How to do this in 2024?  I'm using BC 26.0.0 and the console window gives this error that only legacy wallets are supported by this command.


And no indication is given as to how to do it for "newer" or non-legacy wallets.  So in addition to backing up wallet.dat, how do I export the private keys?

Agreed.  I'll be the first to admit am not too much of a techie, I have read the majority of the material on the bitcointalk newbie (getting started)thread, the bitcoin.it wiki, and bitcoin.org whitepaper.

I do have experience in business, basic mechanical engineering, and logic.  So although we may use different symbols to describe an event, if it is explained in a simple and logical flow, i can usually follow along.
I understand the need for the whole blockchain.  I was originally thinking more along the lines of one-time use only.  Like western union or fedex.  Once the receiver picks up the item and this is confirmed, the transaction history technically is no longer needed and could be discarded.  Of course there may be other secondary (usually legal) reasons to hold on to the record for a longer period, but the primary function (Point A to Point B delivery) was achieved.  Traditional bittorrent files, like a movie remain alive as long as there are seeders.  The idea is that enough people will reseed the torrent to keep it alive.  A bittorrent file size is fixed, so the user is limited partially in hard drive space, but more so in bandwidth.  Then that space can be reused when the file no longer needs to be seeded.

Bitcoin wallets also double as a stored value container (holding Bitcoins)with no expiration date.  Because of the non-expiring nature, you need the whole blockchain history from the first bitcoin to verify the authenticity of every coin that ever passes through the system.  This type of accounting system works well when there are only a few daily transactions or a few stock items in inventory.  In order to keep records of every transaction, you need physical disk space to hold the entire history of transactions.  And it must be in one continuous sequence; you cannot break up the blockchain into 1000 rar files and scatter them on different drives (can you?)  Because of the nature of bitcoin, this disk space in the form of a node needs to be constantly connected to the internet in order to add any real value to itself (to remain up to date) and to other users (to facilitate validating, mining, etc).  Or it would at least require daily connection for, say 4-8 hours a day and less for people depending on their level of dedication to the bitcoin network.

We cannot "reuse" the space where the blockchain already exists, except through pruning or other methods of compression.  Not for 1 central node, but for all nodes.  This will increase the need for cloud disk space, which is not unlimited.  The low barrier of entry will not be so low, as the blockchain growth is approaching exponential levels.

- What is the difference between the total bitcoin amount sent and the transaction size? I thought they were one in the same.
- Maybe a receiving fee or a fee for maintaining wallet for xx days with no transaction may be in order.
- What stops someone from doing a bloat attack, where they make lots of small (or large)transactions to themselves, increasing the size of the blockchain?

 
You claim disk space is a trivial cost, yet it is not so trivial, for the reasons I mention above. is It's trivial now because it's 'only' 3GB large.  Trivial would have been correct back at the hobby stage of 3-30MB But historically speaking, it is growing exponentially.

Another person wrote using Electrum or other client that hosts the blockchain separately.  I may very well have to do this in a few months.  Too bad everyday people will not be able to host their own node.  We will have to rely on 3rd parties.  Some consolidation is natural for 'on-demand' services, but doesn't this defeat one of the original goals of bitcoin, which is to make it accessible to masses with decentralized authority?  If pruning will not allow significant re-use of disk space, the blockchain that is the the very heart of the bitcoin network will have to be placed into the hands of trusted 3rd parties to get any practical use out of it.

I want this bitcoin idea to work, which is why I placed the wallet on my server to begin with.  I'm sure I've confirmed thousands of transactions already with my short usage.    I guess we will have to wait and see what becomes of the blockchain.  I certainly hope pruning and/or other consolidation techniques do fix the blockchain bloat problem.

Commercial Network Services (affiliate link) .  They have servers in New York City, NY USA, San Diego, CA USA, and London, UK.  They cater primarily to financial traders and related services which demand always on connections to the financial markets.  Zero forced reboots or forced windows updates on hyper-v; I've personally gone 6+ months without rebooting.  And whatever resources you pay for are YOURS; they don't oversell their services or over-promise resources.  They used to have dedicated servers, but got rid of them when hyper-v stabilized and their VPS setup was just as dedicated and more scalable.   They do have linux servers.....you may have to ask.

Barry is a great person to work with; and they make the uptime thing look easy.  I don't think they accept bitcoin (yet), but they do accept liberty reserve as well as traditional visa/mc/paypal/wire.

The only thing you cannot do is dedicated bittorrent/seedbox service.  A shame, because the VPS have multiple high quality 1-10Gbps connections.  But pretty much anything else is fair game.  I streamed video from the desktop using a hack where you link two user accounts and livestream.com streaming software.  The lag was 3-10 seconds.  There are other hacks to recover 3-5Gb from windows installation. 

You can't use the cheap $2 webhosting for blockchain hosting (they don't usually allow downloading or torrent sites anyway); you need something more dedicated.

Credit and fiat currency will still be needed to support various social programs (gov't backed).  Bitcoin will be a great additional currency to move goods around.

Resources have a real (fiat currency) cost.  Just like fiat currencies or gold or diamonds have to be securely stored, insured, etc, bitcoin has a real cost in order to keep the bitcoin network running smoothly.

Most regular bitcoin users are familiar with the recent exponential increase in blockchain size.  When I first downloaded bitcoin about 3 weeks ago, it was just over 1.2GB.  It is already at 2.7GB and rising quickly.  Arguments have been made that suggest that hard drive space is cheap so it won't be a problem.  Offline hard drive space is cheap, but 'cloud' or dedicated internet accessible hard drive space is still a bit pricey, depending on the service provider, location, amount of space, etc.  My windows 2008 R2 64 bit VPS which is guaranteed 100% uptime in a major USA backbone is appx $40/mo and I only get 30GB (16GB used by windows install alone). I have appx 40-60 active connections at any given time, although unfortunately the client does not keep track of how many confirmations my node has done.  The original bitcoin client is actually lacking in a lot of advanced statistics to give the user an idea of what their node has accomplished or is currently processing.

Regardless, whether dedicated or a casual user, the full blockchain is taking up too much hard drive space, especially considering there is no compensation (that I can see in the original client) for hosting the node.  I should have a right to reject to confirm a transaction that does not have a certain percentage of the original transaction as a fee.  Making the transactions 'free', no matter how small will attract a certain type of undesirable user (freeloader).  In fact, i was imagining that a certain type of 'bloat blockchain attack' could be done where a huge number of microspends could be done on an automated basis to make the blockchain very bloated and therefore inaccessible to those nodes without the hard drive space or bandwidth.

Potential solutions: 
- allow blockchain to be divided up into xx MB/GB file sizes.  Consider using compression for older portions of the blockchain.
- Allow node to customize how much of the blockchain the node will confirm.  Either in days from present day (past xx days) or in number of transactions from the most current block.   So 'supernodes' can hold the entire blockchain, while 'small business nodes' may only keep 6 months worth, and a casual user only needs maybe 4-6 weeks.

Perhaps there would be increased transaction (research fee) to confirm older transactions.  The real cost of storage is directly proportional to the length of the blockchain.  Wouldn't older transactions be further back on the blockchain?

- find a way to shrink/summarize older transactions so that only a minimum amount of information is needed for the blockchain.
- consider expiration date for accounts with no activity or something similar.  Like a gift card or anything else of stored value, there needs to be minimum activity to keep up with changes.  The bitcoin client will need to evolve and cannot always be concerned with having to maintain older clients
- A minimum per transaction fee of 1000th (0.1%) of the total transaction size, (or the smallest BTC denomination, whichever is larger) charged to the sender at the time of sending.  That's 0.1% transaction fee; unheard of in credit card processing.  The transaction fee can be divided up evenly amongst the first 6 confirming nodes.
- allow node to reject transactions that do not have a certain % fee of transaction.
- allow return to sender option if wallet does not receive/confirm a transaction after xx minutes.  Default can be 3 days but perhaps adjustable to up to 7 days or so.  We don't want too many unconfirmed/stale transactions floating around.
- bonus: allow an optional checkmark to donate 0.1% of the total transaction size to bitcoin client developer address to assist with future development.  When this is in the client, people are more likely to actually participate in it.  Maybe even type a short thank you note or suggestion.

If a transaction is 'confirmed' x number of times, is there still a reason to keep the original record past a certain amount of future transactions count (or n many months)?  We would have to give the receiver some responsibility in checking their wallets/transaction history, similar to how the bank account statement would be checked by the customer to ensure no errors. 

If you think about it.  Even banks only keep so many transactions in their current database before storing them offline or historical database.  Then for these older transactions, a "research fee" must be paid to look up the transaction.  After so many days, months, or years, the the historical data may even be destroyed, as it is no longer relevant.  Once the transaction is fully confirmed in the receiver's account, there's no need to hold on to that past data for any extended period of time (otherwise, what's the true purpose of confirmation?).  Perhaps there should be a 'return to sender' and the receiver has x number of days to claim their funds (3 days?) or else it is returned to sender.  If there is no sender address, do the bitcoins get distroyed? Or evenly distributed to a random number of confirming nodes (for doing the work of having to confirm the transaction).
The fundamental idea here is that the receiver will be keeping track of their transactions on a regular basis, which would require that you be in communication with the sender. 

Bitcoin need to mature out of the "hobby" mindset in order to truly be accepted and integrated into the business world, which is what bitcoin is primarily intended for (settling agreements rapidly between 2 or more parties). Being scalable on paper is not good enough.  Some of these things need to be done from the original client.  People do have other things to do with their hard drive space, especially in the cloud.

I woke up today and had all these thoughts about bitcoin and felt the need to express them.  Not sure how much longer I can be a free node.

I think the OP was not only referring to the initial blockchain download, but was also referring to how much data is used for each active connections that are left open by the client?  To receive payments, make confirmations, receive new block information, etc.

with CUDA (or any of the puddinpop miners), is there an argument/parameter to force the GPU/CPU to sleep between cycles?  my GPU on my laptop (Nvidia geforce gt 525m) gets fairly hot when I attempt to run guiminer.  I think the first time I ran it (with the default guiminer miner), laptop shut down after 20 minutes of so (overheat protection I think).

Did a lot of googling, but no luck.

+1

Here's where the major discrepancy between cash vs credit comes in.  The major disadvantage/challenge to bitcoin is showing all those who 'love' credit (usually Western consumers) and all of the 'protections'  that it affords the buyer.  From secondary school on up, you are taught that credit is the best thing since sliced bread.  "Look at all these social programs that those 3rd world countries don't have...." etc, etc.  And credit offers convenience to the consumer.  Zero liability, near-unlimited chargebacks ability, and the 'convenience' of receiving your product ahead of having to pay.  Who can beat that offer?  Chargebacks aren't so bad....but 120-180 days to "take back" your purchasing decision? Someone has to eat that cost.  It's either going to be the bank, the payment processor or merchant vendor, or the merchant.  Credit really permeates a good portion of the entire infrastructure of the Westernized country.  Social programs were already mentioned, but public education, transportation, telecommunications, trucking industry, printed money, housing, etc; just about everything you see is a result of a credit transaction.

In societies where cash is the primary medium of exchange in banking transactions (like Thailand and most of SE Asia, Russia, etc), bitcoin can catch on much faster because they are already used to in-person or longer-distance cash transactions via direct deposit.  In fact, Thai banks (for example) have CDMs (cash deposit machines) in most major shopping mall branch locations or attached to their stand alone bank locations; and anyone can deposit cash without a debit card nearly 24 hours a day to anyone with account # for a nominal fee (roughly $0.33 for every $330, with $0.67 minimum)  So your savings account could actually be in the 'open' (advertised on merchant website) and its not a huge security deal because without the ATM card or going in person with the passbook/photo id for the account, you cannot access the account.  Plus, merchant could simply have a second account and immediately transfer their funds into that account.  And most utilities are either prepaid or postpaid, but prepaid options are accessible.  In these countries, it's a cultural thing to take responsibility for your purchases (and actions in general) ahead of time.

The common problems amongst Eastern and Western (or wherever-ern) monetary systems are usually rooted the reliance on the central authority.  Each perceived benefit comes with strings attached from that authority.  The authority can be corrupted, make mistakes, and impose certain restrictions that make it difficult to cover .  In the mean time, there are real costs that need to be covered.  If you already have a large cash reserve, such as larger businesses, especially those who are debt-free, then you may not be so offended by the inefficiency of the credit/banking system (you already have the 'cash is king' advantage)  But for small-mid size businesses and sole proprietors, you need a method where you can get cleared, transparent payment for little upfront cost.  And there are no restrictions either locally or internationally.  Individuals who value their own sovereignty obviously benefit from decentralized payment methods to pay for their goods/services without 3rd party interference. 

Other payment processors, including "gold-based" processors like e-gold have attempted to fill this void, but even if the underlying currency is legitimate, that trust in the central authority can easily be broken for the same reasons as any other corporation:  bankruptcy, incompetence, another authority sabotaging/intervening with the currency, etc.  Bitcoin is the only form of currency that can be used as long as an internet connection is present long enough to validate the transaction, which can be done with a dial-up connection if necessary.  And all those 'check cashing' places, or places that accept western union/money gram can just as easily exchange bitcoin without too much additional investment in equipment (can re-use existing modern computers and internet connection).

Bitcoin will NOT replace all forms of fiat currency. Credit will still be 'needed' for those who do enjoy the social programs and other privileges that are only possible with credit. It will actually improve the credit system, by allowing credit to be used where it is best suited, and bitcoin (or cash) to be used where it makes the most sense.  Instead of a strict one-size-fits-many blanket approach to economics; consumers will have the choice (and the associated responsibility) to make their own choices on their own terms.

I get an error that the dll load failed.  I am running guiminer 2012-02-19 version with bitclockers.  I am using windows 2008 R2 64 bit VPS server with no GPU, dual core CPU.  Here is a copy of the log:

I have no idea what I did wrong.  I do not know which dll could not be found.  The log file does NOT mention which specific dll is not found.

edit:  I have account with bitclockers.com.  And the guiminer folder is located @ C:\guiminer

I was unaware about adding BitCoin to the firewall (port forwarding?) so that it wouldn't have the 8 connection limit.  Now I am getting 16-20 active connections and it appears to be growing.  If this was done prior to the initial blockchain download (where I maxed out at 8 connections), I might have downloaded the blockchain in a few hours instead of it taking days.  I have dual core windows VPS with 100 Gbps connection; I was wondering WTF was taking so long to download blockchain. 

I'll have to watch now how much quicker transactions take to validate (used to be 1 hour for micro transactions <0.01 BTC)

How can someone view what different nodes (IP addresses specifically) are connecting to their client?  I'm surprised there is no gui chart/table with that information readily available.  Only the tooltip of the total connections.

UpnP is not working for me. (I use windows 2008 R2 64 bit VPS).  I will try port forwarding.  Is there any specific directions to do this?  Everyone is talking about port forwarding, but I do not see a guide how to do it.

edit:  I think I got it to work by disabling UPnP on the bitcoin client settings, then adding bitcoin-qt.exe to the windows firewall.  I now have 18-20 connections.

I receive the coins.  Thank you.  Question:  How many times can someone click on the ad and get credit?

As a general rule, you cannot tax a right, you can only tax a privilege.  if you are transacting as a private individual, you shouldn't have any problems.

AwarenessForex will be launching shortly and will be introducing free and paid financial market  indicators and trading robots that "mine" fiat currency (mainly focused on forex speculation).  Two things that make AwarenessForex unique:

1) Transparent, proven methods of making profits.  I do not sell blackboxes where you have to hope that the system is profitable.

2) Purely price-action based.  Almost all other known indicators lag behind current market prices because they 'average' or smooth out prices.  The APAMI indicator never lags because it never averages any price.  It measures trends in a consistent.

3) I will be accepting bitcoins as a payment option.  

So that's at least 3 unique reasons.

I'll take the free bitcoins.

17ee8jkCP4wYTa4qZvZJTaVyXGPzSZU9wJ

I almost forgot my own personal welcome message.  Hello from Thailand.  I represent AwarenessForex which has developed the only free, non-lagging trend indicator for forex that measures price distance in real time.  I also have complete automated trading systems.  Too bad there isn't (yet) a tradable BTC/USD currency pair.  I heard about bitcoins through a privacy advocate and the more I researched, the more intrigued I became.  It's more or less like LibertyReserve, without the central authority.  It's just a matter of being able to buy/sell these things that might be a problem initially.

Why can't you trust any dealings by wire order?

so how will you know that the person has clicked on the advert.  Is there tracking that matches the username to the advert click-thru?  Or does a separate support ticket need to be generated?

I posted the bitcoin address to the "wall" (is that the correct place to post it?) I'll look out for the payment.

It is interesting how you have the time requirement.  How do you calculate the time difference?  I've spent several hours on this forum, yet barely show 1 hour of logged time.

Does your client offer mining capability?  I was reading that CPU mining isn't too effective, but I would like the opportunity to do so if I choose.