Tracking Balance And Transaction with Coin Address?

[jerry0]

I read about the top so and so richest btc addresses etc.  I have a nano ledger with btc in it.  How do I know how much of my btc are in one address or in multiple addresses?  Now if I want to be able to see if there has been any activity in that wallet, I could just copy/paste it on a site and it would show it?  Let say someone is traveling or do not have access to their laptop which contain their ledger live.  Say they only have their phone but did have their btc address on their phone.  How does one check if there was any activity?



Now every altcoin out there has this option as well?  Example say you store waves in the waves exchange client to make it simple.  They give you a wave address associated with the account.  Does this mean when you are traveling or if you don't have your device where you store your waves in... as long as you have the waves address associated with the account, you could literally check online to see if there are any recent transactions?  Could you see what your full waves balance is as well?   And if so, what site is that?

[jackg]

Trezor and ledger both have support in the mycelium app where you can check bitcoin addresses and balance.

It's possible to use a block explorer like blockchair to check for balances and transactions in bitcoin addresses and a few altcoins like ltc and eth.

Waves also have their own explorer too: https://wavesexplorer.com/

[Maus0728]

You can also setup a watch-only wallet on your phone using Bluewallet. It is similar to viewing all the transaction of that particular wallet on a blockchain explorer but the difference is that you need to put a little work.

- Try exporting the xpub key directly in Ledger Live and see if you can click the wrench icon on upper right corner of the particular account you want > Go to advance > copy the xpub key that starts with "xpub"

- After copying, paste it on the extended public key converter^[1] > select "zpub ''Native segwit" (it depends on the type of your bitcoin address^[2] in ledger) > copy the converted keys > import or scan the converted pubkey on the Blue wallet of your phone.

[1] https://3rditeration.github.io/btc-extended-key-converter/
[2] https://allprivatekeys.com/bitcoin-address-format

[Charles-Tim]

If I would be specific about bitcoin, you need a wallet explorer, you can use the watch-only option of a reputable wallet like on Electrum for this. All you have to do is to download Electrum from https://electrum.org and make sure you verify its signature. Click on standard wallet-> use a master key and paste in the master public key on the device you carry all about. You will be able to know the balance on your addresses, but know that you will not be able to spend.

But if you want to make use of explorer, you can use blockchair.com. Other coins have their own explorer as well. But for privacy, it will be good to make use of Tor or a reputed VPN or DPN for accessing the site and tracking.


Please note, many people have lost their coins as they are using watch-only wallet, you have the master public key there only, not the private key, you can only use it for tracking, not used for spending. You will need your main wallet which you generated the seed phrase or the private key, or you imported the seed phrase or the private key before you will be able to spend.

[noorman0]

Just to check? There are many resources of tx tracker like this telegram bot: tracktcbot. I've used it for years, no private key needed, view-only mode.
Note: I'm not going to break the security rule that I should export the private key to a foreign place unless it's urgent and I don't plan on using that address again.

[witcher_sense]

Let say someone is traveling or do not have access to their laptop which contain their ledger live.  Say they only have their phone but did have their btc address on their phone.  How does one check if there was any activity?

In my view, the key thing that those unfamiliar with how exactly blockchain works should realize is that all activity occurs inside the blockchain itself, not in cryptocurrency wallets. Thus, in order to obtain knowledge about the state of your holdings, you should have access to the Internet which in turn gives you access to what is happening inside the blockchain. You either download the whole history of transactions by running your own node or you rely on other nodes like in the case of different block explorers or watch-only wallets. When you are traveling, you evidently can't carry the entire blockchain with you, but you can ask other nodes via your mobile phone how many coins you have or what happened with the blockchain while you were not looking at it. Okay, but what about your Ledger? What does it do then if it isn't "keeping your funds?" It helps you to interact with the blockchain, essentially it stores your keys, generates addresses for you, and signs your transactions. In case you have an additional copy of your keys, which you definitely should, you can interact with the blockchain with other means, including mobile wallets, desktop wallets, web wallets, etc. But they are not as secure and convenient as hardware wallets, which are specially designed to interact with the blockchain safely.

[_BlackStar]

-snip-

Blockchair offers quite a number of blockchain options for you to monitor transactions and balances. You can also browse more ERC20 tokens with one site. This depends on your needs, but of course you can use other sites recommended by other users. I often use this site to monitor recommended bitcoin transaction fees, you can also see the same for other altcoin.

[Myleschetty]

tbh Blockchair is the best site to track your wallet balance but if you want to know every activity (in and out transaction) of your wallet as soon as it happens, I will advise you to make use of @trackxbot on telegram which will also notify you when the BTC transaction you sent is mined.