OK, got Bitcoin Cash Node synced.

So I think my next steps are...

1. Buy BCH and eCash dust from you.
2. This gets sent to... my original addresses? An unused address in my existing wallet?
3. Sync Bitcoin Cash Node once dust has verified on blockchain. Take offline.
4. dumpwallet in my original offline BTC wallet
5. importwallet this file into new offline Bitcoin Cash Node.
6. Let it verify, hope all BCH shows up as available back to 2010.
7. Send to Ledger BCH wallet by creating transaction on Bitcoin Cash Node with my 3 UTXOs plus a dust address.
8. Broadcast this transaction using https://blockchair.com/broadcast

All being well, repeat this process with https://www.bitcoinabc.org/ for eCash.

Thanks again LoyceV.

If I can buy dust for BCH and eCash, transfer them away to new wallets inc dust, then would BCH and eCash be safe? I.e. if I then moved BSV without dust, what would the risk be?

Yes, values going up has prompted me!

I'm looking at Changelly or similar to swap some of the low cap coins. Selling options particularly restricted to me in the UK these days. Will do in small chunks of course.

I did read your send-to-pubkey post, that makes sense. If I have the signed transaction from my offline BCH wallet, can I then broadcast it from https://blockchair.com/broadcast (selecting BCH network) as I did with the BTC process?

I'll set up and sync https://bitcoincashnode.org/en/download.html on a new Ubuntu installation, checking sigs of course. Guess that'll take a while.

Thanks LoyceV.

All BTC were sent to my Ledger using your advice in the May thread, most sold in June.

SSD with the original wallet in offline Bitcoin Core was then unplugged after I made some encrypted backups of wallet files.

Left in my safe til just now - I removed LAN cable (no wifi card on my desktop PC - definitely remains cold wallet!), plugged in SSD on its own and confirmed it still boots fine and Bitcoin Core as I left it.

All my BCH addresses on blockchain.com say they are CashAddr (P2PKH) format.

That's all really!

Hi LoyceV , thought I should try and sort this out. Haven't really used any Electrum client before so first I am familiarising my self with ElectronCash (v 4.4.0) for BCH.

I haven't touched my private keys yet - still on a SSD in my safe!

My plan was to buy some fork coin dust from you and work my way through the offline signing process, but not sure what I'm missing here with ElectronCash:

I checked my original 3 coin addresses on blockchain.com under https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/bch/q[longstrings] which show expected balances and transactions (mined x2, faucet x1, dust in 2021).

I made a watch wallet in Electron Cash using those public addresses. The faucet address shows expected balance but the mined addresses only show the dust balances from 2021.

Meanwhile am syncing https://bitcoincashnode.org/en/download.html on another installation, should that be needed.

Thanks for reading.

Thanks for the reply LoyceV!

I have my 3 original transactions from 2010 - at blockchain.com they all go to addresses labelled Base58 (P2PKH) so I guess that's OK?

Hi LoyceV, re your process:



Can I just check these are the right core clients for each:
BCH: https://bitcoincashnode.org/en/download.html
XEC: https://download.bitcoinabc.org/latest/
BTG: https://bitcoingold.org/downloads/
BCD: https://www.bitcoindiamond.org/download/

BTW, it looks like BCH and BTG can be sent to a Ledger wallet once set up for those coins, but not XEC or BCD - https://www.ledger.com/supported-crypto-assets

Thanks!

Yes, fear not, I have snapshots from various points, with forkcoins in mind and now any potential tax evidence issues. I'll return to forkcoins at some point.

My current measures protect pretty well from burglary but I need a better option for fire - that's a priority.


Oh I am not an extravagant person at all! Honestly, right now I am mostly excited about going to part time work (I like my job, and going part time would not be unusual in my organisation, so would not attract too much unwanted attention). But wow, to have time to Do Other Things! For life is short.



Yes, will give this plenty of thought and keep a chunk I'm sure.

The thing that is going to make my family laugh (when I tell them about all this - nobody knows yet!) is that my annoying habits of geeky tinkering and mild hoarding (including old data and backups!) has finally yielded results!

Done! Thank you!

That was quite scary awaiting confirmations and for balance to be reflected on Ledger Live, but all done.

I left the dust (a few of 0.00000547 BTC) in old wallet.

Will do more backups now.

Will sort thank you tips at some point - am working right now!

btctaipei - per previous suggestions, I loaded old wallet in offline Bitcoin Core, got a receive address from Ledger (on another online PC), copied via USB stick to offline PC, sent this in offline Bitcoin Core, copied raw transaction string back to the online PC, broadcast it via blockhair's Tor address. Repeated for each UTXO.

Thanks LoyceV - so in coin control I have 3 sizeable inputs and 3 tiny ones (I think dust from a few years ago).

So I should do a transaction for each of the three main inputs to a different Ledger receive address (ignore the dust)?

I have been checking the receive addresses in the Ledger device as you advise.

Thanks again!

OK, good point on testing send from Ledger - did so and it worked fine.

Should I send the rest in one go or divide into say 5-10 transactions? I know that will be more hassle and a bit more transaction cost but is it worth it in case of some unforeseen problem?

And should I leave 'Deduct fee from transaction amount' unchecked when sending from Bitcoin Core?

Have a specialist advisor company in mind that have many good reviews in my country (but will do more research on them),

Thank you!

OK, thanks both.

My test transaction has been confirmed >10x now, so I have more confidence in what I'm doing with this bit at least.

Planning to move the rest within 24h then get some specialist advice on tax, exchanging for fiat etc.

What is the forum policy / etiquette on tipping to say thanks?

Thanks again nc50lc

I took the plunge and made a small transfer to Ledger via blockhair on Tor - received OK

Blockchair gave warnings on privacy re:
 - matched addresses identified
 - round value
 - output value x1000 (I guess Bitcoin Core had to use a large UTXO)
 - discrepancy: no output of the same type as inputs

Anything I need to be concerned about here?

Hello, thanks for your replies once again.

I will keep making multiple dated wallet backups for disaster and tax/bank query purposes!

Ledger device received and set up. Recovery words secured on paper (though I may get a metal backup version).

Tor Browser set up as it looks like copying the raw transactions from my offline Bitcoin Core and broadcasting would be simple and secure enough.

I see Blockchair have an onion address for this (taken from the footer of their site): http://blkchairbknpn73cfjhevhla7rkp4ed5gg2knctvv7it4lioy22defid.onion/broadcast

I checked the getwalletinfo again, it's definitely my imported wallet that has keypool=1000, the empty wallet I created has keypool=0

So I now have to sleep then work, but next I plan to send say 10 mBTC to my Ledger wallet this way to test things out.

When I get to transferring the rest to Ledger, is there any point in keeping some BTC in my imported Bitcoin Core?

Thanks for reading, and for your patience. I don't want to mess anything up by not having a good enough grasp on things.

Thanks again for the replies.

Ledger Nano arrived today but will tackle that tomorrow. Not wise to try it while tired and slightly drunk 

My plan is to move everything from old wallet in offline Bitcoin Core to Ledger, then once all that's confirmed on the blockchain I guess the old wallet becomes redundant?

getwalletinfo for my old wallet returns: walletversion=10500,  format=bdb,  txcount=6, keypoolsize=1000

I was not aware of the change address mechanism, so please help me clarify:
 - small (test amounts) outgoing transactions from my old wallet will use a change address from my keypool
 - Bitcoin Core is offline so won't know about change returned
 - I presume that once I sort my Ledger Wallet, the blockchain will link all change transactions to it?

I will make multiple backups as I go, but I suppose my anxiety is that because my old wallet is offline and I am try to move all to Ledger, that my change will disappear into the aether (as I don't fully understand change address mechanisms)...

Hello all,

While I await the Ledger Nano, thinking ahead...

My plan is to transfer BTC from my offline Bitcoin Core to a Ledger wallet, using the method outlined by nc50lc above involving a new online Bitcoin Core, to broadcast my offline transactions.

I have a Raspberry Pi 4 with 8gb ram which could do this, using a fresh Ubuntu install. Can I copy the blockchain files (not wallet!) from my offline installation of Bitcoin core to save me some time? That way it would only have a few days worth of blockhain to update.

Would I be wise to run this over Tor or is that overcomplicating it?

Is there any point in doing an upgradewallet with my original wallet in the offline Bitcoin Core?

Finally, once Ledger set up, is there any risk/implications in transferring a test amount (like 1 to 10 mBTC) so I can get the hang of things?

Thanks again all.

Well.

Bit of an emotional rollercoaster here.

Thanks again for all advice! Sorry for confusion re forks, spent best part of a day unspending all the purchases I had made in my head.

Will ignore PMs, none so far. I am a noob but I can learn.

Will get tax advisor! (words I thought I'd never say).

Going to do some more, careful backups. Back later!

Hang on LoyceV, are you saying I have xxx BTC actually for real? And then derived amounts from forkcoins in addition to that?

My first reading of your reply was that the xxx BTC had been 'diluted' by the forking, but I would be happy to have misread that...

OK, in the Bitcoin Core console I rescanned my wallet imported as described above (call it 2010-first) - no change.

Then I used the 'recover wallet' option in the GUI on another backup copy of the original wallet.dat, which led to another wallet being created in Bitcoin Core which I called 2010-second. Rescanned this in the console, result was again no different.

OK, I need to get my head around creating, signing and broadcasting. I only ever received one transaction in 2010 which was just a matter of giving someone my public address.



Yes I was dimly aware of forking - so not enough for the jet! But basically free money so I'm not complaining.


Right, will have to get my head around all that at some point then.

Thanks for your help!

Hello all, an update:

I installed Ubuntu on a new SSD in my desktop PC, then installed Bitcoin Core, downloaded the blockhain.

Unplugged the LAN cable (no wifi card).

Made a new wallet (TestWallet) which created the wallet subfolder in the .config

Copied old 2010 %appdata%\bitcoin folder (wallet.dat and all others) to a new subfolder at same level as TestWallet on Ubuntu. Added the new wallet which I presume was then validated against the downloaded blockhain, took a while.


This is good news, right? I've ordered a Ledger Nano.