Thanks, the broker function definition is a very useful and reassuring distinction. Taxes - yes, that and death.

Hi,

Kudos for what you're doing here! I got paid with a couple btc sometime back. I was thinking of selling for cash using localbitcoins but I was reading earlier today, bitcoin.com I think, that increasingly sellers are being arrested for "illegal money transmission" by law enforcement posing as buyers. At least two of them involved illegal drugs so that may explain some of it. My question is should I be concerned?

Also, way back, we're talking 80s-90s, Lambda Legal had a self-help manual out at a time when homosexuality was criminalized by sodomy laws in many states. One piece of advise it had was, if you were going to pick up someone in any place that wasn't inside an LGBT commercial establishment or private property, like the sidewalk outside a bar where you met this person, to ask before any physical contact occurred - do you work for any law-enforcement? To avoid getting arrested for solicitation/whatever. I don't see this being a viable protective tactic for a drug dealer (otherwise we wouldn't have a show called The Wire), but what about if you are selling a couple btc?  Is there a magic number of transactions that sets apart a "trader" from a joe/schmoe occasional seller/buyer? Or anyone who sells even half a coin counts as engaging in "money transmission"? (I didn't think I would be asking questions like this in 2017!) Does it matter that I am not even advertising a trade on localbitcoins but will be answering an ad of a buyer?

Thanks in advance.

An update for people who wind up here trying to sweep private keys, encrypted w/ BIP38 with a passphrase, into Electrum and finding it doesn't work: I chose the simpler option of decrypting using a blockchain.info wallet, instead of downloading a bit2address(?) and decrypting offline, not least because the developer moved on and I wasn't risking it with software not updated in a couple years or more. The process is pretty straightforward in the blockchain.info wallet -  finding the actual import/sweep feature is the hardest part. You have to access it via "Addresses" in the left navbar.

Looking back I think it is easy picking up the paranoia out there about people stealing your coins - I have no doubt that is a real concern. But for my purposes, I think I could have left out the private key passphrase/encryption part. I  hash-checked the bitaddress.org.html download and did the paper wallet generation offline, off an Ubuntu USB stick, so the real risk left is someone breaking into my place and stealing the paper and getting easy access to the coins with the unencrypted private key. The odds of that in a doorman building? Definitely not high enough to make it worth the steep learning curve trying to get paper coins back into digital form.

Thanks. I know I downloaded the bitaddress.org generator offline when i created them on an Ubuntu USB stick minus internet  but don't recall if it was BIP38 - I'm guessing whatever was the default. I have to put this on hold for a few days but fingers crossed decrypting via bit2factor.org (offline) works when i resume next week. I will update as I go along. (Money still there - yay!)

Speaking of key-logging - at some point everyone using Electrum etc are relying on when they put aside concerns about key-logging etc? I didn't verify my download with the PGP sig (too complex) - in fact "too complex" was one of the top comments on Reddit by an expert type....  so at some level I am relying on the company's reputation that they are not going to run off with my private keys? Sort of like Chase not running off with my fiat money?

Update: I'm learning from this link http://www.thecleverest.com/importing-bitcoin-from-a-paper-wallet-into-electrum/ that there are more hoops to jump thru before importing a paper wallet into Electrum. It's three years old but, since it was the first hit on Google, hopefully still current. Almost Kafka's Castle. Know where I need to go but incredibly aging peeling back the layers trying to get there....

Thanks. Turns out you are partly/mostly right and I was partly stupid. I created a new address+key at bitaddress.org and sure enough "Sweep" got un-greyed. I tired one of my no-money keys and Sweep went back to stubbornly grey. Tried another bitaddress generated key and it worked. But as I went back and forth I noticed that my paper keys all said 'Encrypted Private Key (Password Required)' and the new ones I generated today did not.

So my question now is - do I reinstall Electrum using the password I used to generate the old keys? Will that work? Also - would you have any suggestion(s) for a simpler way of accomplishing what I am trying to do - basically split up one paper-wallet into multiple ones with just a coin or two each. Back when I got these coins they weren't worth as much.  I'm finding the learning curve for digital wallets a bit steep. The only reason I am trying to get them into Electrum is only to split and send pack to paper. Thanks again for pointing me back to the obvious.

Hello,

I installed Electrum 2.8.2 on OS X Yosemite, entered a paper wallet private key with no bitcoin in it to test, and got back a "No Outputs" error. Which I read is the error when there's zero BTC in there. Deleted the installation to reinstall with the WiFi off (call me paranoid), deleted ~/.electrum and everything in that directory including default_wallet. After reinstalling, I go to Wallet->Private Keys->Sweep, paste in another private key but the "Sweep" button doesn't get active and stays resolutely greyed out. Unlike the seed words check during setup, the sweep box allows you to copy/paste.

I tried reinstall a few times and even created a new user and tried an install but nada - sweep is still greyed out. I'm guessing there are other hidden files/folders besides ~/.electrum which is preventing proper reinstalls? Would really appreciate any help - spent the whole day on this and am really glad I didn't use the key with bitcoin in it... the amount is non-trivial. Thanks.