Not a bad post but this would do better at least in the Politics & Society.
The Meta board is majorly about forum developments, appeals, and feedback from people about the new changes.
So if you can just press the move button for a better discussion there.

Some people don't know much about sweeping and importing and when to either import or export their private keys. So I just decided to make a topic with a simple explanation of what these two procedures are and under what circumstances one could attempt to do one over the other.

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Importing a private key from an already existing Online or software or paper wallet to another software wallet such as Electrum, Armory, Mycelium or Coinomi implies that you are moving that private key into the new wallet's existing collection of keys.
In this case, If any coins were in the address before you imported its private keys, they will be visible and accessible from both the old wallet from which the keys were exported from and the new wallet to which the keys have been imported.
After importing, the new software wallet will be like a replica or copy of your original wallet.

PROS
    • It's quick, the whole process of exporting and importing the wallet can be done in a very short time if one knows what they are doing.
    • No fees needed at all as it does not involve any form of transaction.

CONS
    • If the original paper wallets private keys get compromised or if someone else ever has a copy of the paper wallet's Private keys, It means s/he can still be able to spend your coins even after importing them to a new wallet.
    • It distorts your new wallet backup especially with Deterministic wallets (wallets where seed phrases are used for restoring the addresses in them such as electrum). This means after every private key import you make, you will need to redo a backup procedure.

CAUTION⚠️
Once you have imported a private key of your paper wallet to the new software wallet, It's very important you make an immediate backup even if you don't plan to use the new software wallet/hot wallet for a long time.

This is because if you make a bitcoin transaction, even for a small amount, the whole bitcoin amount will be spent and the change will be sent back to your wallet but to one of the new addresses in it and not your original paper wallet address that you imported.
i.e. You have imported a private key of your paper wallet that has some bitcoins say 10 BTC to a new software wallet. Afterwards you then do online shopping and decide to spend 2 BTC. What you have to note is that even if you want to spend only 2 BTC, the entire amount of 10 BTC in your address will be spent during the bitcoin transaction and the change (in this case 8 BTC) will be sent back to a new address which has a different PK but in the same wallet.

This will make the original address(Paper wallet) empty. Therefore, if you delete the software wallet (hot wallet) without backing it up. It means you lose all your BTC that was sent to the new address as you will have no other way of recovering the wallet.

SOLUTION TO AVOID LOSING COINS
- Back up the new wallet as soon as you are done importing.
- Resend the change back to paper wallet address before deleting the software wallet (but in this case your privacy will be compromised). Sending it to a new paper wallet address is very advisable.

Note: This caution should be taken into very serious consideration if you are going to make transactions from your new software wallet and plan to use the paper wallet storage method afterwards or you risk losing your bitcoins.


When sweeping a paper wallet or private keys to a software wallet, you are essentially creating a new transaction to a new public address which empties your original wallet i.e. paper wallet.
This means after the sweeping process, your coins will be sent to a new public address of your software wallet which will now have a new private key that is stored in an encrypted form on your device.

As it is like making a transaction on the blockchain to a new address, a relevant transaction fee will be deducted from your whole balance and rest of the amount sent to your new wallet.
Also, unlike in the case of importing, after a sweep, your coins will be accessible and visible only from the new software wallet to which you have swept your private keys

PROS
    • Your new wallet's Recovery seeds won’t be broken due to the sweeping procedure meaning you can easily recover your wallet using the seed phrases you used for creating it without any issues.
    • It’s safer in case your original paper wallet gets compromised. New wallet address after sweeping means at that time you will be the only one who knows your private keys.

CONS
    • You will need to cover a transaction fee in order to carry out the procedure.
    • You have to wait for the transactions to get confirmed in order to have the whole process completed… Could be slow according to network congestion and fees.
      

    • It’s very important you import your private keys ONLY when nobody else knows them apart from you.
    • If you ever have even any single feeling that your Private keys could have leaked or someone could be having a copy of them. The best thing to do is to sweep your wallet.
    • You can also sweep your private keys if you want to take all your coins to a new address and destroy the paper wallet.
    • Also, it’s important to note that if you used to receive periodic payments on your old paper wallet before you did the sweeping, payments will still continue going into the old address and not the new wallet address. This means you will either have to manually keep re-sending the coins to the new wallet or simply change the periodic payment details to your new wallet's public address. In-case your private key has never been compromised. Importing your wallet is the most reasonable thing to do here.


Sweeping and sending are actually the same thing, The only small difference is that with sweeping, you are looking at making a transaction which may sometimes involve lots of small inputs.
This is because certain wallets generate so many addresses for security and privacy purposes so that your transactions and expenditure cannot be easily tracked. So in this case, as time goes on your different address could have different small unspent coins(balances). Sending them to your new wallet address could prove challenging and even impossible but with sweeping, you could easily send all your small unspent coins to a new address with less hustle.


    • Ledger Nano S
    • Trezor
    • Exodus
    • Bitcoin Core
    • Electrum
    • Jaxx’s Chrome Extension
    • Mycelium
    • Coinomi
    • MyEtherWallet
    • MetaMask
    • Coinomi
    • Mycelium
    • Armory

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UPDATE
* Caution section added thanks to LoyceV
* Russian Translation by madnessteat ➖ Импopт или cвипинг пpивaтныx ключeй
* Indonesian Translation by ryzaadit ➖ [EDUKASI] Importing Private Key vs Sweeping Private Key | Mana yang lebih baik?
* Nigerian (Naija) Translation by Chilwell ➖ Importing Vs Sweeping Private Keys; Wetin you need to know.


Any other possible additions and suggestions are welcome,
Thank you.
- Private Keys: Import vs. Sweep
- Highlighting The Difference Between Sweeping & Importing Private Keys
- Sweep VS Send?
- Bitcoin Wiki

It's a great thing to do uplifting Newbies but it would really be nice if you could look around the forum and give merit to a couple of merit worthy newbie posts.

Imagine each one of us here who had merit just created a merit giveaway thread. What would the forum look like?
Would you love to log in each day and see each board with over 10 merit give away threads?

People would even stop on focused discussions on bitcoin and cryptos and would only switch the focus merits and merit threads which is not the sole purpose of this forum.
Take merits as something like retweets/likes. You get something you like, you Retweet/like it. You get something you dislike, you ignore.

Am helping quote this whole post so that we would be able to see all the illustrations.


It really depends on the situation, Someone could just be in specific need of sending Bitcoins somewhere and not an altcoin.
For example, I would be in need of sending some bitcoins to my localbitcoins account, this renders using XMR or any other altcoin invalid.

It doesn't matter, that particular post already had a link to it. If people were to be banned based on these criteria then we would have way so many people getting banned here including me.
What got him banned must have been another post

You really can't make such a conclusion basing on the bear market. If you wanted to off load them,  you should have done it a long time ago... Maybe last year in January or Feb.
selling them off would be meaningless after waiting that long.

Am just basing on the fact that I have seen other users from other countries also ask for a board but have not been granted any on my assumption that I could be due to local activity.
But keep trying, you never know what admin has in mind.

What matters is to know when to get in and when to get out. Imagine people who bought BTC at around 5K, held it through the time it reached 20K up to the time it's now 3.5K... To me, I see this kind of thing poor planning. Have your target and once you hit it, don't be so greedy, cash out and live to trade another day

Thank you @TryNinja. I think that will help. Will give an update of my progress, whether successful or not

These telegram signal groups remind me those olden days when sports betting was at its peak in my country. There would be so many "VIP paid fixed match" groups and oooh boy... people got scammed left to right, top to bottom.

Never trust such groups... those 200 members could even be bots just to make you believe it's real. If you are not smart, you get scammed.

This is the problem with speculation. One just sits there and starts imagining a scenario that he can create which he thinks can lead to the drop of BTC and boom, hits youtube and blogging sites claiming how BTC is going to drop in the next coming month all in the name of trying to boost website traffic and views.

I think post activity by Georgians also matters when deciding to open up a board for a given language... but if the activity is way too low, chances of getting aboard of your own may be too slim.
You don't to have a board where you can see  just only 2 posts a week
Anyways, hope your wishes get granted.

This is really so laughable. These scammers are a very big joke.

Otherwise kudos for the good job you are doing to fight scammers. Without you and ICOEthics, lots of innocent forum users and ICO investor would have lost their money.

Do we have a procedure for Linux users? or this is only possible for those who have only Windows OS?
Otherwise great effort you put up there to simplify the whole process. I could make one if I get to use windows soon.

Then perhaps it won't help the price to go down too  , Just kidding.
I think binance has enough volume of traders that all this remain normal. It's just a few individuals that will be trading OTC and although their volumes of BTC might be so big, It still won't stop ordinary traders from doing their normal trades.

I suggest you with the main cryptos... but of course, those ones that are mostly blockchain payment solutions unless like BTC, LTC, DASH etc. If you are planning to sell online games and something like that too on the platform, then cryptos like EOS and TRX can come in.

Looks so profitable at the moment if you make a breakthrough. advertising is so important among other things like creativity and uniqueness.

Be very ready for competition. Try and check out EOS Dapps, so many gaming and gambling dapps in there but most of them have collapsed due to the increasing competition and the current never-ending bear market.

Just give up already and move on mate, The forum has a zero tolerance on mostly plagiarism. if you are caught... there is no chance of coming back. I have seen even Legendary accounts that have spent years here getting banned and never getting unbanned.

Before you start off, I advise you first learn the basics about bitcoin;
- wallets
- security measures you can take up to protect your funds.
- Different Bitcoin exchanges
- Good trading practices

Bitcoin Wiki is a very good place to start from.