get a legacy address and you might be confused why you are getting a different address. I am using Electrum wallet for mobile you find it on electrum official website.

that means you do not care about using a closed source shady wallet that may do whatever it wants in the background without you knowing it including tracking your addresses, linking them together, sending your private keys to their servers,...

@OmegaStarScream have given you right answer, just follow it and don't be confuse by so many suggestions. I am curious about your private key, is it paper wallet? Or how had you created your private key? However I don't know the way how you get private key. As @hosseinimr93 already mentioned, this is the most important thing for single private key holder and I want to highlight it again. If you are going to spent your fund from single private key just send all the fund, don't send partially to another address. Its because of change address (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5190841.msg52684373#msg52684373), so better sweep your fund on electrum instead of import only private key. There is risk if your wallet doesn't include change address. Perhaps you would lose your fund. This problem only if you hold private key for a address. If you have seed phrase then no problem at all.

O.o
Well, said like this I admit that coinomi isn't the best choice.
anyway, I would only use my smartphone just for low value (sub $500) tx / sweeping
My point was mycelium is crashing every time I want to use it.
But thanks for the eyes opener

I do agree that Mycelium may not be the best option for iOS. I experienced a lot of technical issues while using it in the past but pooya87 is right, using coinomi is not really recommended, especially if you don't hold any alts. So as an alternative, I would suggest trying Edge or BRD wallet, they are both open-source and support sweeping private keys.

Electrum is available on android devices as shown in electrum website. The problem is that android version of electrum doesn't have sweep feature unlike in windows version of electrum. However, electrum use change address to receive your remaining btc after paying someone with btc. Did someone tried changing this settings?. Take a look at the image below.

Yes but even if you use it (ie Use change addresses: Yes) with an imported key, the change is still sent back to the same address. So there is no risk to lose the funds.

i still say you shouldn't use a closed source wallet even for small amounts by principle. in the decentralized open source world of bitcoin there is no room for closed source and centralized things in my opinion.
the only benefit of Coinomi that i can see is that they support a huge number of altcoins that could be used for certain purposes like claiming bitcoin forkcoins and things like that.
if you are have an Android then check out Electrum, it is a much better wallet.

A web wallet is not as secure as you thought. Spending some time downloading a new app is a risk worth taking to get a fairly good wallet. Especially if you can't recover your login details easily.