Bitcoin Forum

With the BCH signer done, here is a guide on how to use it and keeping your stash secure.

-------- The signer --------

In order to sign for BCH, you have to pick your signer manually. This is a new feature, and is only available in Expert mode, so first thing first, set user mode to Expert.
To pick the signer, you need to get to the "Confirm Transaction" dialog. Once there, you should see the signer select frame, click it and pick the signer for the chain you want to spend on. The default option only picks between Bitcoin signers, to sign for BCH you HAVE to pick the BCH signer manually.

Screenshots for the good measure: https://imgur.com/a/9zXGD

Once you've picked the signer, the rest is business as usual. Note that this step only occurs at the point of signing, i.e. if you sign offline, you have to pick the signer on your offline machine.

-------- Security --------

The process is relatively safe. If you mess up and pick the wrong signer for you chain, the transaction will be invalid for that chain anyways. That transaction is valid for the chain signer is for however, example:

Armory is running against a BCH node. You create a tx and sign it with a Bitcoin signer. That transaction will fail to broadcast to the BCH network. However, if you try to broadcast this same transaction with an instance of Armory connected to a Bitcoin node, it will succeed and your coins will be moved on that chain.

This may sound confusing but this is how Armory operates by design, it trusts the underlying node to be honest and the Bcash devs made a point of not changing network ports, magic number identifiers nor script hash prefixes, so you end up with this mess.

As for why I didn't go further out of my way to try and make this distinction stronger in my own code, I'm trying to think for the future with all changes to mission critical code (such as signers), and let's be real, Bcash has no future. Therefor the changes were minimal, with an explicitly paying attention to:

1) Trying to salvage as much code as possible from this effort (OP_RETURN outputs and signer selection).

2) Making it easy to prune the useless bits once miners pull the plug on this nonsense.

3) Be prepared for the next gonzo debacle (2x?).

At any rate, if you do not care about Bcash, this feature is transparent to you, as the signer will always default to Bitcoin.

-------- Splitting your coins ---------

As stated previously, BCH sigs are invalid on the Bitcoin chain, and vice versa. Therefor there's nothing more to splitting your prefork coins but to spend them post fork.

-------- Testing --------

I've moved coins on the BCH chain. Here's a tx created with Armory:

2cc2b1f4578e6c0b42c5de396ca43eb0fe6868509bd19d9bd5e14a0b4f2c5166

I've also used the opportunity to test the OP_RETURN feature on a mainnet. If you inspect the transaction, you should be able to read "signed with armory" in the op_return message.

For the more paranoid, you can trace the history of the outpoint on the Bitcoin chain and verify that it has been spent to a completely different transaction, therefor demonstrating the split. The order I went was Bitcoin tx first, Bcash second, but it should work the other way around as well.

-------- Privacy ---------

In order to reduce privacy leakage, you should pick non KYC pure crypto exchanges. In this case, spend UTXO per UTXO in order to not link your coins on chain. If you're using a KYC exchange, it doesn't matter as much, as the exchange knows these coins are linked and who controls them, even though it wouldn't be obvious on chain if you went a UTXO at a time.

Whether you have sent your coins to a KYC exchange or not, you want to cycle your wallets on the other chain afterwards, i.e. if you dumped BCH, you want to move all these coins on BTC chain to a fresh wallet.

The reason for this is that your public keys will be exposed on at least one chain. One of the security layers of Bitcoin is that public keys are behind hashes up until you spend the coin. Once you sign coins on one of the chains, you lose this layer. This is a major reason why you do not reuse addresses in Bitcoin. This is particularly relevant if you have coins in long term cold storage: cycle them if you touch the keys!

As for how to cycle your wallets, it depends on the scenario:

1) If you used a KYC exchange, create a new wallet and send coins over whichever way you want, you have no privacy at this point. To regain fungibility, you will have to mix your coins or swap to fungible alt coins and back. This is out of the scope of this post, do your research if you value your financial privacy.

2) You used a non KYC exchange or some sort of cross chain swap scheme. You should move your coins to your new wallet utxo per utxo, or (1 in -> 2-3 outs), over the course of several weeks.

-------- Requirements --------

You need to update both your signer and online machine with a version of Armory capable to sign for BCH in order to spend the coins.

You need a copy of the chain, a running node and DB per side of the fork. You cannot mix ANY of these or you will corrupt your data. As a safety, make a backup of your Bitcoin chain before fiddling with the BCH stuff.

-------- Tricks --------

If you want to dump BCH but don't want to bother with the BCH node/don't trust their code, you can get around it with this trick:

1) You know all your prefork coins are also available on the BCH chain, therefor you only need blockchain data up to the fork point to move these coins.

2) You have all this data already in the form of the Bitcoin blockchain pre fork, so why not just use that?

3) You'll want to create a copy of your blockchain data then remove blkXXXXX.dat files up until the fork point . I don't know which file this is, something around 950~960, I'm sure someone will figure out the exact file. Note that if you did not move any coins post fork yet, you do not need to delete anything.

4) With this done, you want to sync a fresh DB against this blockchain folder. Do not run a node against it, just start ArmoryDB against this folder, then start ArmoryQt, it will pick up on that DB.

5) Once you're synced (it will show you as offline), you can create your transactions. You should pick utxos manually and keep track of them so as to not create conflicting transactions.

6) Once your tx is ready, make sure to create it as unsigned, even if your private keys are online. You will get a blob of text that you can feed back into the offline tx GUI. There you will get to sign the tx (make sure to pick the BCH miner), and you will get another blob of text. On the right side of that dialog, you will have a button that's called "Copy Raw Tx (Hex)". This is what you are after. This hex string is your signed tx.

7) With the signed tx, all you need now is some online service that will broadcast it to the BCH network for you, and voila.

-------- Advice --------

At first, before you try to fund an exchange account, send coins back to yourself on both chains and wait for a few confirmations to be sure you aren't shooting yourself in the foot. Cross check on the other chain to make sure you send the coins to the chain you intended.

-------- Disclaimer --------

It only makes sense but I'll remind it here: use this code at your own risk!

First of all, thx for all your hard work and effort in improving and expanding Armory's features. I've watched the World Crypto Network at the time of the fork, where Jimmy Song has mentioned you were considering to support that new script type of Bitcoin Cash if it survives more than 2 weeks. It hasn't been a week ago now and you've already released a version that supports it! That's truely awesome! :-)

I have a question regarding the privacy part of your guide. For e.g. if I create a new wallet in Armory for BCH only and I prepaire all tx in my old wallets to just spend that single UTXO set in BCH and send each to a new seperate address of the generated wallet, would it then be safe to reuse my old wallets for BTC only? Because newly generated addresses in my old Armory wallets that I'm only going to use for BTC shouldn't be leaked if I have seperated all my BCH coins into a new wallet, should they?
I'm currently not looking forward in selling BCH and if I do only via something like Shapeshift and like you suggested only one UTXO set at a time.

Cycling your wallet guarantees you won't reuse old addresses. If you're confident you aren't doing such a thing, you can keep the same BTC wallet and move coins unused addresses.

Thank you, goatpig, for the effort you put into this!
I like the modular "different signers" approach, neat!

I use a separate armorydb and armoryqt and would like to send bcash via your "create signed tx and broadcast elsewhere" hint. I didn't do any tx (BTC nor bcash) since the "fork". So, in short, I just create the tx with the bcash signer, that's the only difference here?


Does anyone know where to broadcast those bcash tx without setting up my own bcash stuff? I don't plan to run a node or the like.
Couldn't find anything online yet.

Thanks,

Ente

Try here: http://blockdozer.com/insight/tx/send

I haven't actually used it... so can't comment as to whether or not it works... but blockdozer is one of the only BCC blockexplorers at the present time.

Thanks, HCP!
I'll give it a try eventually.

Ente

You create the tx the usual way. At the time of signing, you pick the BCH signer, and that's now a tx only the BCH network will accept.

Does it also work with offline transactions on the offline pc ?
And do I also need to update armory on the offline pc ?

Thanks

It all worked fine for me.
Creating unsigned TX on armoryqt, signing on an offline machine, broadcasting on http://blockdozer.com/insight/tx/send
Just please, please, don't forget the checkbox to sign with the bcash signer! :-)

Ente

Looks promising. But I assume this does not work in case I have already transferred the BTC on those adresses elsewhere?

If you moved the BTC post fork, these addresses still have BCH on them.

Assuming that I'd like to keep my offline machine cold, what is the best way to update the signer on it?  Noob on here, but been using Armory for several years.  Thanks in advance!

MF

Install the relevant package on your signer. You already have all the dependencies if you have a functional signer. I have not added dependencies to Armory yet. Actually, I've removed a few.

Yes, certainly. But if the BTC are moved already, the balance on that address will be shown as zero in Armory - and it is not possible to initiate a transaction be signed with the BCH signer. Or am I missing something?

Ah, you mean you want to do this without running any Bcash binaries or grabbing their chain? Then refer to this point:

Ok, now I get it. Deleting the blkXXXXX.dat from now until back in time to the fork will make the post-fork spending of the BTC invisible to Armory.  Thanks, will give it a try!

You will have to sync a fresh Armory DB atop of that copy of the chain for the changes to take effect on the Armory end.

A new settings entry for the script signer would be awesome, so you do not have to specifically select Bcash signer for every transaction. Or is it possible to permanently change the default script via config file?

Kind regards,
Mr.Vice

Wooo
that's really fix my promble
just dude ;D ;D

No such thing. you'd have to modify the source for this. This has not been designed as a permanent fixture. Once SegWit is enabled on the BTC chain, this should act as a deterministic way to identify the chain, in which case the chain/signer type will be implicit and binding in the unsigned tx message (basically it will hint the offline signer as to which signer to pick by default).

Thanks for this.

Any chance that we can get a 32 bit .deb version built? My offline signing machine has been around for a couple of years (since you forked the project) and everything was still 32 bit back then. Would be a real pain to have to reinstall the OS just for that.

I've tried to follow the linux build instructions - used a 32 bit docker container but ran into issues with the autobuild stuff - there was no Makefile but also no configure script to generate one. That said - not sure how to get a deb built after building the software - the release scripts folder does not exactly seem all that clear! :-)

Cheers
LV

Goatpig/Ente,

Thanks for the information here.  Having trouble generating a valid transaction in the BCH network, I think.  I'm creating the transaction on armory, then signing it(using the BCH signer) on an offline machine, and then attempting to broadcast the raw tx on Blockdozer and Via Btc, but getting error messages from both.  Via Btc yields "invalid raw transaction" and something similar from Blockdozer.

Is there something that I am doing wrong here?  Pardon my lack of technical expertise on the matter, but I did read this thread several time and can't come up with anything.

Thanks,

MF

Found the problem, needed to uncheck the RBF box in the transaction signing process. 

MF

Meh, shenanigans. RBF flagging is not invalid on the BCH chain, second RBF relay is disabled is all. These services have an erroneous implementation in which they reject sequence flagging as a whole, even though that chain support CSV and CLTV.

I seem to have issues getting Armory to show the wallet balances as per pre-fork. So I deleted block data from after. Deleted the Armory DB. Then I run ArmoryDB which works fine. But then I have issues getting Armory to act as if online although it's not. Which options do I have to start it with so it doen't start bitcoind in the background but still acts as if online on top of this old data. I have moved BTC utxos out of Armory just after the fork and now need to recover my Bitcoin Cash.

Edit: I managed to get it up without starting bitcoind (wonder why that setting was true before, as I always handled BitcoinQt manually). However, same issue. It doesn't scan TX history or anything. Shows as preparing DB, which it is not doing, as ArmoryDB is up and running.


Edit2: Data folders and everything should be correct, actually.

Edit3: I know I could also just export a shitload of private keys from each wallet and sweep them all somehow, but I think your trick would be far nicer, actually.

Post your logs. Most likely a pathing issue.

I does wallet consistency check, and then stays on gray bars for preparing db and scan tx history

on shutdown and hangs...

Not able to get mac os to build from source the "bchSigner" branch code.

Getting the output below. I upgraded pip and believe I installed setuptools correctly (maybe not getting picked up right). I used brew to reinstall python and update/upgrade other dependencies.

Also, I'm upgrading X-Code from 8.0 to 8.3.3.

Any tips?

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup.py", line 11, in <module>
    import setuptools
  File "/Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/unpackandbuild/setuptools-35.0.2/setuptools/__init__.py", line 10, in <module>
    from six.moves import filter, map
ImportError: No module named six.moves
Finished executing: "python -s setup.py --no-user-cfg install --force --verbose 2>&1 | tee -a /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/build-app.log.txt"
Finished executing from: "/Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/unpackandbuild/setuptools-35.0.2"
********************************************************************************
Installing pip.
********************************************************************************
2017-Aug-21 02:10am
Executing: "python -s setup.py --no-user-cfg install --force --verbose 2>&1 | tee -a /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/build-app.log.txt"
Executing from: "/Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/unpackandbuild/pip-9.0.1"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup.py", line 6, in <module>
    from setuptools import setup, find_packages
ImportError: No module named setuptools
Finished executing: "python -s setup.py --no-user-cfg install --force --verbose 2>&1 | tee -a /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/build-app.log.txt"
Finished executing from: "/Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/unpackandbuild/pip-9.0.1"
********************************************************************************
Installing libpng
********************************************************************************
2017-Aug-21 02:10am
Executing: "tar -Jxf /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/downloads/libpng-1.6.29.tar.xz -C /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/unpackandbuild 2>&1 | tee -a /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/build-app.log.txt"
Executing from: "/Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild"
tar: Unrecognized archive format
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors.
Finished executing: "tar -Jxf /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/downloads/libpng-1.6.29.tar.xz -C /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/unpackandbuild 2>&1 | tee -a /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/build-app.log.txt"
Finished executing from: "/Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild"
********************************************************************************
Unpacked: /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/downloads/libpng-1.6.29.tar.xz
********************************************************************************
2017-Aug-21 02:10am
Executing: "./configure 2>&1 | tee -a /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/build-app.log.txt"
Executing from: "[]"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ERROR: coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, list found
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I guess I saw on there that X Code 7 is recommended, so I would want to maybe downgrade X Code From 8 to 7, and try installing that way?

I was able to build using this mac os patch:
https://github.com/goatpig/BitcoinArmory/commit/22130dffd119eba081c462dc3c0b338515bf4a3f

And it created the Armory application, so I can double click it in Finder. But the app doesn't open at all, just maybe auto quits or something.

When I try running the App in terminal, I get this error:

 open ./Armory.app
LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed with error -10810 for the file /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/Armory.app.

I need the full log.

When I build BCHSigner Armory on MacOs Sierra, with Xcode 8, the App is created, but when I run it, I get this error:

LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed with error -10810 for the file /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/Armory.app.

Errors I see in the build log are:

"2017-Aug-21 12:12pm
Executing: "patch -p0 < /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/qmake_LFLAGS.patch 2>&1 | tee -a /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/build-app.log.txt"
Executing from: "/Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/objc_armory"
patching file ./Makefile
Hunk #1 FAILED at 15.
1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file ./Makefile.rej
Finished executing: "patch -p0 < /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/qmake_LFLAGS.patch 2>&1 | tee -a /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/build-app.log.txt"
Finished executing from: "/Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/objc_armory""



I also see this error in build log:
********************************************************************************

EasyDialogs not available in this Python - skipping Build Applet.app
cd PythonLauncher && make install DESTDIR=
test -d "/Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/install" || mkdir -p "/Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/install"
test -d "/Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/install/Python Launcher.app" && rm -r "/Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/install/Python Launcher.app"
make[2]: [install] Error 1 (ignored)
/bin/cp -r "Python Launcher.app" "/Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/install"'


********************************************************************************
2017-Aug-21 12:07pm
Executing: "python -s setup.py --no-user-cfg install --force --verbose 2>&1 | tee -a /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/build-app.log.txt"
Executing from: "/Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/unpackandbuild/setuptools-35.0.2"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup.py", line 11, in <module>
    import setuptools
  File "/Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/unpackandbuild/setuptools-35.0.2/setuptools/__init__.py", line 10, in <module>
    from six.moves import filter, map
ImportError: No module named six.moves
Finished executing: "python -s setup.py --no-user-cfg install --force --verbose 2>&1 | tee -a /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/build-app.log.txt"

********************************************************************************


017-Aug-21 12:07pm
Executing: "python -s setup.py --no-user-cfg install --force --verbose 2>&1 | tee -a /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/build-app.log.txt"
Executing from: "/Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/unpackandbuild/pip-9.0.1"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup.py", line 6, in <module>
    from setuptools import setup, find_packages
ImportError: No module named setuptools




WOuld appreciate if there was a MacOs BCH build.

As of now, waiting for XCode 7.3.1 to finish download, and then attempt to build with XCode 7.3.1 as recommended.

Quick question: Do the offline watch only wallets need to update the source to the bchSign branch? Or can just the online transaction prepping device sign using the BCH Signer, and the offline wallets don't need an update?

Both signer and online instance need updated.

You'll need to manually edit the build script and set the OSX version to 10.8. Once you do that, everything should be fine. Just be sure to nuke the workspace first.


I did make one and fire it down the pipe. Not sure why it hasn't been posted.

No luck with the 10.8 OSX version switch.

I was getting python module related errors like "Setuptools module not found", but then I exported PYTHONPATH over with setuptools and got those to install.

Still, the app doesn't start up, when running it from Terminal, I get error: "LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed with error -10810 for the file /Users/nolandiatrading/git/BitcoinArmory/osxbuild/workspace/Armory.app."

Xcode 7 wouldn't work at all, so back to XCode 8.3.

If someone can please take a look at this

failed macos build LOGS : http://dumptext.com/hpTjd579/raw/

Sent a PM

Did you modify your wallets offline before going back online? Looks like it's scanning your wallets atm, and 0.96.2 RC2 has this issue where it won't show DB progress under certain circumstances. I've fixed that but I haven't pushed the fix in a build yet.

At any rate, confirm by starting ArmoryDB from the command line, you should see it scanning. Also you can get rid of thread-count=1, you're just gimping the scan unnecessarily.

I have watching only wallets. The were were never modified by me willingly. I always start DB first and wait for it to show 0 conf tracking. I had some problem in earlier releases already and there I established that together with you. The installation was running fine online before. Transacted BTC out. Now I have cut the blocks in the bitcoin datadir and not synched Bitcoin. I then start ArmoryDB and let it scan. after the 950 or so files it enables 0 conf. Then I open ArmoryQT and it goes to do the integrity check of the wallet. It then seems to do pretty much nothing.

Your DB shows it's scanning. The wallet check runs in parallel and is unrelated to the DB or the init process.

So should I just leave it on over night when QT is opened?

Was it actually doing something but not showing the progress bar?

Edit: lol, i see now in the db window "scanned from block ..." updating every second or so

OK, it worked over night. Now I am actually seeing one confirmation for a tx which was done a few days after the split. I think I have to remove more block data still and remove it... Quite strange, so split must be well before file 949.... I may have to experiment a little with that then....

If your coins have not moved months prior to the split, you can afford to overshoot. Actually, you are better off overshooting and reintroducing files later, as the DB can append forward but needs rescanned backwards.

Perfect, I'll take of some files and can always add later. I'll report back how it worked.

OK it all worked for me now. Thanks for the help. One of the issues was that I had only deleted one type of file from the blocks folder and not the other. So file 0949 was actually OK in the end. Broadcasted the raw tx and currently receiving BCH. Now almost done consolidating all my BCH....

I thought I have this, but I'm not. I need help.

I'm starting ArmoryDB.exe -datadir=<path to Armory DB> --satoshi-datadir=<path to Core DB>
Then I'm starting ArmoryQT.exe with the same arguments. I turn off "Let Armory run Bitcoin/Core in the background" and I wait. But apparently Armory is stuck at block 472XXX and it's not updating no matter how I move the blkXXXXX.dat files files followed by a Rebuild Database option.

What am I doing wrong?

keep adding blk files, blocks are not order in on chain so the one block linking the chain together can be 5 blk files ahead or more.

I did, but nothing happens. Even when I rebuild the database. Will add more :)

Otherwise let me see your logs.

I've spent my BCH accross hitbtc, changelly, shapeshift, poloniex and bittrex. They all worked ok. Changelly was the least annoying.

Bitfinex has no KYC if you only deposit and withdraw crypto. You can send bcash there, convert to BTC, and withdraw BTC, all with no KYC. You can also trade to USD in between, just not use banktransfers up or down.
I normally avoid exchanges, so I can't tell you about other options.
Let me know if you want a 10% fee reduce code for Bitfinex for the first month ;-)

Ente

Additional blk files were required. Thank you!

Quick Q: Is the BCH signer supported for multi-sig transactions (lockboxes)? Is there a way to select BCH Signer for when creating a multi sig transaction? If not, is this a particularly easy thing to add - ability to select BCH Signer in Lockbox mode - or there are no plans to include this?

Background:
I finally got the Bitcoin ABC & Bch Signer working in a VMWare Ubuntu instance.
I'm able to see my BCH balances correctly both on regular wallets and my multi-signature (lockbox) wallets.

But, I can only select the BCH Signer for when doing transactions using regular wallets. I can't get it working with the multi-signature/lockbox wallets.

Is there any way I can at least just get the BCH out of there by somehow manually crafting the BCH signer multi-sig-transaction? (I don't mind even just sweeping private keys, but these funds are sitting in a multi-signature wallet, so I don't believe key swiping/export would work there, I don't know).

EDIT: I'm in the process of going through Bitcoin ABC node and seeing if I can manually do a multi sig transaction that way by importing private keys.

Image of when doing a Multi-sig/Lockbox transaction, error returned:
non-mandatory-script-verify-flag (Signature must use SIGHASH_FORKID)

https://i.imgur.com/MMO305O.png

Crud, so I guess the issue is that I can't even get it working using Bitcoin ABC's.

I managed to use the bitcoin-cli command/debug to import the 3Lxx multisig address, and it's children 1-2 private keys. I also got redeemScript.
I went through the process of creating the raw transaction, then signing it. Still I get error from Bitcoin core:

16: mandatory-script-verify-flag-failed (Signature must be zero for failed CHECK(MULTI)SIG operation) (code -26)

I guess I need to reach out to Bitcoin ABC then

EDIT: Ok, I solved the issue. Needed to send the amount when signing transaction and had to include fees.

There's no support for the BCH signer with lockboxes because lockboxes are not covered by the new C++ wallet interface. I'd have to do that first to even look at the signer part.

Hi

How does one install an offline version of Armory capable of signing for Bitcoin Cash??

I am currently running 0.93.2 on an offline machine (with TAILS), but unable to upgrade because of dependency problems.

I cannot find an offline install bundle for the new version or a repository to dependencies.

Please help! How do I get the latest version of Armory running on an offline machine?

Many thanks

There are offline builds for 0.96.2. Otherwise, list the dependencies, download them and take those files to the offline machine.

I like this idea. Definitely don't trust BCH. Just wanna dump it ASAP :)


949 was created on July 29 and I did no transactions around those days. Does this mean I should just remove all blk files 950 and above?

Also, is it enough to remove blk files? There are corresponding rev files in there. Do I need to remove those too?


How do I "start ArmoryDB against" a particular folder?


Sorry for these noobish questions, but I'm a bit confused. Will Armory not simply show me exactly how many BCH are in my wallet? (I wanna know exactly how many BCH I own that I can dump LOL.)

Armory does not use the rev files. Remove whatever amount of files you need to roll back the chain in a state where all your post fork coins are unspent.


https://btcarmory.com/docs/pathing


Using the "trick", you will know how much BCH you have in total, but since you can't use Armory to broadcast (you are not running an actual BCH node), Armory can't track which outputs you've spent on the BCH chain. If you dump in several transaction, you need to keep track of which utxos are still available.

I'm starting to get it, thank you! Just a few more questions if you don't mind:

1) What broadcasting website did you use? Others have reported http://blockdozer.com/insight/tx/send Have you tried that one? They don't use HTTPS which worries me.

2) I normally use https://bitcoinfees.21.co to check what BTC fees I should be using. What fees do you recommend for BCH? The faster I can dump, the better :)

3) Let's say I have a total of 2 BTC in various utxos in the Armory wallet. And let's say I'm transferring it all at once (to some BCH exchange address). Let's say I want to use the fee 0.001 BTC. Isn't it then just a matter of selecting all the utxos and transferring 1.999 BTC using a 0.001 BTC fee? I'm almost 100% sure this is correct, but I thought I'd make sure just in case.

1) I sync'ed a BCH node.

Blockchair uses SSL, but I don't know if they have a send API. One thing you need to know if you're going to push through a 3rd party: Armory RBF flags by default, and RBF is disabled on the BCH chain. This doesn't mean RBF flagged transactions are invalid on the BCH chain, but that second RBF won't be broadcasted (first RBF flags potential replacement, second RBF is replacement). However, people have reported 3rd party chain explorers won't broadcast RBF flagged tx on BCH, therefor I suspect they went for the idiot patch and reject anything sequence flagged as a whole (how do they deal with OP_CSV?).

2) Last I checked, you could get first block inclusion with as low as 20 sat/B atm. I expect it's cheaper now

3) Pick all the eligible utxos in the coin control UI (don't bother if you want to move the whole wallet balance), then check the "MAX" box and pick a sat/B fee (force a flat fee).

Ok, since you did that, I think I'll do that too. Did you use Bitcoin ABC (https://www.bitcoinabc.org)? Do you trust their code? I'll be compiling it myself.

Yes


lol no

Hmm, in what sense do you not trust it? I was just wondering if it's trustworthy enough to run just for the purpose of dumping my BCH :) But who knows, maybe this code contains malware... that's what I meant.

After compiling a binary, maybe I should run the binary on a VM just to be safe.

There is a whole community running BCH nodes with almost religious fervor.  I am sure they would have noticed if it installed malware or stole wallets.

Your question was akin to: "do you vouch for this code?". No I don't, nor do I want the responsibility. Also, ABC devs went out of their way to obfuscate their changeset. This is like a manufacturer advertising that you shouldn't trust their product. Alright then, I won't.


I do not believe these developers are malevolent. I certainly think they are incompetent. Whether you get screwed intentionally or by negligence, the end result is the same.

Like the whole "let's configure BitcoinABC so that it installs to and uses the same default data directories as Bitcoin Core" saga... They say you should never attribute to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence...  ::) #noComment

You can use Bitcoin Unlimited or Bitcoin Classic instead, if you do not want to touch Bitcoin ABC.  Personally, the lack of digital signatures is enough for me to chose something else.

My personal plan is to use Bitcoin Unlimited to once and for all extract my BCH from my Armory wallet, and move it to my Ledger, where I will keep them hedging for the unpleasant possibility that the main bitcoin chain does not manage to address the scaling issues.

Once I have done that, I will probably clean up the software mess on my 'puter - and wait for the Segwit2x hardfork and its associated mess.  :)

• Quote
  Quote

  Quote from: goatpig on August 06, 2017, 11:26:32 PM

  With the BCH signer done, here is a guide on how to use it and keeping your stash secure.
  
  -------- The signer --------
  
  In order to sign for BCH, you have to pick your signer manually. This is a new feature, and is only available in Expert mode, so first thing first, set user mode to Expert.
  To pick the signer, you need to get to the "Confirm Transaction" dialog. Once there, you should see the signer select frame, click it and pick the signer for the chain you want to spend on. The default option only picks between Bitcoin signers, to sign for BCH you HAVE to pick the BCH signer manually.
  
  Screenshots for the good measure: https://imgur.com/a/9zXGD
  
  Once you've picked the signer, the rest is business as usual. Note that this step only occurs at the point of signing, i.e. if you sign offline, you have to pick the signer on your offline machine.
  
  

I dont understand how to get to the signer option :[ im very new to this stuff and im pretty slow, will need more assistance at a convenient time for whom ever may help. Cheers

[/list]

I decided to go with your Tricks route. I'm using https://pool.viabtc.com/tools/BCC/broadcast/ to broadcast. It works like a charm!

I just have one question now: In Armory, I saw an output address (what you called "utxos") with 10.0 BCH. The problem is that ShapeShift's maximum deposit was 8.0 BCH. So I sent 8.0 BCH to ShapeShift and 2.0 BCH back to the original output address ("utxo"). In other words, I used the original output address ("utxo") as the change address. So now I'm stuck with 2.0 BCH in this original address. My question is this: How do I spend the remaining 2.0 BCH? Can I safely follow the same steps except with 2.0 BCH instead of 10.0 BCH - even though the Armory UI erroneously shows me that 10.0 BCH remain in there?

(In the above 10.0/8.0/2.0 BCH example, I obviously ignored transaction fees to keep the example simple.)

You screwed yourself here. You basically need a fully validated BCH chain now for Armory to be able to see the tx that created that 2 BCH output, for you to be able to now spend it.

I'm probably stretching it now, but any chance you could zip and upload somewhere the BCH blk files from 950 until today?

I tried running Bitcoin Classic (it's supposed to be able to re-use Bitcoin Core blocks from before Aug 1) but unfortunately it failed... so I may have to download the entire 150 GB chain :S

Copy your BTC chain, delete block files up to the fork point and let a BCH node sync against that.

Is it enough to delete the blocks/blk*.dat files down to the fork point? There are a bunch of more files in there:

• Files: blocks/rev*.dat
• Folder: blocks/index
• Folder: chainstate
• Files: banlist.dat, db.log, debug.log, fee_estimates.dat, mempool.dat, peers.dat, wallet.dat

I'm not sure which of those I need to delete. (I'm going from Bitcoin Core -> Bitcoin Classic in UAHF mode.)

For instance, just deleting blocks/blk*.dat files from 930 and onwards, and then launching "./bitcoind -datadir=<new dir with deleted files>" of Bitcoin Classic UAHF gives me "Error loading block database, Do you want to rebuild the block database now?"

I tried various other combinations starting fresh, such as deleting also blocks/rev*.dat and chainstate. Same error. Nothing seems to work.

Everything here but the blk files are created on the fly during sync. That stuff will be overwritten if it doesn't match the state of the blk files.


Same thing goes with the chainstate db. It's the processed state of the blk files. If you change the blk files, you need to reindex the chainstate.


These are not relate to the blockchain, you can ignore them.

I'd like to sell my BCH, without installing their node/syncing their chain, if possible. My BTC are unmoved since before August 1, and I've got a copy of Armory 0.96.2 synced to the Core chain. I'm a little confused with how to create the BCH transactions on a per-utxo basis.

Does this look correct?:

1. create an unsigned TX on online Armory 0.96.2 machine that's synced to the Core chain
2. sign it with BCH signer on offline Armory 0.96.2 machine
3. broadcast the transaction on, eg. http://blockdozer.com/insight/tx/send
4. repeat steps 1-3 for each of the addresses I have that contain BTC; sending the full amount contained in each address each time? (I think this is necessary, in order to avoid change addresses - since I don't want to run the BCH node/chain?)

Also, it seems I should disable RBF for the sake of compatibility on the BCH chain?
Is it possible/necessary to have the transaction fee come from the utxo, so that if an address contains 1BCH, I can have eg. 0.999BCH send, with the 0.0001 transaction fee coming from the same address, emptying it completely with no change address generation? This aspect is what I'm most confused about - is there some easy way to manage all this within the Armory software?

Is it necessary to move the BTC to new addresses, either before or after dumping the BCH?

Thanks!

The fee is "the difference between total inputs & total outputs"... so if your input is 1BCH and your output is 0.999BCH then the difference is automagically given to the miners as the fee. Note that BCH network fees are generally a LOT lower than on the BTC network. Generally, they never get enough transactions to fill a block... so 1 BCHtoshi per byte is usually more than adequate :P


That is only really a "recommended" security measure when using "untested/untrusted" BCH wallets and/or when having to export/import private keys to try and prevent loss of BTC in the case that the private keys/seed get leaked for whatever reason...

Thanks for your help - I'm just really confused with how to ensure I send all the BCH out, in multiple transactions, without having to install the BCH node/chain.

Running

./bitcoind -reindex -maxmempool=3000 -datadir=<copy of bitcoin core dir with blk files down to July 28 2017 deleted>

appears to be working, but it's not finished yet. After 24 hours it got to only January 2017! Still running. This is insane lol. I've got a 2.6GHz Intel Core i7. Is this normal? What a painful experience...

Do I need to do steps 3 and 4 if all my coins are unmoved since August 1st? I've got Armory 0.96.2 synced against the BTC blockchain up to today. Can I use my current setup?

Oh but by all means, let's raise that block limit!


You're fine as long as you don't move coins on the BTC side that you have not moved on the BCH side.

Worth repeating: PICK THE RIGHT SIGNER, BCASH! OTHERWISE YOU RISK LOSING COINS ON OTHER CHAIN!

To be safe, I personally created a new wallet for my BTC stash and moved BTC there before I dared do anything related to BCH.

 :)

Thanks for your help, guys!

Could you elaborate on this? In what sense is BTC privacy compromised after dumping BCH?

At the time of the fork, you had BTC and bcash 1:1 on the same addresses. So if someone learns your bcash addresses, she knows you have the same amount in BTC on the same BTC address. Prime example, of course, would be an exchange. They might learn your bcash = BTC addresses as well as your bcash = BTC holdings.

Basically all the same as privacy concerning Bitcoin before.

Ente

Thanks for the explanation!

it appears to me that BCH isn't going anywhere.  is it possible to make an easier to use BCH claim tool that doesn't involve building a custom blockchain, similar to what Trezor has done?

Read the "Tricks" section

are you saying we also have to delete the rev*****.dat files from today back to 00949 from the blocks directory/file?

is that all we have to delete to claim BCH?

rev files shouldn't matter at all, they're only relevant for Core's reorgs. What you need to nuke as well is your ArmoryDB (if you're not going to use a fresh folder).

Also, there's no guarantee file 949 will do it for you. Core does not download files sequentially, there's a chance post fork blocks are embedded somewhere deeper down your blk files. This file # is only relevant if your node was running at the time of the fork. If you caught up for more than a day of blocks after the fork, chances are you have post fork blocks all over the place. Granted, the only thing you are actually after is the blk file with the first post fork block. If that one is taken out, Armory can't compute the chain past the fork point and you should be good.

i'm not sure i follow what you're saying here.  are you saying i have to load a blockchain btwn zero and the "one block file with the first post fork block" to make your trick work?

i was under the impression that if i loaded a blockchain that was anywhere pre-fork, let's say btwn block files 0-660, that would be sufficient.  the reason i say this is that i found an old USB stick with a copy of the blockchain in that block file range.  since i have done some tx's of BTC post fork, i have to use your trick of this truncated blockchain from what i understand.  will this block file range work?

Only if you have not moved coins on the prefork chain past that point.

The logic is as follows: your last set of valid utxos pre fork is still valid on the Bcash chain (up until the point you move your bcash). If you roll back the BTC blockchain to a point in time where it stands past your last valid utxo set state and before you moved coins post fork on the BTC chain, these utxos are also valid on the Bcash chain.

Graphically, it would look like this:


Any chain tip between V and M has the utxo set state you need to move coins on the Bcash side of the fork (as there is no divergence in utxo sets yet in between the 2 sides of the fork).

So what you want to do is to feed Armory a copy of the chain with the tip belonging to [V, M[

Thanks goatpig.  that really helps conceptually.

i'm having trouble connecting to that USB connected drive with the truncated /.bitcoin/blocks folder from the genesis block to blk00660.dat.  no tx's have taken place between 660 and post fork.

Bitcoin is installed here:  /home/debian/Downloads/bitcoin-0.15.0/bin

Armory is installed here, with a fresh empty Databases folder inside:  /home/debian/.armory

when trying to run ArmoryQT with controlling bitcoin, i get this.  :


any help would be appreciated.

Start the DB manually with your custom paths (consider using armorydb.conf for that), then run the client.

is it true that i can simply scan a BCH encumbered private key into a BCH enabled wallet, like Electron Cash, to claim my BCH even after i've sent the BTC away?

if true, wouldn't that be a simpler method to claim BCH than fiddling with all the truncated blockchain tricks?

If you export private keys, you have to consider the wallet compromised and cycle it. That means your backups are done for too. Choose accordingly.

let's say the online computer one uses to import the private key containing the BCH has malware.  even if the key is compromised, it doesn't help the attacker derive your other private keys without him also having the chain code, correct?

does this change if one imports several private keys to claim BCH, all of which get compromised, even though they don't have the chain code?  IOW, can the master private key be derived by using correlation?  i wouldn't think so since that's the point of the chain code; to make each deterministic key function like a totally randomized key.

This is what you need to know to treat your private key exports properly: you can reveal the private root of an Armory wallet with:

1) A chain of public keys tracing back to the public root.
2) The chaincode (that's treated the same as public keys).
3) Any corresponding private key on that public chain.

The most conservative position is to consider the entire wallet compromised if you export even a single private key, and that's the position I hold both personally and officially.

Are all 3 of the above required to compromise the private root?

Are you safe from the above if you sign the BCH transactions offline, and just broadcast the transactions using a block explorer?

Yes. That's what several here did, me included.
Or broadcast with your own bcash node, if you have one.

Ente

So if you dumped the BCH from all of your public keys on a single exchange, they could derive your private root from that info?

No, did you not read the posts above yours? The private keys cannot be determined from the public keys, and you need the chaincode with the private keys in order to derive any other private keys in your wallet.

Got it - thanks!

how does one correlate block height with blockfile.dat?

Since headers first (Core 0.10), crap shoot.

as a suggested UX improvement, please give us the option to Uncheck All selected UTXO's in Coin Control.   currently, by default, all UTXO's are checked; this can be a major pain if we want to use only a couple of UTXO's specifically for a tx while holding thousands of UTXO's in a particular wallet.  this forces us to manually uncheck those thousands of boxes down to the couple we want to specifically use.

Uncheck the parent section.

haha.  good one.

since i'm in the cycle of asking stupid questions, is there a way to order the UTXO's by address in Coin Control?

There is no sorting feature atm.

how do you deal with miner fees and change when claiming BCH?

let's say your wallet pre fork has ten UTXO's with 1BTC/BCH each.  post fork, you perform a 1BTC tx to buy something and your wallet automatically pulls the miner fee from one of the other nine UTXO's and dumps the change into a new address.  weeks later, you go to claim the BCH via Coin Control.  how do you set this tx up using the blockchain truncating Trick?

i assume you select both UTXO's that were in the original BTC tx pre fork.  i would assume you could also set a much lower miner fee than what was necessary in the original BTC tx since BCH miner fees are cheaper.  do you have to worry where the BCH change goes, or doesn't it matter?  will Armory actually dump it into the same change address created from the original BTC tx?

edit:  now that i think about it, i'm getting more confused.  i'm actually trying to claim 2BCH, right, since two BCH containing UTXO's were consumed?  so do i try to send 2BCH as an amount to the receiving BCH address, minus a BCH miner fee, despite the original BTC tx sending 1BTC as the amount?  if so, where does Armory pull the BCH miner fee from?

You don't, that UTXO does not exist on the backtracked copy of the chain you have.


No there's no guarantee of that. If you use the same wallet file, you will get a fresh address every time, otherwise, who knows.

You're doing it wrong with the fees. Go into coin control, pick the outputs you want to spend, then in the recipient frame, click "MAX". This will guarantee it will move all the coins it can to the target address without leaving anything for change. That's how you want to go about moving that stuff.

it's been years since i've updated the offline signer.  can you link me to the download version for BCH signing?

edit:  nvm, i got it:  0.96.2, i think.

There is now a 0.96.3, you probably want that one, at least if you ever plan on creating a fragmented backup.

why don't i see any specific "offline bundles" on it's Release page?   https://btcarmory.com/0.96.3-release/

ok, got it to work with latest release.  nice tool.

mentioned some issues in RC1 thread.

Now with BTC on the Hot Wallet its working fine with the BCH signer on BCH chain.
My question now is about the Cold Wallet, is there any possibility to do the same?
I dont want to get my cold wallet change in a hot wallet.....

I'm in a similar situation. I understand that currently Armory does not allow to sign such transactions using the BCH code. Do you know of some other way I can access the BCH stored in lockboxes? Some crude export/raw hex/import/CLI magic would be a great workaround.

BCH for lock boxes:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2227856.0

Thanks a lot!

Yes, same question here. Would this work with a cold wallet. Did you try it?
Thanks!

You can do it with a cold wallet, but you need to update Armory on the cold wallet.  I moved it to my offline wallet on a USB stick, and used it to sign my BCH so I could transfer them to my Ledger (Keeping two chains up to date is too much, and BCH is low priority for me.  Just keeping them until I see what happens with the 2x fork).

Please help!

I successfully sent my BTC from Armory 0.96.3-beta.

Before I did that I created a signed tx to transfer my BCH. I signed with the bitcoin cash signer and disabled RBL as described in this thread here.
I saved both the unsigned TXSIGCOLLECT data and the signed TXSIGCOLLECT data. I also saved the raw tx.

Passing the raw tx to http://blockdozer.com/insight/tx/send however does not work!
Also it seems like the raw tx is not even a hex. It contains a "+" character for example.
I also tried to convert this string to hex (both from ASCII and BASE64) and submit the result which also did not work.

Any help is much appreciated!
In particular I'm looking for a way to get a valid transaction from the data I have.

Do you have more information than "does not work"? Maybe Blockdozer is clever enough to provide an error message that could help us debugging?

The error message is quite generic unfortunately.
Blockdozer just says:

An error occured:
TX decode failed. Code:-22

Turn off RBF. Blockdozer is just bad like that.

Meh, I'm pretty sure that I turned RBL off when I created the transaction :/

How do you extract the raw tx?

I think there was a button like "copy raw tx to clipboard" or something like that.

And that gave you a raw tx with non hexit chars in it?

Exactly.

It looks like BASE64 since it contains a '+' but it is not since it does not end with a '=' char.
It is 20 characters long.

Update:
It seems like that this 20 character long string is contained in the signed TXSIGCOLLECT data.
Could have been that something went wrong with copying stuff around in X11 and that it is my fault. I'm not sure though. Normally I'm not that stupid.

Is there a way to get the raw tx from the signed TXSIGCOLLECT data?

No, the data has to be serialized first then converted to base16. I'd like to look at your armorylog.txt to see if it there's some error report in there.

Sorry, it worked now. I deleted enough blocks, rebuilt the armory database on the new subset of blocks and then could create the BCH transaction again. This time it worked and I could send the transaction through blockdozer.com.

It was either my fault or something strange happened during copying the signed raw tx. Just make sure that you actually get a quite long hex value there.

i hate to bring this up, but now that it appears that BCH is here to stay for real, it seems to me that perhaps building a simpler BCH conversion tool might be in order?

edit:  Trezor has this:  https://trezor.io/claim-bch/

Hmm, I wouldn't wantthe Armory team to waste ressources on this.
The proposed way to trnsfer BCH with Armory works well enough already, I'd say.
For doing more stuff with BCH, well, use a BCH wallet?

Ente

well, the issue is that i've had to dedicate an entire new laptop to maintaining the truncated blockchain to be able to do goatpigs workaround just to harvest BCH to sell.  from the comments above, it's clear this hasn't been an easy task for everyone as there are more issues than just extra dedicated hardware.  making a more convenient tool to recognize one's BCH would certainly improve liquidity of BCH.

I for one, am struggling since months trying to figure out how to "claim" my BCH (and am so mad I couldn't sell them a few days ago when their value peaked).

I would love so much if somebody could give me step-by-step & safe instructions.

My current situation is:

- latest bitcoin core (full node) installed, up and running on local computer

- latest armory  ( 0.96.3.99-beta ) compiled from source from github, can see all my BTC

- bitcoinABC compiled from source from github and NEVER LAUNCHED

- ONLY ONE COMPUTER

- did _NO_ transactions with BTC since before the fork, in order to make things easier

If somebody could help so that I can start using my BTC (and BCH) again, that would be very much appreciated.  I guess there may be thousands other persons in same uncomfortable situation.

hopebit, did you try it with the procedure in the first post of this thread?
What step exactly doesn't work, with what result?

Ente

the other meta issue around harvesting one's BCH is this recommended procedure to move one's BTC away from a private key before sending BCH to a BCH address.  i completely understand this recommendation as one doesn't want to risk losing their BTC using a crude workaround if they don't do this first.  however, a BCH tool, like Trezor's, that doesn't require this beforehand would be helpful to refine the tool to the point where this doesn't have to be done at all.  it's a problem b/c many of us have hundreds to thousands of private keys with BTC/BCH stored on them and the current recommended process requires us to effectively double the number of tx's to harvest BCH while at the same time risking anonymity (by address merging out of convenience).

You have to go through this step to preserve the security model of Bitcoin to begin with. I'm not pulling these recommendations out of nowhere.

No, I didn't try it, because it's dated Aug 6 and it's followed by 8 pages of discussion and I think there are now different versions of the software involved (armory, bitcoin core etc.) which may have different features. Also the procedure contains some "IF"... I would like to know what's the procedure up to date, and what exactly to do in my case without "IF"  (hat's why I posted my personal situation).

Also I was secretly hoping that Amory would have been upgraded with some "magic button" which does the whole procedure automagically with no risk to make errors, lose privacy etc.

The process of splitting (and disassociating) coins post-fork requires user input at several stages in order to properly protect oneself. Armory is an expert level wallet where security is always considered before convenience and as a long time Armory user I can comfortably say that I would never use such a "magic button" and would hope that the Armory dev(s) would never consider wasting time implementing such a feature. Bitcoin itself is a advanced course in personal responsibility and trying to push that responsibility onto others typically leads to monetary loss.

Security <--------|--------> Convenience

Choose one.

Also, the first post of this thread is still relevant.

Absolutey this.
Better than I could have put it.

Ente

ah yes, forgot about exposing one's public keys.  you're correct.

Hi

I am pretty non technical person in fact very non technical!

So I am currently downloading BCH unlimited chain to a separate folder on my HDD.

Couple of noob questions what do you mean by cycling a wallet?

What I am not sure about is do i need to I need to install another instance of armory as changing the setting would I presume mess up my current armory wallet. OR can I configure armory to flip between the 2 chains using the signer?

Thanks for any help appreciate work goatpig has done.

The online instance of Armory will have to build its database against the chain that you want to use.

I read through the entire piece on page one an many pages after and not being very technical, frankly i have no clue if it was written to solve my problem.

I had bitcoin sitting in my Armory since Apr 2016.  I only moved some out in sep 2017.  At that time i upgraded to version 0.96.3 beta etc.  I never saw any BTC coins shown nor was aware that i should get them when it forked.

I had assumed that i couldnt get any but now understand that in fact i should be able to get the due BCH coins if i was holding them in my own wallet.  Unfortunately i have no clue how to do this with armory which of course i paid for as it was the best at the time.

Having read page 1 if i am right , I need to somehow install Armory on a seperate machine, download a BCH chain or cut a copy of the existing chain to some unknown block between 950-960, use a BCH signer etc...all of which is a total mystery to me.

1) under the above conditions did i receive coins /should i be able to find my coins
2) How do i find my coins
3) how do I access my coins.

Mr G...you are very busy and probably dont want to waste your time explaining in noobspeak how to do this - i am willing to pay for your services in helping me recover my BCH- IF in fact it can be done.  Or if you have a noob guide on what to do i would greatly appreciate it. 

We can take it offline on t63crypto@gmail.com

Kind regards

Tristan

How in the hell did you pay for Armory? It's free open source software.


Any coins you had in your Armory wallet on August 1st you'll have the BCH equivalent for. Moving BTC post fork does not change that.


You are getting confused. Basically you want to setup a BCH node as if you were setting up Core. The point is, since you already have Core, and thanks to BCH being idiots, if you setup BCH on your regular system, it will conflict with the existing Core files and mess everything up. Therefor you want to setup BCH in a way that it doesn't shit all over your existing Core setup. The regular way to do this is configure the BCH node to use a different path, and later reflect that on Armory.

If you're really a huge noob or can't be fucked to manually set paths, you could create a new user on your online computer for BCH only (user accounts come with their own set of data folders, and both node and Armory default to the active user data folders). Once you've done this (create new user and get a BCH node running), let sync the chain in full. With that done, grab you Armory wallets from the Core user (digital export is your best option), start Armory on the BCH side and import the wallets in then let it do its thing.

Once this is over, the Armory on the BCH user account will show you your BCH balance and create transactions for the BCH network. You will still have to pick the BCH signer manually to sign something valid.


To you it's mister Pig. Don't you get familiar on me yet, boy!

I am about to send all my BCH to an exchange to have it converted into BTC. I am naturally cautious and I'd like to verify my case here:

Setup: I have an up-to-date Armory on the BITCOIN(BTC) network with no BCH nodes.

1. I go through the usual process just like sending BTC and put the exchange's BCH address assigned to me in, but just short of the final review window where you click Send!, I change the Signer to BCH.
2. I then go to transaction details, and copy the raw transaction.
3. I need to find a website or tool that will process the raw transaction and broadcast it to the BCH network since I have no BCH node. I know there are a few for BTC but I'm still looking for one for BCH.

After this is complete, the exchange's BCH address should eventually update with the amount I sent. Is this correct? Armory will still generate a valid transaction for me even if it's not on the chain?

Thank you

UPDATE: Went through the offline process and created what I believe should be the correct transaction to push, it is now sitting around while I look for a way to broadcast it. Would be nice to also be able to verify its details.

UPDATE 2: It worked!

Any chance you can share how you broadcast it?

Also, it should be noted that your process might only work if you have not conducted ANY BTC spend transactions since Jul 31st.

Otherwise, Armory might not be able to find the correct inputs as they could possibly have been spent.

At least in August
https://blockdozer.com/insight/tx/send
worked fine. Thanks again, HCP, for the suggestion.
Even if the broadcasting service is malicious, they can't do more than not-broadcat the tx (and know your address and IP).

Of course you need to be *very sure* to use the BCH signer.
Or transfer the bitcoins away first, to another wallet of yours. It's all written down on the first page here.

Ente

The service I used was https://pool.viabtc.com/tools/BCH/broadcast/ . I already know they can't tamper the transaction without breaking the signature. I also disabled RBF since it was mentioned earlier in this thread that it doesn't work. I then went to a BCH blockchain explorer and refreshed until I saw my transaction up, then waited until the exchange had enough confirmations to allow me to do trades with it.

Hey Goatpig, thank you for helping me restore my wallet. Now I'm trying to get my BCH off there. When I sign the transaction with the BCH signer and hit send, I get a message that pops up:

Transaction not accepted

16: mandatory script verify flag failed(signature hash type missing or not understood).

I assumed this just meant the BTC chain didnt recognize the transaction, but its not popping up in my BCH wallet either...

Correct.


For that to happen, you'd have to submit that transcation to the BCH network, not the BTC network.

Copy the raw tx instead of broadcasting. Paste that in whatever service. There is no guarantee this will work, as you are obviously grabbing the utxos from Core node.

I pasted the rawTx hex into Blockdozer, and got an error 16: mandatory script verify flag failed "operation not valid with the current stack size"...

Also, in armory on the transaction details page, it doesn't give a transaction ID because it says it's not signed... Do I have to click send for it to sign it? When I click send, it prompts me for my passphrase, and once I enter my passphrase, the error message pops up and I don't get to see the rawTx...

Do I initiate it as an offline transaction? I'm so lost...

Ok. I got it... I hate the old "trial and error" method when dealing with money, but I created an unsigned transaction just like doing an offline transaction, then signed it, copied that rawTx hex, and pasted to blockdozer. Transaction sent.

I am a noob when it comes to some of these matters and having a bit of trouble separating my coins.

*For simplicity’s sake, I have used an arbitrary number of 10 BTC to illustrate my issue.

•   Work = work computer
•   Home = home computer
•   Prior to the BCH fork I had 10* BTC spread across 5 addresses.
•   Addresses A, B, C, D, and E.
•   Assume 2 BTC per address.
•   I have a paper copy of the public AND private keys for each. None have been moved post-fork prior to yesterday.
•   Work has Bitcoin Core v0.14.2 and Armory 0.96.3[/size]

Per my (mis)interpretation of Goatpig’s Aug 6 post and some posts from everyone that followed, I have done the following:

1.   Home - Uninstalled Bitcoin Core, deleted the block folder and uninstalled Armory.

2.   Home - Installed Bitcoin ABC and let it download the full chain (1+day). Installed Armory 0.96.3

My intent was to transfer my BTC from Work to my Electrum wallet and transfer the BCH on Home to an exchange. Per previous posts I interpreted this as the easiest method to ensure I don’t mix or corrupt data from each side of the fork.

To follow Goatpig’s process as closely as I could my intent was to transfer the BTC first then the BCH.

3.   Yesterday I transferred 1.5 BTC from Work to Electrum. Using the “coin control” feature I specifically made the transfer from Address E. The change of 0.5 BTC went to a newly created address in my Armory wallet. The other addresses remain unchanged (I printed paper copies again).

4.   I went to Home and opened the newly installed Armory. It ran its opening scans and was then online (I trust the BCH chain?). I “Import or Restore Wallet” using the Root Key. I then had the same wallet on both Home and Work. While importing the wallet it got stuck on “scan transaction history”. I’ve restarted, let Bitcoin ABC run until its up-to-date and still no luck. It constantly gets stuck with only a few seconds left on the “scan transaction history” stage.

I assumed the Home wallet would run against the BCH chain since that is all there is on that machine. Shouldn’t Home Armory see all my pre-fork coins and allow me to transfer on that chain?

I can see the remaining 8.5 BTC on Work and the transferred 1.5 BTC in my Electrum Wallet.

How do I separate the coins since the Armory on Home will not open the wallet thus allowing me to transfer the pre-fork coins on the BCH network?

Please assist. I would like the least risky method to split the coins…not necessarily the easiest / quickest.

Goatpig, if you wish we can correspond via email and I will compensate you for your time.

Thank you in advance.

Magilla Gorilla

Sounds good to me (although I chose the other approach and didn't install a bcash node).
- Are you sure both your bcash node and Armory are fully synchronized? Like, please check in bitcoind (or however it's called) what block it is at. And that Armory shows the same blockheight at the lower right corner.
- Check if the Armory Root Key import worked: compare some bitcoin addresses at "home" and "work", shouldn't matter if some "receive" or "used" addresses. If you find at least one address the same on both, you should be fine here.
- Run Armory via commandline, observe it it shows you errors, "scanning" or the like. And if it receives new blocks from time to time.

Don't worry, I see no hint that any funds would be in actual danger here.

Ente

I suspect we're going to need to see the Armory logs to understand what is happening... armorylog.txt and dbLog.txt (or export logs from within Armory).

Copy/Paste the contents of your log files to https://pastebin.com/ click the "create new paste" button and then cop/paste the generated URL for your paste here.

I'm trying to move my BCH out of my Armory addresses. I have spent some bitcoin, so I deleted some blocks to get Armory back in time. I followed the instructions on the first post and sent a test of amount to be safe. The change ended up in an empty address. How am I going to move the change out if Armory doesn't know the offline transaction was processed?
[EDIT]
I used the "Max" option to clear out the Cash, other than the change in one address. Will there be any way to recover it? Control doesn't allow you to select zero balance addresses.

These are post fork coins now, you need the BCH chain.

Ente,

Thank you for the quick response. In response to your questions:

1.   I am uncertain if the BCH node and Armory are fully synchronized. Now that I have imported my wallet, Armory will not open and gets stuck during the “Scanning Transaction History” process. I trust this means it cannot synch for some reason. Based on my dblog attached in a post a few minutes ago, it appears to consistently get stuck after scanning block #496043 to #504744.

2.   I am unable to view the Bitcoin addresses at Home since Armory will not open. During the “Scanning Transaction History” it gets permanently stuck with “xx seconds” left.

3.   I am uncertain how to run via command line. Since you are looking to see errors, if they could be viewed in my dblog or armorylog…those are now posted. If you can let me know how to run via commandline I will do so and let you know any errors shown.

Since I have paper copies of the public and private keys and my only objective is to split the coins and sell or store the BCH elsewhere….would it be just as easy to create a BCH wallet elsewhere and manually import (ie type in / copy and paste) my keys into that BCH wallet?

GOATPIG - Based on the dialog under the "Export Log File...." selection within Armory, I assume making my logs public does not put my BTC / BCH private keys nor my wallet Root Key at risk. I understand that my TXs or perhaps public address privacy could be impaired....but still not anything putting my BTC at risk. Please verify my assumption is correct.

Logs leak some of your privacy, they do not carry anything that can reveal you private keys.

Goatpig - thank you for confirmation that posting my Logs does not jeopardize my BTC / BCH (via private keys, root key or otherwise).

Per HCP's request for logs regarding my post #161

dbLog
https://pastebin.com/nJCQLbL1

armorylog
https://pastebin.com/PtujAYbe

You may see that  Armory completed its scans and showed as online the one time I ran it before my wallet was "restored". Once the wallet was restored the "Scanning Transaction History" process always got stuck with only "xx seconds left". Based on my cursory understanding of the logs it always seems to get stuck on the same blocks.

I see 16 entries of

So, is it at default folder path, and is it running? AFAIK you can also open Bitcoin-qt (the GUI shortcut).
Oh, and you need to allow api connections to bitcoind too, in bitcoin.conf.

If you checked all this already, nevermind. Also I don't know what the current state of Armory regarding "automatically find bitcoind path" and "automatically start bitoind" is.

edit: armorylog seems to find and scan the bcash blocks fine.
Also, nevermind me mixing up bitcoin and bcash here :-)

Ente

I always ran bitcoin-qt and Armory separately, and I don't mess with the Armory settings by using a shortcut...

"D:\Program Files (x86)\Armory\ArmoryQt.exe" --datadir="D:\ArmoryData" --satoshi-datadir="D:\BitcoinData"

I renamed the database folder in ArmoryData to database.old to save it.

Substitute Qt with DB if you are following the instructions.

You don't want Bitcoind running if you are following the first page instructions.

The discussion is getting beyond my scope of knowledge so I apologize if I cant keep up with some of the questions / instructions.

I sincerely appreciate all of your assistance.


ENTE
I am uncertain if bitcoind is in the default path and whether or not its running. In Armory Settings (from the dropdown File menu) the checkbox is selected for "Let Armory run Bitcoin Core/bitcoind in the background". Where is the default location Armory is looking for bitcoind? Should I specifically select a location within settings for the "Bitcoin Install Dir:" or "Bitcoin Home Dir:"?

API connections are a new concept to me as well as how to adjust with bitcoin.conf.

I agree that it seems to scan the bcash blocks just fine. Before importing the wallet Armory would show as online and kept up with the Bcash blocks as they were created.

PeZ
I am following the first page instructions and uncertain if bitcoind is running in the background. I am not running it intentionally (ie opening the .exe).


Another thought...
Since I am having difficulty getting the new Armory to run after i import my wallet, is there any risk to taking the following route to extract my BCH:
1. Transfer my existing BTC (at pre-fork addresses) to a new address in a new wallet created in Armory or my Nano S.
2. Install a BCH wallet such as Electron Cash.
3. In the BCH wallet, sweep the private keys from my old BTC addresses that existed pre-fork and send to a newly created BCH address.
Once i have transferred all BTC out of the current wallet and away from the existing addresses, is there any risk in exposing those public and private keys to the BCH network?


I would prefer to transfer the BCC from Armory per GOATPIG's page 1 instructions but remain unable to get Armory to load my wallet on the BCH chain. To start on a somewhat clean-slate, I am contemplating uninstalling ABC and Armory from Home and then re-install to see if that makes a difference; though I am sure you will tell me I'll end up at the same spot.

What is the easiest way to claim post fork BCC from an Armory wallet?  I have moved the coins post fork.  Is it as simple as running armory with a complete BCC node and then sending using the BCC signer?

Thanks for any help,

Zurs

Yes.

Yes. That said, I highly recommend keeping the Armory database separate from the Core DB, otherwise you'll have problems. This link (https://btcarmory.com/docs/pathing) explains how to set up the paths, which you'll need for both the Armory DB and the Bcash chain.

This is what I do/did. I had previously emptied my BTC from my main wallet. Some BCH got stuck as change when I transferred it away, so I installed Bitcoin ABC in a separate directory.
Uncheck the box that lets Armory run bitcoin core. It will find it, if it is running - as long as your firewall is not blocking it.
Keep separate directories for Bitcoin ABC data and Bitcoin Core data and copy the Armory wallet to another directory, but remove the database directory for when you use it with Bitcoin ABC.
If you want to run Bitcoin, do it with a shortcut e.g. "D:\Program Files\Bitcoin\bitcoin-qt.exe" -datadir="D:\BitcoinData" -disablewallet
When synced, run Armory with the shortcut that I mention in the previous post. Follow the directions on the first page.
Not sure if this is the easiest method, but it worked. I am using Windoze, but other OS's should have something similar.

OK this is what I did but didn't work

I'm a noob

so I created a second windows user and the downloaded and synced bch abc installed new armory pointed the directory at bch abc when i imported wallet with BTC it comes up with a balance of zero so I'm confused (which is easily done)

Hey PeZ, when you did this does the transaction completed or you should copy the tx raw data and transmit to online service?
I have fully sinced bitcoin ABC and i want to execute the transaction through armory with the BCH signer.

Also do you see the correct BCH balance on armory when running against bitcoin ABC.

Thanks

With both Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin ABC, I unchecked RBF, used 1 S/B fee and copied the Hex data and used http://blockdozer.com/insight/tx/send to submit the transaction. I don't know if it is required, but I would empty the wallet of BTC before messing with the BCH contents.

Yes, when you use Bitcoin ABC you would see the BCH contents, but my wallet was completely empty of BTC.

Just read the news about BCH chain introducing new type of address:
https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-cash-community-prepares-for-change-the-address-day/
Is Armory supporting it (or planning to support it in any upcoming release)?

nothx

if i'm understanding this right, at this time, we cannot access BTG b/c Armory isn't supporting it.  if Bitcoin Cash converts to Bech32 addresses and Armory doesn't support that, are we risking not being able to access our BCH in the future by continuing to use Armory?

Armory is not for altcoins. I provided a BCH signer so that people can get their coins out. I will provide a BTG signer to the same end. I made it pretty clear back in August that if BCH (or any other Bitcoin fork for that matter) was to introduce changes that made it incompatible with Armory, I would not support that stuff.

ok, i have to ask, b/c i think it's a distinct possibility; in the offchance that BTC fails and BCH is declared the real Bitcoin, what would be your position then?

Leave the cryptocurrency space probably.

I understand you want an Armory that works good. I was using a HDD and it was real bad. I bought a SSD and it works fine, with it. But hey, if you don't want to update Armory to support altcoins, ok, but it has got to have some support, so people can spend it. Or do you think people will even have bitcoins in Armory, if it means losing money?

You can always take the risk to import your private keys in software that supports the alt. Or you can pay someone to fork Armory and implement support for the alt for your choice. I've put in the effort to allow Armory users to withdraw their bcash. I'll let them withdraw their btg too, but they need to know there is no plan to support altcoins beyond withdrawal.

Do not be mistaken, this is only a courtesy, not a commitment of any sort. A lot of users do not know how to handle their private keys safely, and these airdrop alts are scammy by nature, therefor their software is untrustworthy.

I won't put the effort to support complicated changes in alts, therefor I won't bother with he simple ones either. I have a personal commitment to Bitcoin, the rest is irrelevant to me. Again, you are free to pay someone to implement support for the alts of your choice.


Only people with a narrow understanding of cryptocurrency would assume loss of wealth when they are in control of the private keys.

i don't think anyone's suggesting that you support other altcoins.  but being able to access the airdrop coins would be helpful in allowing us to sell them off in support of BTC, as another way to look at this.  i for one, really appreciate being able to get at my BCH.  i also look forward to doing this with BTG.

Your question was specifically about changes to BCH addresses. I do not want to pollute the GUI with that stuff. I don't mind adding a signer, but when the changes required to support the airdrop introduce complexities in the GUI, at that point the cost to support outweighs the benefit.

Bcash has been around since August. I think people had plenty of time to move their coins since. I consider I have fulfilled my responsibility to Armory users on that matter.

Hi!

So I made a thread called ”ELI5, how do I claim my BCH if I had BTC during the hard fork?” and got some help in that thread, but I don’t feel fully confident yet.

So this is my situation:
I’ve had BTC in my armory wallet for a couple of years.
I sold some BTC post fork but didn’t even know about the fork until recently.
I’m a complete newbie and only know how to send BTC using Armory, I don’t know anything about signers etc.

If I understand it correctly I have some BCH that I can claim (the same amount of BCH that I had BTC during the fork). I’ve read the entire thread (keep in mind that I’m a noob and probably only understood about 5% of what was written) and it looks like I can install Armory on an external HDD (don’t have enough space on my laptop to have another approx 150 GB for the blockchain) and delete some blocks (until about the date at the fork?) and somehow I will see the amount of BTC i had during that time? (which is exactly the same amount of BCH I had at that time). I can then send those BCH to another wallet by checking the box ”BCH signer”?

If I do something wrong (like forgetting to check the ”BCH signer”) I might lose my regular BTC? Do you recommend me making another wallet and send all my BTC to that wallet first? Can I somehow make a mistake and ”leak” my private keys and therefore basically lose my BTC? (someone commented ”Do not expose your private keys.” and I have no idea what I can or can’t do to expose them)

All I want to do is to move some of my BCH to a safe place and some of my BCH to an exchange and trade in for BTC and some altcoins.

Is there any possibility at all that if I wait to much, I might lose my BCH (If BCH converts to other addresses or something like that). Keep in mind that I’m a complete noob 😊
I guess I first also have to update my Armory version since I right now have 0.95.1? Where can I update armory? Do I need to uninstall the version I have now before updating?

no. even when BCH converts to bech32, old BCH addresses will be functional.

Hello ConnyH,
from what I understand it's like this: Consider the blockchain as a path you walk down. At the moment of the fork the path splits in two paths and you can walk down BOTH paths and have the history of the original path on each path up to the moment of the fork. So deleting the blockchain part after the fork for synchronizing the BCH blockchain is one necessary measure.
The second measure you need to take is use a client, that can follow the chain down the new path. That is either Bitcoin Unlimited or Bitcoin ABC (for simplicity, take that one). You need to install one of those instead of Bitcoin Core and make Armory use that as the backend. Then the client will synchronize with the BCH chain and you will see your wallet from before the fork with your BCH coins in it.

You can't do anything wrong. BCH has a replay protection, so with the wrong signer in the transaction the transaction will not be accepted by the BCH network and vice versa. What you could do wrong: Send BCH coins to someone's BTC address or vice versa. Usually people create separate wallets for both coins in order not to confuse the addresses and the reason I will describe next. So take care, which coins the recipient expects on which address.

Possibility of losing your BCH if you wait for too long? Yes, there is a faint possibility: If the public key cryptography linking the private to the public key turns out to have a weakness or progress in quantum computing is made in the near future (likely within the next decade), so someone is able to derive your private key for an address from your public key of that address. Since you already spent coins post fork the public key for that address can be found with the spending transaction on the bitcoin blockchain. If someone were able to derive the private key from that at reasonable cost, you run the chance of losing the BCH coins in that address.

Hi!
I'm really confused now. So if I install Bitcoin ABC and let Armory run against that I will be able to see my BCH balance? Is there any risk of leaking my private keys or something if I don't use Bitcoin Core?
I initially thought I only needed bitcoin core and Armory and then needed to delete some blocks and voila I would see my BCH balance and could send them to another BCH wallet using the BCH signer, but now I'm just super confused. Thanks for your reply!

I am having difficulty running Armory against the BCH node.  I think the node stopped syncing from the fork date.  Armory says it is connected but it does not show a BCH balance.

Would it perhaps be easier for me to attempt to export my private keys to a different wallet that has built in support for BCH?

Any help/input is very much appreciated.

Zurs

Yes, you'll see your balance once ABC has finished syncing. Core has nothing to do whatsoever with ABC/Bcash now. Use pathing (https://btcarmory.com/docs/pathing) for both ABC and Armory to generate a separate blockchain and Armory DB so that nothing from Core gets overwritten by accident.


Did you follow goatpig's guide? How are you invoking everything? Which version of Armory and ABC or Unlimited are you running?

Armory works just fine with a BCH node. Are you saying your BCH node has stopped syncing? If so, you need to get that working before worrying about Armory.

Can I import/sweep my keys to a different BCH friendly wallet using my Armory paper backup?

No... you would need to restore to an Armory Wallet first... then use the "Export Keys List" functionality at: Wallet Properties -> Backup this wallet -> see other options -> export keys list -> click "export keys list"

Then you want to tick:
- Show addresses
- Private Keys (Plain Base58)
- Include Unused (Address Pool)
- Omit spaces in key Data

This will give you a list of all addresses and WIF format private keys in your wallet.

You DO NOT need to have Bitcoin Core installed, or for it to be synced etc to do this.

Hi again!
I managed to sync Bitcoin ABC and now I can see my BCH amount in the wallet. (I know it's my BCH because it's the same amount I had at the time of the fork).
I now want to send them to an exchange and sell them for BTC, if I understand it correctly right now with BCH almost no transaction fees are required? So I can set 1 satoshi/byte and it will still go through in a reasonable amount of time? Should I enable RBF or will that somehow fuck some things up?

Thank you so much Droark for helping me!

I don't know what would be an acceptable fee, to be honest. In theory, 1 sat/byte (or maybe even 0!) would work, although I've seen signs that at least some miners might be setting their max block sizes to 2MB for now in order to squeeze some extra fees out of people. Anyway, I'm pretty sure Bcash can handle RBF. You could always start at 1 sat/byte and bump it up if it fails to confirm in a reasonable length of time.


You're welcome.

I set it at 1 sat/byte and it got 6 confirmations quite fast, thank you so much once again!

RBF is non standard on BCash, i.e. the replacement tx can be mined but won't be relayed by the network.

And people wonder why some engineers think Roger was dropped on his head as a child....

Spent quite a long time with bitcoin-abc-0.16.2 and armory 0.96.3.991 and trying to get it to work.

This combo throws in the bitcoind log.
2018-01-04 21:34:48 PROCESSMESSAGE: INVALID MESSAGESTART version peer=0

However, bitcoin-abc-0.16.1 and armory 0.96.3.991 allows the connection to happen:
2018-01-05 07:11:02 receive version message: [127.0.0.1:34586] Armory:0.96.3.991: version 70012, blocks=-1, us=127.0.0.1:8333, peer=0

Just a heads up to others. I believe something changed in the bitcoin-abc repo around 12/3/2017 surrounding this PROCESSMESSAGE output.

I have read through the entire thread a few times now as well as the Aug 6th guide and I am still a bit confused.

For want of a simple solution that doesn't involve copying lots of data and running multiple offline clients but still keeps the original bitcoins safe in armory etc can I simply:

1. Create a new wallet in armory and send all of my bitcoins to it (wait for a few confirmations)
2. Use keys from the now empty old wallet in something like Electrum Cash to get and move BHC
3. Never use/burn the original wallet again in case it is compromised on the BHC side

Now, of course I am not asking if my BHC will be safe with something like electrum cash but would this solution keep my real bitcoins safe in my new armory wallet AND allow me to gamble/sell/move/split/risk the BHC without having to get too technical?

Cheers in advance and let me know if there are any obvious pitfalls

PsyMan

Looks sane.
One thing to note, you will need to split BCH in Armory if your coins are in P2SH-P2PK addresses.

Hold onto the old wallet's private keys for other splits. BTG, for example.

I agree, your approach (PsyMan2000) looks sane.
Good catch, PhoenixFire.

Ente

Thanks PhoenixFire, Ente and of course Goatpig.

Its starting to become clearer but still not to the point I am comfortable to just go ahead and do it, it's not the biggest wallet in the world but still much more than I care to lose from being too hasty.

Address type: P2PKH , does this mean I can stick to my plan and simply split using Electron Cash (or equivalent) with a direct key import or will I need to go back to the data moving, double armory plan?

PsyMan

Good attitude to have, tbh.
And yes, you can stick to the Electron Cash plan. P2PKH is compatible with everything.

That is good news, thanks for the confirmation and tips. My plan B if I had to split with Armory would have been (as possibly misinterpreted):

1. send bitcoins to new armory1 wallet (wait for confirmations)
2. rsync/copy my huge bitcoin folder to my laptop in same relative location
3. install armory2 on laptop and launch it offline checking it is using the copied folder
4. change signer to BHC & import wallet (hopefully now seeing the same sum of BHC)
5. create offline transaction sending all BHC to exchange wallet (not sure how but I am sure I could find out)
6. work out how to make that transaction a live reality (again, grey area but easily researched)
7. spend BHC on a new yacht and solve poverty

While I am only 75% confident the above would have worked there was enough doubt to stop me trying, hopefully someone can clarify the Plan B steps and advise if wrong for anyone else approaching the thread for advice.

PsyMan

can you explain this further?

The P2SH-P2PK address type is unique to Armory (as far as I know). Unless you want to craft your own transactions, you're limited to dealing with whatever forks Armory has a signer for - you can't just export the private keys and call it a day.
P2PKH is universally supported, and P2SH-P2WPKH is supported by other segwit wallets (assuming they follow the standards).

so ALL Armory legacy addresses are in this unique format?  meaning you can't export their private keys to another wallet?  makes sense as the root key is unique afaict (2 rows of 9 blocks of 4 letters each, all lower case).  that's good to know; don't bother wasting time exporting...

No, you misunderstand me. Not all Armory addresses. For one, P2SH-P2PK was only introduced in 0.96 and HD/root key wallets predate that AFAIK.
You can choose to have addresses in any (and all) of the 3 listed formats in one Armory wallet right now. I honestly don't remember what the default was when I first booted up Armory, but I suspect it was P2PKH. Up to you to decide which format you use (this is in the settings), and you can check which addresses (used or unused) are in which format via the wallet properties.

Edit: If your addresses are specifically P2SH-P2PK, then yeah you are going to have a bad time trying to get the exported keys to refer to the right addresses in other wallets. Armory does say that it requires 0.96+ to spend from them.
P2SH-P2WPKH is a bit less smooth, but doable. P2PKH is supported by everything bitcoin related that isn't ancient.

Does that help? Don't want to leave you with false ideas about it :)

that helps alot, i did misunderstand you.  what is that, btw?:  P2SH-P2PK.  pay to public-key?  isn't that an old relic from the past?  wasn't the Base58 format introduced way back when to obscure the public key?  unless of course, the P2SH part obscures it via the redeem script...but for what purpose?

Yes, it is pay to pubkey. The P2SH part obscures that because the pubkey is part of the redeem script. The reason for doing P2PK instead of P2PKH is that it takes up less space than P2PKH nested in P2SH.

So as to allow for the use of compressed pubkeys at roughly the same cost as compressed P2PKH, without murdering the Python wallet code over it.

Hello,

Looking for some advice here (am noob).

I have BCH trapped in a lockbox.  I have moved all BTC and BCH from the addresses that fund the lockbox post fork, and all BTC from the lockbox post fork.  I have BCH remaining in the lockbox.  I just synced an ABC node against Armory hoping that I would see the BCH amount appear in the lockbox, but it's not showing. 

Question:  Should Armory be showing the BCH amount in my lockbox once it has synced with the BCH node?  Or will the lockbox amount show "0" if there are no funds in the wallets that fund the lockbox?

Lockbox will show their proper balance assuming they had coins pre fork.

I was able to spend BCH from a wallet, however the lockbox fails to send.  The error dialog box states "the transaction that you just executed failed with the following error message:rate limited free transaction".  I have tried enabling and disabling RBF protection and adjusting fee rates.  Anyone else have this issue or know why I might be getting that error?

Log file:
https://pastebin.com/embed_iframe/XrQBJb4d

oh please gaud, allow me to find a fast way to search thousands of UTXO's for the few BCH address claims i make from time to time from the Coin Control window using the trick method...

So, I opted to forgo the "tricks" and go ahead and temporarily run a BCH node.

I downloaded and installed Bitcoin ABC version v0.16.2.0-6af5e93 (64-bit) and let it fully sync, only took about 28 hours.

Upgraded Armory to the latest RC3  0.96.3.992-beta-8a7f18a499

Dealt with my custom pathing, which I think I understand.

Nuked my old core armory DB and got armory to build the DB against the ABC install.

If I try and let Armory manage QT it hangs on "preparing databases"

If I run ABC manually Armory loads up the wallets and shows expected BCH balances (which differ from BTC balances as I moved all those onchain first) but in the lower right it reports "Node Offline (blockheight as of armory launch)

I feel like I have made a lot of progress and am very close, but I am stuck here.

logs
https://pastebin.com/yypEZvFu
https://pastebin.com/751Uzqqa

I am so sorry to bother you guys...I really tried.

Shut down Armory, wait a few seconds, and then check the task manager for instances of ArmoryDB. If any exist, kill them. Once they're all gone, start Armory again. Hopefully this will do the trick.

thanks droark

I hope this is a more appropriate venue than squawking at you in IRC

alas, still "node offline" after killing DB and restarting

Tried ABC 0.16.1 as per the below?

THAT, is probably it!

Thank you PF!  I have read the entire thread, but there is rather a lot of it and after a while it tends to all swim together.  I failed to integrate this point...now to make sure I don't lose the blockchain in the downgrade.

Will report.

Thanks. This somehow floated past me. I'm waiting for more reports but it sounds like running 0.16.1 may be the ticket. I took a quick look at the commits. Nothing jumped out immediately but I didn't take a close look. This is an example of what goatpig was talking about when he said that there's no guarantee Armory will support Bcash. :) People can always try their luck with Unlimited too.

jojo69, I always put "listen=1" and "addnode=127.0.0.1" in my bitcoin config file. I don't know if it will help your situation or not, but it can't hurt.

Yeah, everybody ought to do this. Something for me to put in the in-progress FAQ, now that I think about it....

re the bitcoin.conf file changes

this is the one with the rpcuser stuff in it?

and is that IP address universal or specific to your case?

Please forgive my ignorance.

Yes.
127.0.0.1 is localhost - your local computer, so universal :)

OK, my report, as promised.

The ABC rollback to 0.16.1 did the trick!

I did have to rebuild the Armory DB.

I have added the lines to the bitcoin.conf file since, but that was not the issue in this case.   So, to summarize for the benefit of others.

>move all BTC out of any wallets you wish to claim BCH from

>back up your BTC blockchain, ABC uses the same default install paths (borderline malicious behavior IMO but there it is.

>back up your Armory DB

>install Bitcoin ABC v0.16.1 (https://download.bitcoinabc.org/0.16.1/), NOT v0.16.2 !  Allow it to fully sync.  Without an old pre-fork blockchain backup or some kind of pruned backup this will take a couple days at least.

>install Armory 0.96.3.922    RC3

>deal with your pathing (https://btcarmory.com/docs/pathing) to point your Armory bookmark to your new BCash blockchain

>Armory file  settings  uncheck "let Armory run Bitcoin Core/bitcoind in the background"

>close armory

>delete armory\databases

>verify Bitcoin ABC is running and fully synced

>launch Armory and let it build your new DB.  This will take some hours, be patient.  It may seem hung on 99% 2 seconds remaining or something like that for a loooong time, just let it run.

>when it is finally done it should show your expected BCH balances (you moved your BTC already right?) and report "connected" in purple in the lower right corner

>set Armory to "expert" mode   user   expert

>click "send bitcoins" and make up your transaction as usual remember to uncheck "enable RBF" in the lower right

>click through and SELECT THE BCH SIGNER AS DETAILED IN THE OP OF THIS THREAD!!!

>click to broadcast, that's it...worked for me

If I screwed any of this writeup let me know guys and I will edit

Thank you all so much for the help!!

Thank you very much.  I had exact same problem (ArmoryDB not connecting to bitcoinABC) and was struggling since months.  Could not figure out I had to downgrade to an older version, was quite doing the opposite (looking for the latest versions of everything).
Now I hope I can finally spend my BCH.

By the way as you asked how to improve your guide you may want to detail how to get the sources of the v0.16.1.0 version of bitcoinABC (I'm saying this because, differently than Armory which gives step by step instructions for this, I could find no similar instructions for bitcoinABC)..

good point

I found the binaries at https://download.bitcoinabc.org/0.16.1/

will link in above post

I wrote "sources"   :)   and also "v0.16.1.0" according your instructions  :)

What I did (within a script) was:

  git clone https://github.com/Bitcoin-ABC/bitcoin-abc.git
  cd bitcoin-abc
  TAG=v0.16.1
  git checkout $TAG
  git tag -v $TAG
  git submodule init
  git submodule update

It gave some errors, but overall it worked.
Please note I used "v0.16.1" instead of "v0.16.1.0" otherwise it didn't work at all.

Maybe the git experts here can suggest a better way to do it? Missing specific instructions for Bitcoin-ABC I used same script I use for Armory (just changed the TAG) but it appears the two repositories are setup differently...

I am at "POKER" cards (add your own entropy) seed thing ...before cash OUT for investments ...

waiting patiently, until blows up ... 

I don't think there are submodules in ABC's repo. At least there are none in Core, so ABC would have had to had to add submodules recently. It won't do anything to initialized submodules on a repo that has none, but I'd rather people know that this step has no effect. That aside, this is a acceptable procedure. Note that you can verify a tag without checking it out. It's actually preferable to first verify the signature on the tag then to check it out than otherwise.

Thank you for the clarification. So what would be the preferable procedure in case of Armory? According to the instructions here:
https://github.com/goatpig/BitcoinArmory/blob/master/linuxbuild/Linux_build_notes.md#ubuntu-build-instructions
it would be (quoting literally, just stripping the comments):

$ git clone https://github.com/goatpig/BitcoinArmory.git
$ cd BitcoinArmory
$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update
$ git checkout v0.96
$ git tag -v v0.96
$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update
$ ./autogen.sh
$ ./configure
$ make

I'd replace 0.96 with the latest version (0.96.3.992 as of right now) unless you have specific reasons for using specific versions, but yes, that should work. That said, unless you're just curious or have specific reasons for doing so, why build Armory?

Thanks to the advice in this thread I have finally gotten around to giving my Armory -> electron cash a try

After a 2 week wait due to a stuck transaction (my fault I think) my bitcoins are now safely confirmed in a new Armory wallet and am ready to export the old wallet keys to electron cash however....one/two last question/s.

Should I sweep or import the old wallet in to electron cash using one of the private key export types in Armory? (will sweeping prevent me claiming any other forked coins like bitcoin gold going forward?)

Any idea which of the private key types are needed?

More interested in the sweep vs import bit really though as I don't want to accidentally eat the golden goose :D

Grateful as always

PsyMan

As long as you had BTC on those private keys when "XYZ" fork happened, you will be able to claim "XYZ" coins, regardless of what you do with "ABC" or "LMNOP" coins ;)


You need the "Private Key (Plain Base58)" keys... These are also known as "WIF" (Wallet Import Format)... they should start with a "5", an "L" or a "K". I think Armory uses "uncompressed" keys... so they're most likely going to start with a "5".

I actually put a TAG=<whatever version> at the beginning, and then $TAG where needed.
What I wanted to know was:
- why the two lines "git submodule init" and  "git submodule update" are repeated twice in the instructions, isn't one time sufficient, and where is the best position to put them in the script
- previous post by goatpig seemed to suggest that the line: "git tag -v v0.96" goes before "git checkout v0.96" so I wanted to make certain, if recommended way is different from instructions on the web site, what is the suggested order of the instructions, and possibly remove the redundant ones

I thought you should never trust precompiled binaries and if you care about your coins, you should always build from source?

Thanks HCP

So I take it that means I can sweep the same ex BTC wallet in to multiple forked coins but just never use the wallet again for BTC

Much appreciated

The mud in the water is slowly clearing  :)

PsyMan

Oh no, it's fine! I just wanted to make sure you had an actual desire to compile and weren't just getting in over your head. I think the directions are fine as long as the correct tag is used. The git submodule thing, AFAIK, is more of an insurance policy whenever switching branches/tags. The FCGI code hasn't really changed since it was introduced but other submodules could change between versions if they're ever introduced.

copy 3 quotes by PeZ from Dec 20

<I always ran bitcoin-qt and Armory separately, and I don't mess with the Armory settings by using a shortcut...
"D:\Program Files (x86)\Armory\ArmoryQt.exe" --datadir="D:\ArmoryData" --satoshi-datadir="D:\BitcoinData"
I renamed the database folder in ArmoryData to database.old to save it.
Substitute Qt with DB if you are following the instructions.
You don't want Bitcoind running if you are following the first page instructions.>

<This is what I do/did. I had previously emptied my BTC from my main wallet. Some BCH got stuck as change when I transferred it away, so I installed Bitcoin ABC in a separate directory.Uncheck the box that lets Armory run bitcoin core. It will find it, if it is running - as long as your firewall is not blocking it.
Keep separate directories for Bitcoin ABC data and Bitcoin Core data and copy the Armory wallet to another directory, but remove the database directory for when you use it with Bitcoin ABC.
If you want to run Bitcoin, do it with a shortcut e.g.
"D:\Program Files\Bitcoin\bitcoin-qt.exe" -datadir="D:\BitcoinData" -disablewallet
When synced, run Armory with the shortcut that I mention in the previous post.
Follow the directions on the first page.
Not sure if this is the easiest method, but it worked. I am using Windoze, but other OS's should have something similar.>

<With both Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin ABC, I unchecked RBF, used 1 S/B fee and copied the Hex data and used http://blockdozer.com/insight/tx/send to submit the transaction. I don't know if it is required, but I would empty the wallet of BTC before messing with the BCH contents.

Yes, when you use Bitcoin ABC you would see the BCH contents, but my wallet was completely empty of BTC.?>

---

Then quote from JoJo69 from January 19

<OK, my report, as promised.

The ABC rollback to 0.16.1 did the trick!

I did have to rebuild the Armory DB.

I have added the lines to the bitcoin.conf file since, but that was not the issue in this case.   So, to summarize for the benefit of others.

>move all BTC out of any wallets you wish to claim BCH from

>back up your BTC blockchain, ABC uses the same default install paths (borderline malicious behavior IMO but there it is.

>back up your Armory DB

>install Bitcoin ABC v0.16.1, NOT v0.16.2 !  Allow it to fully sync.  Without an old pre-fork blockchain backup or some kind of pruned backup this will take a couple days at least.

>install Armory 0.96.3.922    RC3

>deal with your pathing to point your Armory bookmark to your new BCash blockchain

>Armory file  settings  uncheck "let Armory run Bitcoin Core/bitcoind in the background"

>close armory

>delete armory\databases

>verify Bitcoin ABC is running and fully synced

>launch Armory and let it build your new DB.  This will take some hours, be patient.  It may seem hung on 99% 2 seconds remaining or something like that for a loooong time, just let it run.

>when it is finally done it should show your expected BCH balances (you moved your BTC already right?) and report "connected" in purple in the lower right corner

>set Armory to "expert" mode   user   expert

>click "send bitcoins" and make up your transaction as usual remember to uncheck "enable RBF" in the lower right

>click through and SELECT THE BCH SIGNER AS DETAILED IN THE OP OF THIS THREAD!!!

>click to broadcast, that's it...worked for me

If I screwed any of this writeup let me know guys and I will edit

Thank you all so much for the help!!>



Then from January 21:

<I found the binaries at https://download.bitcoinabc.org/0.16.1/
will link in above post>

---



I recognize that much of my questions have been addressed in the prior discussions of this thread.
I have copied many of them above to hopefully have a relatively complete listing for my questions:


____

Thank you to all the developers for all your collective efforts over the past 6 months, and the continued development of this thread.

I continue wrapping my head through the various posts of this thread and continue to remain unclear.


One Win 10 x  64 desktop computer (with two hard drives) dedicated to Armory wallets
0.96.3992 with BC Core 0.15.1 all fully sync'd to the default locations on the C drive.

--- Based on the various questions and comments through this thread,
Is it necessary to install and sync an added 0.15.1 to the Data Drive?
or does one install and sync Bitcoin Unlimited or other database to the Data Drive?

Does it remain necessary to manually delete the database blocks
immediately below block 478559 from the newly installed database (on the 2nd Data Drive)?

Does one then redirect the Path of the existing 0.96.3992 (already on the C drive)
to address the the newly installed database on the data drive. Or, does one install
a new 0.96.3992 directly to the Data Drive (if so how does one distinguish between
each of their respective icons on the monitor screen)?   

----

signers will always be an off line laptop. 


Thank you all for the development of these work around procedures
and for your suggestions re my inquiries, as I desire to correctly and securely
effect this separation of BCH from the legacy BTC.

I think I get the essence of your question non geek.

First thing, I am assuming that you are now in this thread because you and your friend successfully accessed your wallets and moved the BTC.  Congratulations!  I know that was a bit of a struggle.

It is not necessary to install a second instance of Armory, you just need to point your existing install to a fully synced and running ABC or BU node with the arguments in your shortcut.

No, you do not install an added Core, yes you install a BCH node ABC or BU.

I was not comfortable myself performing the pruning on the chain to save time so I just let my ABC install download its whole chain so I can't help you there, it took almost 3 days I think.

A big thanks to all who helped me split my BCH, I ended up importing the private keys from my old Armory wallet in to a new blockchain.info wallet in the end and then sending to coinfloor to sell.

electron cash turned out to be a bit of a nightmare (wrong password issues when trying to send the BCH after importing the keys and stuck syncronising) using blockchain.info did mean importing the addresses/keys one by one but a bit of copy/paste gymnastics and it was all done.

I couldn't have done it without the advise in this thread so thanks all. I have learned more about wallets doing this than I ever did back in the mining days LOL

PsyMan

Not sure if its for any help, but I just want to say that after procrastinating for several months I finally accessed my BCH.
I want thank this thread for all help.

I chose to send BTC to new wallet.
Export the private keys (base58 i think?) and then delete all the text and spaces except for the keys starting with 5.
Electron cash wallet, where i chose wallet/p keys/sweep , and paste the list of private keys.
After that I had to send the BCH to one of the adresses on Electron wallet, allthough I could maybe have just sent them straight to the nano S.
Anyways installed BCH app in chrome and in ledger manager and after that sent the BCH from electron to an adress on the ledger nano s .

Waiting for confirmations at the moment but it do seem like it worked.
So glad this is finally done and now I just need decide what to actually do with the bch..

thanks for this.  seems like a potentially easier, more streamlined approach to claiming BCH.  as long as you send the BCH immediately to it's final destination, i guess.  let us know that it definitively worked!

I'm not having any luck importing Armory private keys into BitcoinABC. I picked some keys corresponding to addresses with no balance just to test that I could in fact import them into BitcoinABC, but it is returning an "invalid encoding" error. Supposedly, Bitcoin Core, and therefore BitcoinABC, requires WIF formatted private keys, which I thought these were. When exporting from my Armory wallet, I chose the "Plain Base58" option - is that not what WIF format is?

As I remember, there is a prefix ending with a : which you should manually remove.  Also, if there are spaces in the keys, they need to be removed.

There were no spaces and no ":" chars. All keys started with 5 and looked like I would expect for a base 58 encoding.

i'm having the same issue trying to claim BTG.  Base58 private key not accepted by Coinomi.  are the Base58 private keys in Armory in the WIF?

edit:  nvm, working

what was the issue alomar?

none, the Base58 keys translate perfectly fine in Coinomi.  i must've made a typo manually entering.  figured out how to copy/paste, which worked.  amazing how you can get typed errors even when it looks perfectly fine.

This... Spent a good 10 minutes yesterday getting JSON errors while trying to sign a transaction manually for someone who needed to "rescue" some tokens sent to a MultiSig address...

Took me that long, after checking it character by character FOUR times, to spot that I had "}]" written as "]}" ::)

Copy/paste FTW!

So. I have moved all my BTC off of my ARMORY wallet. I'm trying to extract the BCH from the ARMORY wallet. I'm using Trezor as my heart can't take anymore of this.  ;D

Should I 1st make an attempt of putting ARMORY into advanced mode and signing for the BCH.

Or should I download the BCH ABC wallet. Remove completely Bitcoin core including hidden files. Then install the BCH ABC and somehow point Armory to the ABC node?

you have to run Armory on top of a synced and running ABC node, review this thread some.

Do I have to remove the regular Bitcoin Core wallet first? When I try to install the ABC wallet it says data corrupted do you want to re synch? That means it's probably trying to use the BTC block chain?   

If you are feeling frisky enough, you can use a config file to place (access) the block chain (either of them) in a non-default location.

No, you don't need to remove Bitcoin Core. Bitcoin ABC (by design) attempts to usurp the data directories that Bitcoin Core uses... it was a crass attempt at "taking over" when BCH was first launched and seems to be getting worse.

When installing Bitcoin ABC, be VERY careful about where it attempts to install itself. By default, it will attempt to overwrite Bitcoin Core in the "Program Files\Bitcoin" directory... and also try to take over your Bitcoin data directory when you run it.

The latest version seems even MORE determined to do this... a fresh install of 0.16.2 does not even prompt you where your data directory should go, it just automatically tries to use the Bitcoin one defined in your registry, even if it is in a custom location!

I would recommend that you copy your Bitcoin Core "data" directory (the one with the wallet.dat and "blocks" folder) to a separate location, then delete all the blkxxxx.dat and revxxxx.dat files that are number 951 or HIGHER... and point Bitcoin ABC at this new data directory using the -datadir=path\to\new\folder commandline argument...

That should put it before the fork, and ready to sync up just the BCH portion of the chain.

I just want to keep things simple. I probably won't be using Bitcoin Core block chain in the future as I now am using a hardware wallet. All coins have been moved away from Armory and Bitcoin Core. So wouldn't it be simpler to just uninstall and delete all Bitcoin core and block chain. Then install a BCH ABC wallet and let it do whatever it wants? I don't really care how long it takes to re-download the block chain.    

can you elaborate?

yes, imo, this would be the much simpler way to do it.  if you try to work with a truncated chain terminating at the 8/1/17 fork date like the one HCP is recommending, this means that you have to go back and manually dig out every BTC tx you made when clearing/moving your BTC to Trezor and then construct separate BCH tx's using the same UTXO's in a like for like tx repeat if you will.  this is a pain and is the way i'm stuck doing it for now.  by my understanding, if you instead sync up an entirely new ABC chain on top of Armory, all your BCH will be on display in the GUI in an up to date fashion thus allowing you to harvest the entire BCH balance in a single tx.  at least, that's the way i understand it since i've never done it this way.  someone correct me if i'm wrong.

Yes this seems like the way to do it. Anyone else? I want to know before wasting any time spinning my wheels. And would it also help to first remove Armory also? That way Armory would maybe lock on to the ABC program?

NOTE: "Windows" locations used for convenience

Instead of installing to a "unique" location and using a "unique" data directory location (for example C:\Program Files\BitcoinABC and C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\BitcoinABC) like all the other "QT" clones do... The BitcoinCash devs deliberately setup the installers for Bitcoin ABC to install to the same default location that Bitcoin Core uses. Specifically C:\Program Files\Bitcoin and C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin.

The upshot of this, was that any user that wasn't paying attention, and was just clicking "next-next-next" through the installer and during first run, would end up overwriting their Bitcoin Core install with Bitcoin ABC... furthermore, Bitcoin ABC would "take over" the data directory (ie. Blocks and Chainstate folders etc)... which would effectively "corrupt" the blocks folder making it no longer work with Bitcoin Core... as "invalid" blocks (as far as BTC is concerned) were being added into Blocks folder etc.

The Bitcoin Cash camp were trying to be "THE" Bitcoin... instead of accepting their fate as an "altcoin". I suspect this was also why they only added "replay protection" at the 11th hour when it was obvious they were not going to succeed usurping Bitcoin.


If you work on a truncated chain and reindex with Bitcoin ABC and then let it finish syncing up to todays date... and then do a "Rebuild and Rescan Databases" in Armory... theoretically, that should really be the same as a complete resync/build using a "from scratch" Bitcoin ABC and Armory... But without needing Bitcoin ABC to sync up to 1st August 2017.

At the end of the day, either way should really work... and depending on your syncing speed, a truncated chain may only save a few hours or a day or two... If speed is not a concern, then a "clean" install is probably  less likely to cause you issues

I uninstalled Bitcoin Core and and then deleted Bitcoin hidden files. Installed (bitcoin-qt) Bitcoin ABC wallet. Now down loading the block chain. Should be done in 2 days. I guess I'll just turn on Armory when it's done downloading and hope it just works. If not I'll have to rebuild Armory?     

Yeah, you'll likely need to rebuild Armory... as the existing database it has built from Bitcoin blockchain will likely not line up with the Bitcoin Cash blockchain (ie. missing inputs/transactions etc) if you have transactions etc from AFTER the fork.

I'd still rebuild the Armory DB to be safe. I'm not intimately familiar with the DB code (yet) but I know the DB can go haywire if it thinks something is in a place where it actually isn't. I suppose the OP can try with what they have (assuming no post-fork Txes) but I wouldn't count on it working, and would rebuild to be safe.

(That said, I seem to recall a copy of the DB working when I dumped my Bcash coins at launch. Maybe I'm wrong!)

Well. My BCH ABC wallet is synchronized.

 I guess I'll just uninstall Armory. Delete hidden Armory files. Reinstall Armory. Restore online quick wallet with paper back up. Then go to the offline computer with thumb drive and get data from the offline wallet to the online transmitting computer.

Would it hurt to turn on Armory to see if I can do without all this?

I wonder if I can do this with Bitcoin Gold?        

I started up Armory without deleting just for kicks. It shows zero balances and node is offline. When it is fixed will it show a BCC balance?

I have my Armory node online by unchecking the "let Armory run Bitcoin Core in the background" box. Then restarting Armory after starting Bitcoin ABC. Still no balance. So I have to do some type of computer whiz kid trick Or just uninstall and rebuild my Armory Wallets.

Would Rebuild and Rescan Data Bases do it? Or should I completely nuke it?  

Oh. It's Friday night. Everyone is out having a big night watching "I Love Lucy" reruns.     Crickets............................           

I went to the Armory Help button/Rebuild and Rescan Data Base. Took a few hours and now I see the full balance of my wallets as they should be. So I guess I can now send the coins out of the wallet and be done with it.  ;D



As Jojo69 suggested I used bitcoin-abc-0.16.1-win64     :D

Good to see you managed to get it sorted...

Logically, rebuilding and rescanning was always likely to be the best option. Especially if you had made BTC transactions after the fork... That would confuse the hell out of Armory as it tried to use a database built on a different chain with transactions that don't exist on the current chain in use! :P

Just a shame the price of everything has dumped so much... :-\

Also, for future reference... Try the "edit" button instead of multi posting ;)

I've moved all the free BCH in both wallets today. I think this is the easiest way. Especially if you don't understand computer code.

And one more thing when doing an offline transaction. Don't forget to change your offline signing wallet to expert. If you don't the window to choose BCH won't come up.

The prices are low now. But when the next big one comes expect 18 times the value of the last little blip of $18,000 per BTC. I'll be glad I waited.    

May you sum up the procedure?

(1) First move all BTC coins off of your Armory wallets and Bitcoin Core wallet to a safe place. I'm using a hardware wallet that will hold both BTC, BCH and other altcoins.

(2) Uninstall  Bitcoin Core.

(3) Configure your computer to show hidden files (google methods for your particular computer). Delete all hidden Bitcoin Core hidden files and blockchain. Google or use youtube to find files if you don't know. Your looking for a folder labeled Bitcoin. Delete it.

Or. If you intend to use the Bitcoin Core wallet later. Why not cut and paste the hidden Bitcoin File to a large enough Thumb drive? Then you could put it back later and won't have to download the blockchain later. I just deleted mine. 

(4) Download bitcoin-abc-0.16.1 (Bitcoin-qt) for windows https://download.bitcoinabc.org/0.16.1/win/ (https://download.bitcoinabc.org/0.16.1/win/)

(5) Install and synchronize new ABC (bitcoin-qt). Could take several days. Not easy to find the wallet install in the downloaded folders. If you use a zip file you will have to extract the files. "Hint" Open the files with the most data in them.

(6) Open Armory and in "User" tab and set to "expert" in both online and offline computers.

(7)  Also in Armory (online computer) go to File/Settings and uncheck the box at the top of the page that says. "Let Armory run Bitcoin Core/bitcoind in the background".

(8) Shut down Armory and bitcoin-abc. Restart computer for the hell of it.

(9) Open up the new ABC wallet you previously synchronized. Wait until it is synchronized. Leave it on.

(10) Then open up Armory and let it synchronize.

(11)  Go to Help tab in Armory and select "Rebuild and Rescan Data Bases"

(12) You should be able to see the BCH balance in a few hours. To move the BCH you just follow the directions at   "the first post of this thread".    

Thank you very much for your reply!!

Yes. Bitcoin-abc. I fixed the error.

tried your method but it fails inside an Ubuntu VM.  Armory shows "Node Offline" but with the correct number of initial blocks as it must be seeing the previously running bitcoind.  i've unchecked the Setttings box that allows Armory to control bitcoind.  the background Armory Terminal  window shows "BDM is ready!" but no further blocks get appended to this window altho bitcoind is keeping up and appears to be running properly.  any help would be appreciated.

Do you have:
in the bitcoin.conf file in the Bitcoin-ABC data directory (ie. the directory with the wallet.dat)? It's also possible that the VM setup is causing the issue with Bitcoin-ABC being able to talk to bitcoind...

You did download the Linux version?

https://download.bitcoinabc.org/0.16.1/linux/

this is what i'm seeing.  the Armory GUI overlapping the terminal window.  blocks are up to date and continuously being successfully added  on the BCH chain (when i query bitcoin-cli getblockcount) yet no blocks are being recognized by Armory.

https://imgur.com/zjCRo3a

i should add that this BCH chain in the guest VM is on the same machine that holds the BTC chain on the host.  it could be some sort of socket interference, altho i'm not trying to run them at the same time.  i've been reading about TIME WAIT's binding the socket but i'm not sure.

i built from source.

I completely uninstalled the original Bitcoin wallet including hidden files. That way it can't interfere. I couldn't even cleanly install ABC without removing previous wallet.

If you don't want to delete the Bitcoin wallet. Why not cut and paste the Bitcoin hidden folder to a thumb drive until BCH is extracted? Then after extracting BCH, put the Bitcoin file back and reinstall the program. Then you won't have to download the block chain again and your settings will be saved.

It looks to me like you have to uninstall the Bitcoin Client and it's hidden folder. Then Reinstall ABC wallet. And you might have to re-download the ABC Block chain.  

Another thing you could try is to uninstall Armory. And delete the hidden Amory files also. Nuke it. Then restore Armory. If you're ABC wallet is working normal.  Then it is likely corrupted Armory data on your online computer. I originally was going to do that but decided to Scan and Rebuild the data base instead.  

successfully installed 0.96.4 but still get Node Offline error.  bitcoind updating blocks just fine.

Is your bitcoind installation configured to use:

in the bitcoin.conf file? (or using -server=1 -listen=1 from the commandline?) ???

In any case, you will probably need to post your logs for people to be able to troubleshoot further.

Somethings wrong with Armory then. As your ABC wallet is working. All I did was uncheck the box that says something like "Allow Armory to run Bitcoin-qt in the background".  That fixed the offline node error.  But I still had zero balance until I had Armory in the help menu "rescan and rebuild data base". Worst case scenario, you will have to restore your Armory wallets.

Another way to get the offline node error. Is to by accidentally, restore your offline wallet to your online machine with the paper backup. That had me spinning my wheels for a while.

a bitcoin.conf file is not required.  in any case, i did try adding it with those instructions but still Node Offline.

looking inside .bitcoin, the only differences i see btwn the contents of this BCH blockchain and my currently working BTC blockchain, both inside Ubuntu VM's on different machines, are two additional files inside the BTC blockchain; .cookie and bitcoind.pid.  anyone recognize those two and what they are?  are they critical to getting this Node Online?

@HCP:  there is no bitcoin.conf inside my working .bitcoin directory on my BTC blockchain.

Bump. BTG signer yet?  ;D

You can google them. I googled them a long time ago. Don't remember what they are. I just wanted to make sure they weren't some type of spyware and found them to be safe...

If you have the old BTC folder and blockchain still on your computer that is likely the reason you're having trouble. You probably have to nuke everything and re-install the ABC wallet. If that doesn't fix it. Nuke and restore Armory.

How do you launch the BTC "bitcoind"? ??? Are you using any commandline parameters?

The .cookie file is used for RPC Authentication... without it, you probably won't be able to connect to bitcoind via RPC. You might want to check some of the commandline options as specified here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Running_Bitcoin

I would think that, at the very least, -server would be required so that it accepts the RPC commands. It's also possible you're running into some weird behaviour with them in VMs relating to ports and networking...

i'm launching bitcoind different ways; either directly in CLI with "bitcoind" first, then launching Armory or launching bitcoind via letting Armory do it.  either way Node Offline.  bitcoind by itself will update when launched alone as assessed by "bitcoin-cli getblockcount".  like i said, my other instance of a VM based BTC blockchain works just fine on my other computer that doesn't have another blockchain on the host. so i know this setup runs inside a VM just fine.  that setup also does NOT have a bitcoin.conf file.  i also read somewhere that bitcoin.conf is not necessary.   this problematic computer does have the BTC blockchain on the host (which i don't run simultaneously of course).  i don't see how that could be interfering with BCH client communicating with Armory in the VM however.

as an aside, when i start up Armory with either bitcoind started by itself first or by letting Armory control it, the block count at bottom right in Armory shows the updated correct number.  it just won't advance beyond that both in the GUI and in the terminal (stuck at "BDM ready!").

It's not strictly necessary to have a bitcoin.conf file... but it's possible that things are not working correctly without the appropriate runtime arguments being passed to the daemon (like "server").


That's very similar to the issue I have on Windows 10 when I don't user -server and -listen parameters... it will sync up to whatever block bitcoind has at the time it starts, but doesn't seem to get new blocks :-\

would you be willing to share the entire contents of your bitcoin.conf?  like i said, i tried listing both server=1 and listen=1 as well as dummy rpcuser and rpcpassword parameters without success.

@HCP and @justmyname

this post here suggests the newer versions of ABC won't work with Armory.  what versions have you been successful in getting to work with Armory?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3353849.msg35175889#msg35175889

A few months after the first BCH release, I believe ABC changed magic word and port. This is why Armory cannot work with these nodes. Changing the node port is easy, as there's a command line argument in the DB for this purpose. However, magic words are hardcoded.

You'd have to modify the Armory source to use this other magic word only for the node then build yourself to get it to work with newer ABC versions.

i suspected this was the problem all along.

As one other and Jojo69 suggested I used bitcoin-abc-0.16.1-win64. And it worked just fine.

Maybe not with your operating system. 

there is an ABC hard fork coming up May 15 so you might want to get everything done before then.

So they're forking BCH also. Interesting.

I moved my BTC and BCH coins off of Armory. Their is only one developer left and we still don't have a BTG signer available. These coins are worth a significant amount of money. Sort of like a stock split or dividend.

Hardware wallets have software to separate the significant coins. You can have many different types coins on them without downloading the blockchain.

you shouldn't necessarily concerned.  ABC has made it clear from the beginning that they are planning hard forks q6mo as routine upgrades.  i don't necessarily agree with that but i believe their intentions to be good.  we'll see.  i agree that we should be able to harvest altcoins but i'm sure you'll get some sort of response like code it yourself.    i've heard goatpig is a hard core fundamentalist when it comes to BTC so don't be surprised if you don't get your wish.  good luck

I would certainly prefer goatpig work on Bitcoin features and keeping the wallet up to date with the Bitcoin ecosystem, along with bug fixes and general improvements, as opposed to wasting time adding support for every forked shitcoin that someone dreams up. Armory is a Bitcoin wallet, after all.

Besides, one is able to access their forked shitcoins with other methods if so desired.

BCH shitcoin is worth $1,239.39 each. Not much to you maybe. But I can sell them without touching the Bitcoin if I choose. I'll continue to take those shit coins.

I could export the keys somehow and get the coins that way. It might be interesting to learn how to do it.     

I don't care (beyond the fact that it gives Joe Q. Public the impression that the entire cryptocurrency space is a joke) if people continue to make forked shitcoins until the sun supernovas and consumes the earth. What I care about, in the context of the location of this thread in the Armory subforum, is the limited resource known as "goatpig's time" and how he spends that time while coding features and improvements for Armory - A Bitcoin wallet. ;)

If you want to petition goatpig on the importance of implementing every forked shitcoin from here until Ragnarök, however, don't let me dissuade you!

I guess it's a lot of work to make a signer?

I could download and install the BTG wallet and then simply import the keys from Armory? :P

Of course... you have access to your private keys within Armory and the forks have wallets that allow you to import keys.

Easy solution:
- Export keys from Armory
- Import keys into "ForkCoin"™ compatible wallet
- ???
- Profit

BCH and BTG both have "Electrum Forks" (Electron Cash and ElectrumG respectively) which make importing your keys and moving your fork coins ridiculously quick and easy... you don't need to download any blockchains and assuming you take the proper precautions (ie. moving coins from keys before importing into another wallet, in descending order of value) you don't really need to worry about the security of your coins.

Or you can continue attempting to connect Armory to "forked" blockchains which it has likely not been tested against and/or hope that goatpig finds time to create "signers" for various forks... ::)

this is NOT easy if you have thousands of keys.

A little scripting goes a long way, then.

Define "easy" then? ???

Also, with the Electrum forks you should only need to do the import once. From that point on, you should be able to get away with simply copying the the wallet files and opening the copy in the appropriate fork of Electrum and it should just work.

- Import keys into BTC Electrum (ensure all empty)
- Copy wallet file
- Open in Electron Cash (get BCH)
- Copy original wallet file
- Open in ElectrumG (get BTG)
- Rinse and repeat.

Of course, not all forks have released Electrum forks... but if you want your "free money" you're going to have to work for it :P


Note that without listen=1, I get the issue (using BitcoinQT) where it will say "node offline" or it will say "connected", but it won't update blocks... If I just use bitcoind, it seems to work OK.

However, for me, having listen=1 will ramp up the bandwidth usage quite dramatically though.

You can read about the various issues I've had with Armory and Win10 here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2783764.msg28460485#msg28460485
and an older (and quite possibly outdated) here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2200306.msg22126330#msg22126330)

 I don't have that many transactions. I guess I'll use the configuration in your post https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3274219.0

For each transaction I'll just copy the data to a thumb drive and label them transactions 1, 2, 3 etc. Then take them to the new BTG electrum wallet and import them. The offline wallet will be more difficult but it should be ok.    

i'm now able to get an active connection when i downgrade ABC to 0.16.1.  it will even connect from the VM when the host has an active BTC client connected!  so much for port conflicts.  turns out it probably is the network magic goatpig was talking about and how Armory won't connect to any ABC client newer than 0.16.1.  makes me worry about what will happen after the May 15 ABC hard fork when and if 0.16.1 won't be compatible...

I think they are trying to out do Bitcoin. Become the Bitcoin. where do you think is the best place to have your coins when they fork?  

i don't understand the question.

They had trouble with versions later than 0.16.1. That's the version I have in my directions. Now you should just have to  "Rebuild and Rescan Data Bases". Then you should see the coins in Armory.

What's considered "getting everything done"?

I agree that the amount of coins made is ridiculous. It's ok to fork Bitcoin once in a while if necessary. But not 5 times a year. Making too many coins using Bitcoins name to give them some form of legitimacy.   

One question. Do I need Bitcoin core connected to Armory in order to export keys to BTG electrum and get BTG? Or can I just use Armory with BCH ABC wallet?

My guess. I'll have to download the BTC blockchain yet again............ ::)

You don't need anything other than Armory to export keys. It doesn't matter if you have Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin ABC or Bitcoin Gold installed or not... you will still be able to export keys from Armory. The only caveat, is that if your Armory wallet is not "synced" it won't be able to tell which keys are "used"... so the default settings in the export will likely not show you all the keys you actually need.

The trick is to make sure that "Include Unused (Address Pool)" option is selected during export... this will show you ALL the pre-generated keys in Armory's keypool, regardless of whether or not Armory thinks they have been used and might have transaction history and/or coins.

Note that if you have had hundreds of transactions and used hundreds of addresses, this still might miss "used" keys out past the default keypool size... so if this situation applies to you, it is probably best to make sure your Armory wallet is properly synced (ie. connected to whatever blockchain you're attempting to use)


Same place you should always have your coins when there is a fork... in a secure wallet that provides access to private keys. It honestly doesn't matter how many times a coin is forked. If you have access to the private key(s), you'll have access to your coins.


Most likely making sure that you have moved any BCH that you're trying to get from your Armory keys into a BCH wallet (be it Bitcoin ABC or Electron Cash) that is going to be working post-Fork. Given that the Bitcoin ABC "magic" has changed... it is likely going to be difficult to get Armory talking to Bitcoin ABC... as evidenced by the issues that alomar has had.

As noted several times already, goatpig's focus for Armory is BTC... expecting there to be support for BCH in the future is likely to cause you issues down the line. So, moving your BCH now is likely to save you a lot of time and effort later.

So I've extracted BCH from Armory. Now I guess BTG would be next? Does it mater what order? Their are other coin forks like Bitcoin Private, Bitcoin Diamond?

And if you get a scam wallet you could lose your coins. :P They had a scam wallet on the official BTG site which stole over 3 million dollars in BTC. I guess moving your coins to a safe wallet before claiming new coins goes a long way to protect the coins you already have but not the ones that haven't been claimed from the keys.    

I don't think it really matters what order... personally, I'd do them in descending order of value... so most valuable first. That way, you lose the least amount if your keys are compromised during the process.

Remember, you should move each ForkCoin from the original keys to new seed/keys before claiming the next fork... as for whether or not you want to claim all the ShitCoins... that's up to you.

My first attempt was a failure and kind of spooks me. I downloaded this wallet. https://github.com/BTCGPU/electrum/releases/tag/3.2-beta  Is it safe source? When setting up the wallet it asked what type of wallet do you want? I chose import keys. Then I pasted the large amount of keys that I exported from Armory. This action set off my virus software that said my laptop camera was attempting to connect? :o So I let it block it.

And when exporting the keys from Armory. I chose to "save to file" It acted like it saved it but didn't give me an option of where it was saved. So maybe it's somewhere on my computer and my keys may be compromised. I don't think It would copy to clipboard either. So I just highlighted and 
 copied the addresses (except for the header at the top). Basically all the keys to that wallet. Tons of keys. I guessed I could just import all the keys and extract the BTG.  ???

That's the official github... no idea if it is "safe" or not...


Electrum has a QR-Code module in it that uses your webcam... quite possibly the wallet was just trying to initialise webcam functionality. Was this on Windows, MacOSX or Linux?


No idea... I've seen other users have similar issues where the "save to file" thing does nothing... I always get a "Save File..." dialog open up... maybe it's a permissions thing. Perhaps check the Armory log file for an error?



Yeah, you should be able to just copy/paste the keys from the export window to the ElectrumG import window... note that if you have literally hundreds of keys which you import all at once, this could make ElectrumG choke...

If you can identify which addresses actually had BTC at the fork... you could just import the keys that match those addresses... importing all of keys just saves a bit of hassle if you have BTC spread over a whole bunch of addresses.

It all depends on your situation...

No clue. I wouldn't touch it myself. If I absolutely insisted on collecting my coins, I'd either wait for the Armory patch (I don't think it's coming at this point, honestly, but who knows) or use this tool (https://github.com/jimmysong/hardforkhelp) from Jimmy Song, a former Armory developer. It's poorly documented but you should find some directions if you poke around on Jimmy's Twitter account (https://twitter.com/jimmysong). Anyway, IIRC, the tool helps you create valid transactions from keys you feed it, which can then be blasted out to the appropriate network. It may be more painful but, having worked with Jimmy and seen what he has done post-Armory, I'd trust him any day of the week over random devs airdropping coins with their wallets.

Thanks for the reply everyone.


I'm using Windows.

BTG had a wallet on their site that stole something like 3 million worth of Bitcoin. But that wallet has been removed. They might be responsible for it. If you understand code you should be able to tell if it's safe before adding it to your site.  

I guess I'll reinstall the wallet but install a "normal wallet" instead of an import key wallet. Then after it's installed, try importing the keys. I copied all the keys in the Armory wallet except for the top header.

Would it be better to set up a normal wallet with encryption and then import the keys into it?  

I guess you can just copy and paste the keys and it will know how much BTG you have?  

Coinomi is safe but you have to import one key at a time. The nice thing is it has Shapeshift and Changelly built right into the app for coin exchange.

From memory... the wallet wasn't hosted on their website... they had a LINK to the scam website (ie. mybtgwallet)... also:
In any case... why would anyone put their wallet seed into some random website for some random bitcoin fork??!? ??? People got greedy and in the race to claim "Free Money" they didn't take proper precautions and it cost them.


You can't import keys into a "normal" wallet when using Electrum (and Electrum forks)... it simply doesn't allow you to (to prevent the situation where you have keys in your seeded wallet that are not backed up by the seed). You could "sweep" the coins from the keys though.


I don't see how encrypting the wallet is going to help at all... unless you think that it might prevent your wallet from getting stolen? ???

This is the whole purpose of moving your Bitcoins to a completely new seed first... if your bitcoins are on completely different keys generated by a different seed, it doesn't matter if your old seed/keys get compromised, your BTC is safe... at worst, you lose some shitcoins.

Ok. Now I've figured out that I don't have to have the (not used addresses) which makes it 20 or so addresses. Started the Electrumg (import BTG keys) and copied them into the supplied area. But now only the back button is highlighted and I can't proceed?  ???    


My Bitcoin and BCH are long gone and moved into a wallet with a new seed. I'm sure the thieves would jump in any gutter to get BTG worth $76 each though. Plus Bitcoin Private Bitcoin Diamond etc etc etc.  

Alomar. Did you get your BCH yet? I don't use a computer cell phone though. 

Did you ensure that the keys you copy/pasted into ElectrumG do not have any spaces... and are just the "Private Key (Plain Base58)" keys?  No spaces (Omit spaces in key data)... One per line... like this:
https://talkimg.com/images/2023/11/15/zbU08.png

There should be no other text, or prefixes or " marks or anything like that

since you've already moved your BTC and BCH to a new seed, it's perfectly safe to now sweep the original private keys into a Coinomi phone wallet app to claim your BTG.  it's a great app but yeah, you have to trust their servers aren't grabbing your private key.  but that shouldn't matter in your case.  from within the app you also have direct exchange capacity with either Shapeshift or Changelly; which also has worked great.  i'm skeptical of all the fraud allegations against Changelly.  there are certainly TPTB actors out there trying to disrupt the business operations of legit exchanges.

Tha's probably it. All I did was copy and paste exactly how it is out of Armory. You put just the private key? Or both both private key and address? Which is which?

And after it's imported do I have to do something else or will I see the balance? 

just the privkeys, as he listed

Thanks! I think I have the balance displayed.  ;D

Update:

The Electrumg wallet works great. Moved all coins (including offline wallet) to hardware wallet. You just have to know exactly how to configure your Armory wallet to export the keys to note pad. Then you have to know exactly how to separate and organize the keys before importing them to Electrumg.     

Great success! ;D

I've found the best settings for exporting from Armory are:
https://talkimg.com/images/2023/11/15/zKDpP.png

NOTE: you only really need the "Included unused (Address pool)" option if your Armory is not properly synced (ie. restored wallet on machine without fully synced Bitcoin node etc)... or if you think you may still receive a payment to an address that has not received any coins in Armory already.

The output generated using those options will enable you to match private keys to addresses... so if you know which addresses hold coins etc, you can simply import the matching private key(s) for those addresses.

Wait. I'm lost with what you're trying to do by dumping your private keys into electrum?  Didn't you already move your BTC to a new seed?  And aren't you trying to claim BTG?

By importing the Armory private keys into electrumg I extracted the BTG. Yes, I first moved my BTC and BCH to a hardware wallet with a new seed, (just in case the wallet is a trap). And now I have moved the BTG into the same hardware wallet. The hardware wallet Supports BTC, BCH, and BTG.

And I also downloaded the Bitcoin Private Electrum 1.1.1 https://github.com/BTCPrivate/electrum-btcp/releases/ and extracted those coins also. Unfortunately my hardware wallet doesn't support BTCP at this time so I have just left the coins in my new BTCP Electrum wallet.

I have my pre fork Armory private keys organized into separate note pad files stored on a thumb drive. So I can quickly import the keys into other Bitcoin fork wallets, if I want. That way I don't have to go through the procedure in Armory and reorganize the keys for each new coin.

To get the free fork coins you have to download a wallet set up for  that particular coin that allows you to import the private keys.  

I used HPC's configuration for exporting coins, he partially shows in the post above. To get to that screen you have to go to "properties" for the highlighted wallet and then go to "back up wallet".    

Ah, OK. Hadn't noticed that little g at the end of electrumg. Didn't know they had a BTG tool.

And it looks like I could have saved a lot of time if I would have used  the Electron Cash wallet to extract the BCH.  :PWith this wallet you wouldn't have to download the blockchain. Once you have the Armory private keys exported and arranged  in a note pad file, you would have the coins in minutes.  If the wallet hasn't been tampered with. https://electroncash.org/#download

If by "they" you mean the "Electrum" devs... then NO, "they" don't have a BTG tool...

NONE of these Electrum "forks" are the work of, nor are they supported by, the Electrum Dev(s). They're mostly released by the devs (or supporters) of the fork coins. Also, they're prime targets for fake/scam clone wallets designed to steal seeds/keys/coins... Electron Cash had a lot of issues with scam clones to start. Be careful and make sure you're downloading "official" versions of wallets.


Fairly sure that is what I recommended here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2070058.msg35363497#msg35363497 ;)

In general, if you have NO interest in continuing to use any given Fork... using a light weight client (ie. some Electrum derivative, or Coinomi etc) is a much easier solution than attempting to get Armory to interface with the forked blockchain.

Granted, you need to make sure that your BTC has been moved first, but that's a relatively straightforward task (create, sign, broadcast transaction)... and generally much easier than attempting to sync a whole new blockchain.

Hi HCP

I am using Armory online ver. 0.95.1,and offline ver. 0.92.3,  Bitcoin Core version v0.13.2 (64-bit) on win10 notebook, that can run up to date. Do I just follow below your advice to

1. send out all btc, then
2. Export keys from offline Armory  (Plain Base58) Then
***********************************************
- Import keys into BTC Electrum (ensure all empty)
- Copy wallet file
- Open in Electron Cash (get BCH)
- Copy original wallet file
- Open in ElectrumG (get BTG)
- Rinse and repeat.
*************************************************

Please advice if there will not be working.

Thank you & Regards

If your goal is to get BCH and BTG, then yes, that method should work.

Just remember that the original Amory wallet should be considered compromised and no longer used. I'd suggest you keep the wallet backups though, just in case.

Anyway, when you send out the BTC in Step 1, you should either send to an Address in a completely different (new) Armory wallet, or an address in a completely wallet application.

Thank you very much for your reply  "HCP"

I got the Hardware Wallet, I will move btc , bch, btg.....to it. I will also keep all private keys and the wallet backups.

why do you need to go thru BTC Electrum first?  why not just import Armory private keys directly into Electron Cash and/or ElectrumG?

Just remember. First move your BTC to the new hardware wallet before exporting the keys. As you get new coins move them to the hardware or other wallets.

Copy your keys to windows notepad and put that in a safe offline place like a thumb drive. Then edit everything out except the used keys. One key stacked above the next. Then you can import them over and over into any coins wallet designed to except keys previously forked from Bitcoin.     

You can import your keys into any compatible wallet that allows it. Go to the most valuable coin first. After importing keys move the coins into another, hardware wallet etc. That has has it's own seed, keys.

A compromised wallet download. Device. Could steal your keys and get whatever is left in there.

It's not strictly necessary... But as "Peg" stated in this post:
It's a useful way to double check that you have successfully moved ALL your BTC before your import those keys into other wallets.

If Electrum (BTC) shows a non-zero balance, you missed some! ;)

It can also be necessary to actually use Electrum BTC to move your BTC in the case where you are restoring the Armory wallet (for whatever reason, computer crash, Bitcoin Core corrupted etc) and don't want to wait for Bitcoin Core (and/or) Armory to sync back up before moving your BTC.

Seems newer bitcoin cash nodes have stricter connection parameters to avoid getting connections from other chains and now armory can't connect anymore...

On the node I get Invalid message start.
Tested with newest ABC and BUcash

Their is a problem with the newer ABC wallets. It won't work with ARmory unless you use an older version like this. https://download.bitcoinabc.org/0.16.1/win/

My BCH Armory Wallet works better than when synched to the original BTC Core. 

I know that already, but on May 15th the old versions won't work anymore.
I tried also to remove the code from the main.cpp ( BUcash ) but then another check is triggered and it's still not working.
Don't want to mess much more in the code for now.

I guess I can get it to work by editing some code on ABC or BUcash but guess in the long Armory need to use the correct network magic for Bitcoin Cash, maybe some setting under the bitcoin settings to check that it is Bitcoin Cash?

"in the long?"... Don't bank on any further official support for BCH in Armory. Goatpig is unlikely to fix it if/when any hardforks break BCH usage - as I understand it, it has been provided as a courtesy to get the coins out, nothing more. If it does break on the 15th, you're probably limited to exporting keys at that point or forking Armory and fixing it yourself.

@goatpig

after May 15, it's my understanding we can still access BCH using the "trick" method you've outlined at the beginning of this thread (of pruning the core blocks after the 8/1/17 hard fork), isn't that correct?  afaict, broadcasting the BCH raw signatures using Blockdozer or any other BCH explorer as currently supplied using your method shouldn't be affected by the BCH change in network magic with the upcoming fork, correct?

Hi justmyname

I want to move my BTC.

What is the fee you set when you sent out BTC?  Do you follow this  site advice:  e.g.  set  transaction fee is currently 20 satoshis/byte ......   https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/


Does BCH wallet download from below link?
https://electroncash.org/

Does BTG wallet download from below link?
https://github.com/BTCGPU/electrum/releases/tag/3.2-beta

Thx.

The traffic isn't that high right now. Anything over a dollar in transaction fees will quickly send the Bitcoin. I think I spent under 5$ to send all my Crypto to my hardware wallet. Funds were in hardware wallet withing a minute. 



Looks legit to me but I'm not an expert coder. All you can do is do a search to find any bad sites that are known to have tampered wallets. Generally if you go to a coins official site the wallets are safe.   

Thank you very much for your reply!

For BCH,  Do I just simple sweep Private Key "(Plain Base58)keys" to get bch ?https://i.imgur.com/xJq9ZcR.jpg

You can either Sweep (which will create an onchain transaction that sends the BCH from the old "btc" addresses to new BCH addresses in your BCH wallet)... or you can Import the keys into a BCH wallet (use the "Import Bitcoin addresses or private keys" option when creating the wallet in ElectronCash).

It depends what you want to do... if you want to HODL your BCH, then Sweep is the better option as you're moving the coins from the "exposed" keys. If you're just wanting to dump the BCH... importing the keys and then just sending them to an Exchange is probably "cheaper" and faster (saves paying and waiting for the sweep transaction)

can't you just import your keys into an offline ElectronCash wallet as a cold wallet option for hodling?

I just simply imported (copy and pasted from a prepared note pad file) my "used" private keys, with no addresses. Stacked on top of each other. In Plain Base 58 format. Into the import electrum wallets. I've done BTG and BTP so far. No problems.  

I guess if you don't import your "unused keys" your Armory wallet is still secure (for future transactions)?  But if I every need to use Armory I will still make another wallet just in case.    

I don't know how to configure an "offline" ElectronCash wallet. It probably can be done. After extracting the coins you just send them to your hardware wallet. Wash repeat with next forked coin.

Or you can add a password to the ElectronCash wallet and keep the coins there until you figure out what to do with them.  

Yes, I want to dump the BCH,. Do I import private keys (Plain Base 58 format) from here


https://i.imgur.com/zm0Gynz.jpg


and then send to an Exchange?

If you think you have no malware or keyloggers and that there is no way for your keys to have been harvested... then yes, you could simply import them into an offline wallet to HODL. An even better option would be to simply do nothing at all. You don't need to "claim" BCH, there is no deadline. The coins already exist on the BCH blockchain and can only be moved with your private keys.

Barring a total collapse of BCH, in which case it doesn't matter where or what you did with the coins, "your" BCH are safely linked to your BTC keys and can stay that way until you wish to sell/exchange them etc.

If you just want to be able to "see" your BCH to make yourself feel rich, just create a BCH watching-only wallet using your BTC addresses :P


No... you have selected the wrong option in the "Install Wizard"... as I said, you need to select "Import Bitcoin Addresses or Private keys"... DO NOT select "Standard Wallet"
https://talkimg.com/images/2023/11/15/zKFL8.png


Select that option, copy/paste the "PlainBase58" private keys when prompted (1 per line):
https://talkimg.com/images/2023/11/15/zKNq3.png

Following that, ElectronCash will create the wallet, you'll see your BCH balance... you can then send to an Exchange.

I managed to get armory connected to the newest bitcoinABC version.

You need to remove 2 checks from the the net_processing.cpp:


Note that Bitcoin nodes will also connect to your node then.
Extra if statements that skip those checks only for armory would make more sense or add the net magic to armory on connection. ( {0xe3, 0xe1, 0xf3, 0xe8} )

The only thing you're doing here is uncommenting an actual comment. This won't build no matter what you try.

What I am guessing you're trying to do is to comment out the entire if branch. I would advise users not to do that, as their ABC node would be trying to process messages from actual Bitcoin nodes, which overwhelm BCH. Basically the equivalent of DDoSing yourself.

Instead, you can try to change the P2P magic word in Armory (there's no guarantee that change alone will be enough):

https://github.com/goatpig/BitcoinArmory/blob/master/cppForSwig/BlockUtils.cpp#L886


Should be changed to:

Yes, I commented that out ( Doesn't do much more than versions before as those hadn't those checks ).
And yes I wrote its not the best solution for the issue.
I'll try to edit the armory code and see if that will work as well.


Edit, that change alone isn't enough, armory won't connect to bitcoinABC.
I keep my dirty fix for now till i've more time to get deeper into the armory code.

Check your node log, should tell you why Armory is getting rejected.

Thank you HCP.

I imported Bitcoin Addresses to get all my bch in ElectronCash . Can I send eg. 0.01 bch to exchange for testing, once no any problem then send out all of them?

I greatly appreciate your valuable advice!!

Sure... why not? ???

Just be careful that you don't send less than any minimum deposit amount specified by the exchange you send to, as some exchanges/sites will just "eat" deposits under a minimum size (no refund etc).

Also, fees in BCH are really low due to large empty blocks, so you can generally send with minimum fee. :D

Let's try to distinguish between large block "limits" vs the reality of small economically determined block "sizes" of ~80kB today in BCH, please :D

Those "arguments" could've been used for Bitcoin as well some years back and was used "No one is using it I stay with "real" money"...

Could keep it non political in a technical thread as well.

So if I understand correctly, starting may 15th, you can't use armory on the BCH chain anymore?

Entirely depends on the span of the new HF. If it's just a block size increase and new opcodes, Armory should still "work" provided the network magic word part is fixed.

Honestly, it would probably take me a single day to deal with this stuff assuming all they did was to increase the block size. I don't do it because I refuse to give up development time for BCH.

Got it, thank you for your hard work! :)

It works if you just remove some checks for the network magic, those was only added in the last update, peers for other chains will still be banned so it could only lead initial to some more wrong connections from and to your node.

See:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2070058.msg37065819#msg37065819

For now I think its the best solution, its not the optimal solution but that way you could still use armory and also update armory without needing to edit or add own code.
You just need to make sure you remove the checks also in future updates on Bitcoin Cash. ( I assume the checks wont be updated much so should be easy to find and remove it in future versions as well ).

Thanks, the problem is, as stupid as it may sound, that I don't really know how to download the code and build it with the changes, it will probably take me 2-3 days to do just that.
I would have done that don't get me wrong but I think that this is a bad practice.
goatpig don't want to support BCH which is his right and I respect it.
So now for each new version of both armory and BCH you will have to find more and more workarounds to make it work which is really a bad practice.
Armory is for BTC.
I think it is best to just find another wallet for BCH. Any Ideas?

If you mean for getting a BCH wallet... then your choices are pretty much:

Full Node: Bitcoin ABC - Just be SUPER careful when installing and running it to make sure it doesn't overwrite all your Bitcoin Core install and data directory.
SPV: ElectronCash

I believe that it really comes down to want you want to access the BCH wallet for... HODLing or dumping? ???

If you just want to get BCH to dump it, I'd recommend that you get ElectronCash, export your private keys from Armory, import them into ElectronCash and then you can send them to whatever exchange you want very easily. If you want to hold, then, in the long term, it might be worth the effort to get BitcoinABC up and running and then sweep the private keys into your BitcoinABC wallet. ElectronCash could also be used longterm, but in that instance, you'd probably want to create a "seeded" wallet and then sweep your Armory private keys rather than importing them.

(NOTE: regardless of whether you want to import or sweep the keys, you should makes sure that you've moved all your BTC into a new Armory wallet prior to exporting the keys)

Trezor is a good choice also.

Trezor can hold BCH, BTC and BTG. It's a good idea to put an extra pass phrase on each Trezor account before sending coins to Trezor. That way even if someone gets your seed words list or device they still can't get the coins. You also want to make sure it hasn't been tampered with. Generate you're own seed words and number phrase.

I bought mine off Amazon but it may be better to buy direct from Manufacture. If the device comes with a seed word and number pass phrase the device has been tampered with you need to wipe it clean and generate a new seed word- pass phrase. 

Apparently, that's a bad idea. There's a way of figuring out that passphrases exist for a given Trezor seed, whereas if you don't use a passphrase, then it can be proved that you don't have any passphrased accounts pertaining to the same seed mnemonic.

Great, thank you all.

Assuming i didn't touch my BCH since it was created.

If I just want to send a BCH offline transaction (let's say to my new wallet), Can I broadcast it with an offline node?

You can:

1) Create the transaction with pre fork Bitcoin data (assuming you have air dropped BCH and never touched it).

2) Sign it however you want (offline included)

3) Use a BCH push service to broadcast from there (typically provided by block explorer websites).

Assuming magic bytes are only for finding nodes to connect to on the network (I believe that's so), and other hard fork changes in Bcash don't stop you spending in the old transaction formats (they've done something like 4 hard forks on the Bcash blockchain now, so who knows), then maybe alternatively:

3 b) Use your own Bcash software as your push service


This assumes you trust their software, and all the other assumptions at the start of this post.

The only advantage is that It could increase your privacy a little. Bear in mind that if you push a bunch of transactions to a website acting as BCH push service, then that website could easily collect some tasty data. If you push every output of BCH you own all that in the same browser session, it's reasonable for the website to assume that whoever pushed all the transactions also owns all the associated outputs being sent, and that's effectively deanonymising any corresponding outputs on the original Bitcoin blockchain (that also belong to you). Don't leak that information if you can avoid it!

can you expound upon this further?  afaik, using passphrases for Trezor specific accounts is considered best practice.  that's one.  two, how can an attacker figure out that passphrases exist for a given seed without you telling him?  and third, how can it be proved you don't have any passphrased accounts w/o you telling him?

I don't know what he's talking about either. You can even have diversion accounts with different passphrases and lower amounts of coins, to throw someone off.

From what I understand. Without an extra passphrase..... If someone got a copy of your 20 seed words they can get your coins. Or if they get the device they might be able to get the number phrase off of a chip in the device if they are a hardware engineer. Then they could log on to your device and move the coins. By then you would have probably moved the coins yourself as soon as you discovered your house had been ransacked. 

I believe he is talking about the fact that you have to explicitly turn passphrases on with the Trezor... it's in the settings:
https://talkimg.com/images/2023/11/15/z8KKa.png

Theoretically, if an attacker has your device (and PIN) and they plug your device in open up the Trezor wallet, they will be able to check this setting to see whether or not you have enabled the passphrase protection. It could potentially be a flag that you may have a hidden passphrase that you have not provided. Although, you could argue that you just switched it on to check it out, but never used that feature...

So, while it might indicate that you might have used passphrases, I wouldn't say that having the setting turned on was "conclusive proof" that you did.

I don't have much time atm else I would create a patch for either BitcoinABC or Armory.
I'm pretty sure that the BitcoinABC devs would include the patch if it only allows Armory to connect without the magic check.
Best practice would be probably if someone with time would fork armory and create and maintain a BCH version.
I don't expect or demand that Goatpig keeps supporting it.
It's also unlikely that the code for the magic checks will be changed in the future as it does what it should do, so on updates you probably only need to update the same file and comment out the same checks.

I know its not the best practice but its pretty quick and works for now.

This is the error message.


The endianess needs to be swapped.  When expressed as an uint32_t, the magic value for Bitcoin Cash is 0xe8f3e1e3 rather than 0xe3e1f3e8.

The updated version of your suggestion is as follows.

https://github.com/goatpig/BitcoinArmory/blob/master/cppForSwig/BlockUtils.cpp#L886


Should be changed to:


This connects properly which I tried it.  I also wiped the contents of the Armory db.  I don't know if that was required.

It looks like Bitcoin Cash clients have 2 magic patterns, one for the network and one for disk storage.  This means that even without any changes, Armory will sync with the blocks stored on the disk.  It just doesn't do online updates (or broadcasts), since it can still read the files on the disk.

Thanks, good to know.


What an ugly hack. I don't think wiping the DB is necessary in that light, but I'd say it's preferable (unless you don't have the BCH chain and are just using the BTC one). I'm considering adding an option to stop DB scanning at a user defined height (to scan up to pre fork height without the need to mess with blockchain data).

Question:

I have a back up seed for my armory wallet, there is no BTC in it, but there is some Bitcoin Cash there. (prefork wallet, and I moved my BTC from there last december).
I have not updated bitcoin core nor my armory wallet since there.
Now armory doesnt event start.

so my question is, since I want to get my BCH from that prefork address, and I dont want to be forced to synchronize bitcoin core, -
- can I use the Root Key (from my Paper Backup for Armory Wallet that I printed out initially)
in some application/program to recover my private key?

Or I do HAVE to install armory wallet and recover it there?

thanks in advance.

You can export keys in offline mode, no need to sync with the network for that.

You HAVE to install Armory.

Armory "Root Keys" are proprietary and, as far as I am aware, only work with Armory... there are no other applications that use or can read this format to regenerate a wallet/keys/addresses. However, as mentioned above, you can install Armory (without Bitcoin Core installed and/or synced) and export the private keys... refer here, where the answer to your previous question regarding this was answered ;) : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3274219.msg34442580#msg34442580

I don't think the method is actually 'proprietary'.  That would mean that nobody else was allowed to use their method.


Right, but that is only because nobody uses the Armory method.  They could if they wanted.

Instead they use the standard (BIP-32) hierarchical key generation method.

Armory would probably have used BIP-32 as well, but was developed before BIP-32 was created.

Armory's wallet design was based on BIP32 in an early stage of it's evolution, I believe. But BIP32 changed after the fact, and then took a while to get adopted by wallet software.

AFAIK, Armory introduced hierarchical deterministic wallets to the ecosystem. This in turn inspired BIP32 which improved the design while standardizing the feature.

Right, in those days Alan Reiner/etotheipi was pretty active on bitcoin dev mailing lists and places like that, and I'm pretty sure he discussed the ideas with everyone. Was it actually Alan's idea to begin with? I can't remember that exactly.

Alan definitely just went ahead and implemented his design, whereas other wallets took a long time to follow.