Exporting the keys is described here - you just need the key for the bitcoin address you actually used:

http://docs.bitshares.org/muse/migration/howto-exporting-wallet-clients.html  (near the bottom of the page).

Then you can import it into another client (like Electrum).

The reason you have to download the entire blockchain is that it is the only way you can verify that you actually did receive the bitcoins, without trusting anybody else.  Other wallets like Electrum rely on a pool of servers that do this work for you.

In principle, a very determined hacker might be able to subvert the flashable hardware on the USB stick.  But it would need to be somebody with almost NSA grade expertise, aiming at your specific setup.  I do something similar, and do not worry about it.  I am sure NSA has more profitable things to do than stealing our bitcoins.

EDIT: But do check the cryptographic signatures on the software you run on the offline machine.

The latest model is not even particularly slow, it signs a transaction within a second or two.  The initial RPi required a bit more patience ...

Indeed!

Are you having your wallet on a notebook that you carry around, and may lose in the train or have stolen somewhere?  That is a bad idea, since only the password then protect you from losing your coins.

Or are you using the notebook as an offline wallet, and store it safely in your house?  In that case, it may of course still be stolen (and so may your paper backup), but it is far less risky.

In any case, have an excellent password.  Not a good one, that is not enough, modern password crackers are surprisingly good.

Yes, that is exactly the problem.

You need to have Bitcoin Core installed and synchronized with the block chain.  After installing Bitcoin Core, start it and let it download the blockchain.  It is a 150 GB download and takes a few days on a fast machine with a fast internet connection.  Once Bitcon Core is up to date, you can use Armory, and the full power of a very advanced bitcoin wallet is at your fingertips.  But there is this hurdle to pass first. 

If downloading 150 GB of blockchain data is a no-no, then you can click on the wallet and select Wallet Properties.  There you can find a dialog for exporting the private keys.  You can then import them into another wallet.

Armory only supports Bitcoin Cash as a kind of hack to enable us to get access to the coins.  Understandably, goatpig does not want to support coins that split off from Bitcoin, as that may be a trend (first Bitcoin Cash, then perhaps Bitcoin Gold, then ...).

However, the "hack" that he made for Bitcoin Cash works quite well.  You can use Armory *either* with BTC or with BCH depending on which client you run below it (Bitcoin Core or one of the BCH versions), as long as you are in Expert mode and select the BCH signer for the BCH transactions.

It is even possible to run both simultaneously, but I honestly cannot recommend it.  I made shortcuts that started either Bitcoin Core or Bitcoin Unlimited, and other shortcuts that started Armory with command line arguments directing it to the two possible blockchains.  It worked, but was clunky, and I am sure it is too easy to shoot yourself in the foot, so in the end I moved my BCH to a ledger and kept the BTC on Armory.


If you had bitcoins in Armory the day the chain split, then you already have both BCH and BTC, they just reside on the same private keys.  You do not have to "claim your BCH", or any such nonsense.  If, in a far future, both coins have value then you will have both coins and in the worst case can access them using the private keys.  If one chain is dead by then, you still have the other chain.  So you do not need to do anything now if you plan on holding both coins.  Of course, if you truly believe that BTC will be almost worthless and BCH will be the future, then you can split your coins now and buy 3-5 BTC for every BTC you have.  Just be aware that it is a gamble, it could go the other way.  Do not uncritically believe the BCH priesthood on /r/btc, nor the BTC fundamentalists in /r/bitcoin    [Apologies to both groups, but honestly the debate seems more religious than technical these days].

I am on 10.12.6 but that should not be critical.

I think the latest Bitcoin Core is incompatible with  0.96.3.  You need to either downgrade Bitcoin Core or upgrade Armory to the release candidate.

Other people report that sometimes forcing it to shut down, and then starting up again helps.

If that does not help, you should probably post the log files here, then the real experts can better help you.

Amen.

(And I apologize for politicizing here).

The btc.com online wallet claims that they will support coin splitting.  Since they are also a mining pool, it seems likely.  I have placed a very small amount (it is an online wallet, after all) with them, that I expect to use to taint and split coins, if we get two viable chains.

But I think it is far from sure there will be a true fork.  The plan of the 2x guys is a crushing victory.  They expect (or hope for) getting the vast majority of the hashing power, in which case at least some exchanges may declare the 2x fork for the real bitcoin.  In that scenario, I expect the community to move to the 2x chain, some will think bitcoin has been upgraded, other that it was downgraded.  Then chain split is likely, as it seems that the strongest 2x opponents will continue with the old chain.

Anything else than this will be a failure for the 2x guys.  That can happen in many way.

1. It is all a bluff, the split never happens (extremely unlikely, imo).

2. The 2x chain splits off, but with a minority hash rate.  In that case 2x coins will be a low-value altcoin, and the lack of replay protection which is intended to kill the minority chain will backfire badly, and make it very unattractive to work with.  In any case, I do not think the NYA miners are interested in mining a minority alt-coin, so I am not sure anyone will have the time to move and sell their 2x coins before it dies. The hard-core large-blockers will probably find it more attractive to move over to BCH, some of them are religiously against segwit anyway.

3.  The 2x chain gets a majority, but not a crushing one.  In that case I doubt any exchange will risk calling it the true bitcoin, and I suspect it will have much lower value than the original chain.  Again I think miners will abandon it. 

So only in case of a crushing victory to the 2x side is a true chainsplit likely in my opinion.  But in reality I have no clue what will happen.  It is impossible to judge what people think or discuss it properly.  /r/bitcoin censors any post that is attempting to discuss a block size increase or is not clearly against 2x.  /r/btc is patrolled by trolls that downvote any post that does not seem to imply that the core developers are evil people controlled by the Bilderberg group and/or space lizards. No sane discussion is possible. 

You need to install Bitcoin Core, and let it sync.  That involves downloading the entire blockchain (150 GB !!!).  Once that is synchronized, Armory can access the data.

If downloading 150GB is no-go, then you can export the private keys from Armory in offline mode, and import them in another wallet, at least if you have used the default script types (not segwit).

I am using 0.96.3.  For some strange reason OS X is missing from the web page, but it is available from the GitHub release pages: https://github.com/goatpig/BitcoinArmory/releases

The one strange thing you have to do is move the Armory.app with Finder after you have unpacked it.  If you do not do this, it will fail to launch.  It is some strange OSX security measure that has this weird side effect.

Actually, the Mac OS versions you are releasing are usually working just fine

Yes, that will work. 

IMPORTANT:  In step B, move the BTC to another wallet, not to another address in the same wallet.  Compromising just one private key compromises the whole wallet.  With one private key and the chain code (unencrypted in the watch-only wallet) you can generate all the following keys!. 

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).

Can you get Armory up and running in offline mode?  Then you should be able to export the keys, as goatpig suggests.

I see no reason why it should fail to run in offline mode, unless you have a really ancient version of macOS.  And do remember that after you unpack the program, you need to move it with Finder, otherwise some weird security feature in macOS prevents it from running.

You can in principle export all your private keys from Armory into a Bitcoin Gold wallet, and then spend them.  Just be aware that this compromises your Armory wallet, so you should first create a new Armory wallet and move all your BTC from the old one to the new one, before exporting the keys.  And of course you should do this after the fork.  But let us first see if Bitcoin Gold is going to have any value whatsoever, many are sceptical.

And you may want to wait till after the Segwit2x fork happens, and get all three coins in one go - assuming that the forks actually happen, of course.

If there were any way to use this info to access your funds, the whole idea of an offline cold storage would be worthless.

Unfortunately, unless you have a paper backup or another digital backup, there is no way to recover, except if you can undelete the file on your offline computer. 

Assuming you have not used it since you deleted the wallet, it might be possible to recover the wallet file from the harddisk/SSD, but it probably requires specialist knowledge (professional data recovery services are not cheap!), and is far from certain to work.

And since restoring from paper generates the same wallet, it will still work.

Be careful about putting a password on the paper backup.  One of the main uses (perhaps the main use) of the paper backup is to recover from a forgotten password, so if your backup is password protected, you are lost.  Unfortunately, one can no longer assume that the burglar is ignorant about bitcoin, so consider generating a 2-of-3 paper backup (any one backup stolen is useless to the thief, but if you lose one backup, the remaining two are enough to recover your wallet).