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Other => Beginners & Help => Topic started by: darlidada on June 03, 2014, 02:54:43 PM



Title: How to make a coldwallet with electrum on linux but offline?
Post by: darlidada on June 03, 2014, 02:54:43 PM
Hello!

I've read a lot of tutorials but I must have missed something because I cant find a way to install electrum on a computer without an internet connection. I have electrum on a usb file along with linux mint. I boot on linux mint but then what shall I do?

Why do people use the internet connection to install electrum on the livecd ? doesnt that defeat the purpose of the coldwallet?

please hlep


Title: Re: How to make a coldwallet with electrum on linux but offline?
Post by: Reclaim3r on June 07, 2014, 05:09:38 AM
Don't forget that electrum still needs an internet connection to connect to the blockchain. Every wallet needs to, sooner or later. Although you may have the electrum installation file on your USB, it needs to grab a legit copy of the blockchain to sync your transactions and all the essentials  ;) .

I think you also might have misunderstood the concept of a "cold wallet". When you make a cold wallet, you still have to be synced to the blockchain. However, once the cold wallet is made, it is literally "cold" without any need for a connection to the blockchain until it is used for a withdrawal.

I hoped my answer helped. My apologies if it doesn't quite make sense.


Title: Re: How to make a coldwallet with electrum on linux but offline?
Post by: shorena on June 07, 2014, 05:31:25 AM
Don't forget that electrum still needs an internet connection to connect to the blockchain. Every wallet needs to, sooner or later. Although you may have the electrum installation file on your USB, it needs to grab a legit copy of the blockchain to sync your transactions and all the essentials  ;) .

I think you also might have misunderstood the concept of a "cold wallet". When you make a cold wallet, you still have to be synced to the blockchain. However, once the cold wallet is made, it is literally "cold" without any need for a connection to the blockchain until it is used for a withdrawal.

I hoped my answer helped. My apologies if it doesn't quite make sense.

What?

https://electrum.org/tutorials.html#offline-mpk

Of course you can make a wallet offline. Creating a wallet has nothing to do with the blockchain. You dont even need the blockchain to make a transaction. Chances are its not going to be valid if you dont know how much you can spend, but you can still create it.

Hello!

I've read a lot of tutorials but I must have missed something because I cant find a way to install electrum on a computer without an internet connection. I have electrum on a usb file along with linux mint. I boot on linux mint but then what shall I do?

Why do people use the internet connection to install electrum on the livecd ? doesnt that defeat the purpose of the coldwallet?

please hlep

Did you download the standalone version*?

I just tried it at and it worked fine*. I even go the "you are offline" warning. Not sure if thats the message you get and just interpret it differently.

*Edit: just realized that you are on a linux machine.

The problem is that you need to install electrum first and that must currently happen online. see also here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=416881.0

The security part is that you take that version of Linux (in the guide its ubuntu, but mint is similar) to an offline PC, create your key there, so the key has never been online.


Title: Re: How to make a coldwallet with electrum on linux but offline?
Post by: Light on June 07, 2014, 06:45:12 AM
*Edit: just realized that you are on a linux machine.

The problem is that you need to install electrum first and that must currently happen online. see also here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=416881.0

The security part is that you take that version of Linux (in the guide its ubuntu, but mint is similar) to an offline PC, create your key there, so the key has never been online.

Or you could just download the compressed tarball and extract it then compile it from there. You can get the tarball at the top here: https://electrum.org/download.html

Just use some google-fu to work out how to compile programs from source (it's just a few terminal commands which should be easy if you're smart enough to use Linux).


Title: Re: How to make a coldwallet with electrum on linux but offline?
Post by: Peter882 on June 07, 2014, 10:43:02 AM
Don't forget that electrum still needs an internet connection to connect to the blockchain. Every wallet needs to, sooner or later. Although you may have the electrum installation file on your USB, it needs to grab a legit copy of the blockchain to sync your transactions and all the essentials  ;) .

Not really. You can get the txouts and create an unsigned tx on another machine.
On your "cold wallet machine", you only need to use your private key to sign the unsigned tx and there is no need to have internet connection at all.


Title: Re: How to make a coldwallet with electrum on linux but offline?
Post by: Reclaim3r on June 07, 2014, 03:21:24 PM
My apologirs for the misinformation. It's been a while since I brished up on my btc wallet info. Sorry ;)
Thanks to everybody that corrected me