if you have the private keys in bitcoin core you can just use that. or you can create a new electrum wallet with those keys:

https://bitcoinelectrum.com/importing-your-private-keys-into-electrum/

just because you can store 256 versions/address types doesn't mean you have to use all of them today. you can use the ones you need to and leave the rest for future expansion. or use a smaller number of bits for the version/address type like 4 or 6 bits.

electrum actually uses a system where the first 4 bits tell you how long the version number is. it's very flexible and perhaps overkill.


what's the advantage of doing bitwise operations like these on the version bits? seems like a poor use of space to me.

a single byte would allow for 256 different address types (2^8).

note you export not save. save will save it to the wallet file.

TIL! I thought it was an electrum only concoction.

instead of restoring from seed you should have just opened your old wallet file. it's located at https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/faq.html#where-is-my-wallet-file-located

yprv,zprv etc. are electrum inventions. they indicate the type of addresses to generate.

https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/master/RELEASE-NOTES#L535

other wallets may or may not support them. there is no bip.

no. also when we talk about spending bitcoin we say we sign transactions not messages. messages implies arbitrary content.


the master public key (xpub or mpk) can generate all public keys. an address is the hash of the public key. it's not a portion of the public key. an xpub can also be used to generate addresses. it cannot be used to derive private keys.

to spend bitcoin you need the private keys. the address is not required because it can be derived from the public key which can be derived from the private key.

note there is also such a thing as a master private key which lets you derive all private and public  keys and corresponding addresses. it begins with ?prv where ? is either x,y, Y or Z, or z depending on the type of address you want to generate.

in the case of a deterministic wallet like electrum the relationship is as follows:

seed > master private key > address specific key pairs and addresses.

alternatively: seed > master private key > master public key > public keys and addresses

so if you have the seed you can derive the entire wallet.

it requests fee estimates from the server it's connected to. looks like it's not getting those.

have you tried switching servers? you have to right click on a server in the list and choose use server. also you may want to uncheck select server automatically.

yes i know what you wrote in the OP. my advice was based on that.

each HW has a separate plugin and i believe they are maintained by different people. if you do this you may face issues.


btw 3 of 5 means any 3 out of the 5 cosigners. you can't say 2 HW and one phone. that feature isn't there in electrum.

see here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAC

in electrum it's being used as a fancy hash function. the message is the seed mnemonic and the key is simply the string "seed version" in byte form.

such complicated setups are way overkill. while you won't get hacked you may face issues because of bugs in the software. but hey if you are willing to put up with such things then go for it. be sure to report the bugs and hopefully that will make electrum more robust!

it's outputting the following when using the functions in electrum:


so it's a valid segwit seed.

do you even own any bitcoin?

This is incorrect. Electrum does not use bloom filters. You're thinking of bitcoinj clients like multibit, Schildbach wallet and so on.

In the past Electrum used to reveal the addresses as is. Now electrum servers index the blockchain on the basis of hashes of addresses and that's what the client uses to query the servers. Those electrum servers could just as easily add a second index to their DBs with the preimage, that is the addresses themselves, and when the queries come in they can log what addresses are associated with what IPs. So bottom line the servers see all your addresses (up to the gap limit) and know they belong to the same wallet. They don't see your xpub.


@pomo99 Some reasons I can think of are a) Tor connectivity is less reliable than using your native internet connection b) you have to run a tor proxy. not everyone has one installed so this raises the barrier to entry because your forcing non technical users to install more software c) electrum is a lite client designed for ease of use. hardcore users are better served running their own full node using bitcoin core.

If the address where coins were sent is not a part of your wallet then obviously you don't have the private key for it and can't spend those coins. Did you by chance purchase this wallet.dat file from someone else? There are scammer that try to pass these off as worth something.

how about you let bitcoin core sync and it'll tell you whether you have any money in that wallet or not

people reuse addresses. they receive multiple outputs to the same address. you can spend some or all of those outputs in a transaction. if you only spend some then obviously there are still unspent outputs left under the control of that address' private key.

wallets these days don't usually do this. for privacy reasons they will always spend all the utxos sent to an address.

note you shouldn't be running electrum as root

@thx9527: I don't think you understand how utxos work. If you send multiple utxos to an address they don't get combined together. You can spend some of them and not others.