Importing basically inserts your private key into a wallet (NOTE: this isn't possible with HD wallets, you can't insert foreign private keys)... so the coins stay under the control of the existing private key.

Sweeping, creates an "on-chain" transaction and sends the coins from the address of the existing private key to a brand new address (and matching private key). Usually this is done when you're wanting to either "burn" the private key and never use it again and/or to get the coins into an HD wallet when they're coming from a "random private keys" type wallet (ie. older non HD wallets, paper wallets, brain wallets etc)

For added security, you create an "offline" wallet. This is done on a computer that never has (and never will) be on a network... hence the term "air gapped". It has no network connections. You create your wallet and private keys...

Then on a separate, internet connected computer... you create a "watching only" wallet that has the same addresses, but no private keys (without private keys, you can only view the contents of addresses, you cannot spend any coins)...

When you want to send coins, you create an "unsigned" transaction on the online PC... transfer it (usually via USB) to the offline PC... "sign" the transaction with the private keys... transfer the "signed" transaction back to the online PC and broadcast it to the network.

In theory, this should prevent your private keys ever being compromised unless someone has direct physical access to the offline PC.

http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/coldstorage.html

I can copy/paste 200 private keys into Electrum and it "pauses" for about 10-15 seconds... and then after clicking next it takes another 30 seconds to have a think while it creates the wallet and generates the address matching the private keys...

For the record, I have a Core i5-3570K, 8 GB RAM, Windows 10 64bit... OS and Electrum on an SSD...

I reckon I could probably crank through the addresses of ~20 seeds per hour without even really rushing... so you probably have 10+ hours worth of copy/paste to check all the seeds (assuming your "23" word seed generates a similar number of valid seeds as mine)

EDIT: In case anyone is interested, the (very) unpolished script is here: https://github.com/HardCorePawn/btcMisc/

usage:
Where N is a standard mnemonic length... ie. 12, 18, 24. So this means you should enter 11, 17 or 23 words!

NOTES:
- You NEED the wordlist directory and English.txt file
- Script will hunt for valid seeds, and once found, will generate 100 receive addresses/keys and 100 change addresses/keys and dump them into keys_XXX.txt file(s), one for each seed.
- Script is only looking for ONE missing word
- Script only looks for missing word from position2 to positionN-1 (ie. it does not look for a missing First or Last word)
- Script is only using BIP44 derivation path and only looks for Account 0 addresses/keys

Standard HD Wallet = 90-95% of "normal" use cases... ie. people who want to send and receive bitcoin.

Standard nonHD Wallet = people who need to import private keys from paper wallets (or 'broken' software wallets *cough*MultiBit HD*cough*) and don't want to pay transaction fees to "sweep" the coins.

2FA Wallets = Paranoid people

Multi Sig = Groups of Paranoid People who don't trust each other

Watch addresses = People who use air-gapped offline computers to hold their private keys and sign transactions but need a way to see all the coins in certain addresses... (and/or nosey people who want to watch addresses for transaction activity)

actually... That idea to just copy/paste the addresses into an Electrum watching wallet isn't as dumb as it sounds... If you grouped the output addresses of my script by seed, and then just bulk imported them into a watching wallet (up to) 193 times until you find the addresses that have your coins, then you know which seed is the correct one.

Would take a few hours... and would be tedious and annoying, but if you think it's too much hassle, then PM me the words you have

Seriously tho... if you want I can tidy the script up so it will print out the addresses into a text file (or files)... and as long as you can run python, you can start copy/pasting

Ok, so I've expanded my script a little bit... it will take a list of 23 words... and cycle through the possible combinations of adding in 1 word at each position (excluding first and last) generating valid seeds, and generates the private keys/addresses for the first 100 receive and change addresses for each valid seed that it finds assuming:

1. The 23 words supplied are in the correct order and seed is just missing one word
2. The missing word is NOT the first or last word
3. The derivation path used is BIP44... ie. m/44'/0'/0'/0/0 for first receive addr on account 0 and m/44'/0'/0'/1/0 for first change address on account 0.

The full run took 9mins and 44 seconds to generate 193 valid seeds and the 200 associated receive and change addresses/keys for each seed. 38600 in total then for my random 24 word seed that I deleted a word out of.

Not sure how long it would take to do the RPC queries tho... I don't have a full addressindexed node...

Just FYI, whoever told you that script might be able to help is lying. That python script you have there creates random corruption... and/or deletes random bytes from a file... that isn't going to fix any of your issues... and will probably only make things worse.

Without knowing any of the addresses, then it is going to be problematic to determine whether or not you have found the correct seed, as you have nothing to test against.

A couple of tests on a random 24 word seed shows that there can be multiple different words used in any given position that will result in a "valid" seed.
You could be looking at something in excess of 200 valid seeds assuming a relatively similar "hit" rate of 9-10 words per position... So how would you know that you'd generated the correct one? Surely you must have a record of an address somewhere that you received coins to? or even sent coins to? so you might be able to find an address from a transaction ID or something??

Am I correct in understanding that you have forgotten your PIN and are concerned that your hardware wallet is going to get erased and reset if you guess it wrong 3 times?

Anyone who cares to look at their publicly available API documentation: https://blockchain.info/api/blockchain_wallet_api

They also have a bunch of stuff available on their github: https://github.com/blockchain/service-my-wallet-v3

So to answer the question in your subject... No, they don't use BitcoinJ

A Hero member... that has never heard of bitaddress.org or bitcoinpaperwallet.com... or the fact that brain wallets are a really really REALLY bad idea?      

Both of those sites will even let you just enter a "brain wallet" phrase and do the SHA256 hash as well... They also both provide downloadable versions that you can use on an offline machine

Yes, both the mobile and web wallet now have a "custom fee" option that allows a user to enter a "sats/byte" amount. Small steps in the right direction I guess...

The problem with creating a CPFP from blockchain.info, is that there is no "coin control"... so there is no guarantee that any transaction they create will include an output from the parent transaction unless they choose to send ALL their coins... which is just going to drive up the transaction size (and fees required) needlessly... especially given that the majority of blockchain.info web wallet users also tend to be "cloud miners" and "faucet collectors" and already have multiple UTXOs that are more or less "dust"...

The sheer number of threads here of people not understanding why it is costing them 50% of their total balance to send their coins and then posting TXIDs that have 15-20 inputs and a transaction size best measured in kilobytes for a total of 0.005 BTC sent indicates that a lot of users simply don't understand bitcoin fundamentals.

Go here: https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com/bitcoinpaperwallet/generate-wallet.html

It supports generating paper wallets for BTC, DOGE, LTC and even "CounterParty" aka XCP. Pay attention to the security warnings and make sure you download and use the site offline as instructed at the bottom of the page

Are you restoring an Electrum seed or a seed from another wallet?

Have you checked the spelling of all words? There are a number of words that are very similar (kit, kid, kind, kite etc)... and if you are copy/pasting, try manually typing the words in. If the next button is unclickable, that is usually an indication of an invalid seed.

Have you previously used this seed to restore your wallet?

Generally, most wallet files will encrypt the private keys... and they'll be stored in possibly binary or hex format. Attempting to identify them simply by scanning bytes on the harddrive is going to be like looking for a needle in a stack of needles.

Basic maths would suggest that there are 22 positions (as you think not the first or last word)... and 2025 word possibilities (most wallets don't re-use seed words).

A python script should be able to rip through the 44,550 combinations fairly quickly... even allowing for having to generate the masterkey, and move down the correct derivation path to check the first address is the same as what you have.

Which wallet were you using? and do you have a record of at least 1 address that the seed generated?

Also, depending on the wallet, it may be possible to extract the seed directly (If it is bitcoinj based... ie. MultiBit) from the wallet file. Which leads to my next questions... if you have the wallet, what is stopping you from simply exporting the seed from the wallet application? Did you lose your wallet encryption password?

Yes, as Abdussamad already told you, it is a Hierarchically Deterministic (aka HD) wallet... When you put in the 12 word seed, it regenerates the exact same keys/addresses every time.

Which is pretty much the same as the Armory "root key"... they're just slightly different formats (Electrum seed uses plain english words and Armory uses 18 groups of 4 "random" letters) with different names, but they achieve the same goal.

I would attempt to import the armory_ziimito_.wallet file first. It should read it in and then you should be able to go into the "wallet properties" and do the backup to get to the root key.

If that file does not work, try the armory_ziimito_backup.wallet.

If you have them safely on a USB disk, I would make a copy on your PC, then try to import them. If you can open the wallet files, you should be able to go to: "Wallet Properties" -> "Backup this wallet" -> "Make Paper Backup"

It should prompt you for the passphrase, put that in and you should get the paper backup display including the root key for your wallet. For the love of Satoshi... WRITE THIS DOWN!


As an aside, I'm curious to know where you find the original files? What had happened to them? Had they been deleted and you recovered them with Recuva? or where they just moved?

Theoretically, I think you can just attempt to sweep all the private keys and it will just discard the ones with zero balance... so you don't need to go through them all one by one.

Alternatively, you can create a new Electrum wallet using the "Use public or private keys" option in Electrum and it will let you import all those private keys in one go so you can pretty much instantly see the entire transaction history of all your keys/addresses... and what your final balance currently is.

I wouldn't recommend keeping them in a public/private key Electrum wallet long term. I would suggest that after you are happy that you have all your coins, that you then send the coins to an address in a new HD "seeded" Electrum wallet for the added safety that a seeded wallet provides (full restore from just 12 word seed etc). This is effectively what sweeping does anyway.

FYI, as a comparison... I have Bitcoin 0.14.1 updated and running... and fired up Armory 0.96 for the first time today. It took less than 15 minutes to "Build the Databases".

My system specs are:
Core i5-3570K @ 3.4 GHz
8GB of RAM
Windows 10 64Bit

Bitcoin Core datadir is on a 1TB Western Digital "Blue" HDD
OS (and Armory) are on a 240GB SSD

You really don't need a super computer to make all this work.

What errors are you getting trying to run 0.96?

Simple test to see if your wallet is suitable for holding coins:

1. Does your wallet provide you with the private keys for all addresses contained in it?

Yes? Wallet is OK.
No? Wallet is not Ok.

If you have access to the private keys, you are good to go regardless of what happens. You can put your private key(s) into "LeftForkWallet"™ and have access to "LeftForkCoins"™... and/or you can put your private key(s) into "RightForkWallet"™ and have access to "RightForkCoins"™

What you DO NOT want to do is put your coins in any online service like an exchange/gambling site/web wallet etc where you do not have direct control over the private keys and are at the mercy of that service as to which way they want to send to your coins.