Bitcoin Forum

Used to use Bitcoin Core. Have the wallet.dat file. Have not been running bitcoin core for a while and it's 2 years ++ old. Looks like it'll take foreverrrrr to catch up. Was going to try Electrum - downloaded Electrum portable but got an error - Can't read the file when I try to load the wallet.dat file.

Any idea what am I doing wrong?
OR any other wallet suggestions that will not require a long duration to download before I can send my bitcoin to an exchange?

Thank you

You can't just load a wallet.dat file directly into Electrum. That file format is specific to Bitcoin Core.

There's two main ways you can get to your coins. First, you can get your private keys out of Bitcoin Core and bring them into Electrum and  that will give you full control over everything.  (The other way is if you have 12-word or 24-word recovery phrase from your old wallet.) edit: You can ignore this last part, because as DireWolfM14 correctly pointed out, Bitcoin Core does not use mnemonic seed phrases.

Thank you. Appreciate the info.

  What I think you can do for now, is to wait for you bitcoincore to completely synchronize with the Blockchain. Then if you feel like using another wallet you can then move your coins to another wallet or export your private keys into electrum.

He doesn't have to wait for the wallet to sync with the network imho. He can export private keys from Bitcoin Core even while offline. Or better yet, he should have a backup seed phrase written down somewhere already.

You're both half right.  Bitcoin core has never provided a seed phrase, and it's unlikely it ever will.

Yes, of course. You're definitely right!  Seems my brain is on slow today. My bad.

But he can still import the BIP32 key encoded as a WIF into Electrum, right?

In bitcoincore, use needs dumpprivkey command to get your private key. After extracting the private key, can create a new wallet in Electrum, verify signature, then Wallet, Private Keys, Sweep. After that, create a new wallet, write the seed and keep it.

WIF is standardized method of of encoding a private key and since electrum accepts the private key, there is no need for this.

Take note that since you've downloaded the portable version
Your Electrum data directory (electrum_data) will be saved in the same folder where "electrum-<version>-portable.exe" is located.
It's meant to be used in removable storage like portable HDD/SSD or USB flash drives.

If you meant to use the standard executable without requiring installation, download the "Standalone Executable" instead.

Doing the "sweep" method above will incur an on-chain transaction that will send it to the newly created Electrum wallet.
(once you arranged the provided instructions in the correct order, you'll get it right, it's not that complicated)
Since there's a transaction, it will require a transaction fee to send from Bitcoin Core's exported key to Electrum,
Then another transaction, another fee to send from Electrum to Exchange.

If the goal is to keep some bitcoins to your new Electrum wallet, I'd also recommended it.

But if you only want to send all to an Exchange, you can import it to a new imported Electrum wallet instead, then send max to that Exchange.
With that, you can import it by creating a new wallet in "New/Restore->(Wallet name)->Import bitcoin addresses or private keys".
Paste your WIF private keys there, click "note" for the necessary prefix in case the address(es) aren't legacy.
After creating the imported wallet and letting Electrum sync, you can now send with max value to your Exchange Deposit address.