Bitcoin Forum

So what's the difference between saving your .dat and exporting the keys?
As they both simply save your btc balance?

That depends on which wallet you are using.

If you are using Bitcoin Core, then saving the .dat file also saves the balance of the bitcoins that you receive in the near future in new bitcoin addresses, whereas exporting keys of addresses that currently have a balance will not.

wallet is folder of addresses, some wallets can "pre-calculate" addresses (they're called Deterministic wallet), so when you in future generate new address. You will be able to access it even from older backup of w.dat.

A wallet is a collection of addresses AND the private keys necessary to spend the bitcoins received at those addresses.

They may be in a folder, a file, a database, written on paper, memorized, or any other form.

Most wallet software also provide features to determine the spendable balance that the private keys have control over, as well as features to create transactions to send bitcoins to others.


No.  Deterministic wallets do not need to "pre-calculate" addresses.  The addresses are all formed from a single seed value using a mathematical formula.  As long as you know (or the software is programed with) that formula, you can re-generate the entire list of addresses from the seed value in the future.  This means that those wallets can access the entire balance as long as you have backed up the seed value.

Wallets like the current version of Bitcoin Core are NOT "deterministic".  These wallets generate addresses entirely randomly, making it impossible to regenerate the same address in the future unless you have a backup of the completely random private key that was used to create the address.  Because Bitcoin Core is not deterministic, it "pre-generates" 100 addresses (with the default setting) and stores them (along with their private keys) in the wallet.dat file.  This way, you can recover your entire balance from the wallet.dat file as long as you created the backup recently enough.

long story short, backup your wallet.dat and keep it safe, + add a passphrase
exporting keys is something you shouldnt consider as a newbie.

cheers

As noted above you need to protect your wallet.dat file like you would your own wallet in your back pocket.  It doesn't not store the bitcoins.  The bitcoins are on the blockchain, similar to being on the cloud and the network is what is keeping track of it.

The keys in the wallet.dat file simply allow you to open or unlock your bitcoins.  If somebody else gave you their keys and you knew their addresses you could grab their coins.

Thanks to all, answered my questions too.

You don't need to know their addresses.  All you need is their keys.  The addresses can be computed from the keys.

I don't really see the advantage of exporting the keys over making a backup for your wallet file.
It just costs you more time to export the keys, and import them in the future.

Yes, I think saving the wallet file is better.