Bitcoin Forum

Can I just move one wallet.dat to, say, wallet1.dat, then create another wallet? How do I transfer funds between the two wallets if I have only one computer? I know with multiple computers it is easier. But with one, do you know note down the inactive address, and send to it, and swap the wallet file name and  reload qt?

Sorry if it is a too simple question, but I tested with small amount FTC, and the amount I sent to inactive one I can not see it anymore, even I swapped the wallet file names and reload the qt.

The short answer is, don't.  Whatever need you think you have for multiple wallets, you are probably wrong, and there is a better way.  At least for now; this is a common request, and the software may very well support this in the future, or other clients might already do it today.

If you must, the safest way is to run two instances in different directories.

It should be perfectly fine to do what he's describing as long as you completely close down bitcoin-qt between moving around the wallets. That's what I've been told by developers.


monocolor, if you want to describe why you want to do this, someone may be able to suggest a better way to achieve what you're trying to do. However, I can imagine valid reasons for doing what you're doing.


I think that shouldn't happen, but starting bitcoin-qt with --rescan (on Linux; do whatever is equivalent if you're using some other OS) will likely fix it.

Armory supports multiple wallets (indeed, this is a pretty common use case - one online wallet, and one watching-only wallet for cold storage).

roy

What he is describing will work perfectly as mentioned, as long as he closes down his client 100%. Ive done this a few times with my wallets.

Also just a note to the OP, would creating a new address not help you? Do you need to have a completely separate wallet?

interesting. Is this to hide your fortunes in a private wallet?

Thanks everyone for replying. I tried different way to swap etc, but I don't see the amount I transferred, anyway it doesn't matter since it is just a small amount. It could be due to some bugs.

You can use Electrum with -w tag and run multiple instances with different wallet files at the same time

Whatever you do, be careful. Any time you play with the wallet file directly, you risk losing some or all of the coins in the wallet.

A usage scenario can be as simple as managing wallets for two entities. A spouse or child may have a separate 'account', a business may require a shared wallet that cannot mix corporate funds with private funds, etc, etc... In case of emergency, I don't want my wife to have access to corporate funds, but I may want to give her the keys to the private estate. At age 18 a child can get acces to their 'savings' rather than a cash deposit. A corporation sold, merged, or liquidated may have its accounts transfered by giving access to private keys.

In my case, I think I'll add a wallet on a separate virtual machine, but I'm open to other suggestions. Armory is certainly an option. A default client with -walletfile <wallet.dat> would help too.

.b

The bitcoind wallet is stored in a user specific data directory so you could have multiple user accounts on the same machine. Each one could have their own wallet.

You could also try out MultiBit which supports multiple wallets in the user interface.
With different passwords for different wallets you could effectively separate who can spend which money eg you and your wife both know the 'house wallet' password but for the 'corporate wallet' perhaps only you and a coworker know the password.

For a second there, I got extremely excited until I saw that it said specific, not specified :-(

Damn you for getting my hopes up, but thanks a lot for your suggestion!

.b

Well, the user can specify it too.  But, it is set when the program is started, and you have to shut down (or run a second instance) if you want to change it.

How? I looked through the parameters of Bitcoin-QT but couldn't find anything to specify path for wallet.

If there is one, it would solve a lot of my problems.

.b

EDIT: Yes, I'm an idiot, looking for wallet path. -datadir is the correct parameter.

Thanks!

I don't know if you read me:

Electrum (http://electrum.org)

VMs are the solution to everything ;) because they can run different clients or different versions of the default client
at the same time (directly connected to each other with "connect=..." in config file), and you have all the
functionality of a special client which supports multiple wallets. Probably more.