Completing transfer into cold wallet

[127bit]

I'm stuck trying to complete my first transfer into Electrum cold wallet:

.purchased .91 BTC from cash at exchange
.transferred the BTC out of exchange to Electrum desktop hot wallet address
.confirmed receipt of BTC into hot wallet
.sent BTC to Electrum cold wallet address, signed then broadcasted the transaction. Both transactions are green checkmarked and hot wallet emptied.
   I think I missed the step to Export the transaction?
.opened the Electrum cold wallet on Tails OS flash drive
.initiated Load Transaction, but don't have a file to load, nor know what transaction text to provide
   Can someone tell me from where and what information I can pass to the cold wallet to complete the transfer?
Thanks.

[AB de Royse777]

I'm stuck trying to complete my first transfer into Electrum cold wallet:

.purchased .91 BTC from cash at exchange
.transferred the BTC out of exchange to Electrum desktop hot wallet address
.confirmed receipt of BTC into hot wallet
.sent BTC to Electrum cold wallet address, signed then broadcasted the transaction. Both transactions are green checkmarked and hot wallet emptied.
   I think I missed the step to Export the transaction?
.opened the Electrum cold wallet on Tails OS flash drive
.initiated Load Transaction, but don't have a file to load, nor know what transaction text to provide
   Can someone tell me from where and what information I can pass to the cold wallet to complete the transfer?
Thanks.

First check the address that was taken from your cold wallet. Use any block explorer. If you see the balance then you have nothing to worry.
I assume the wallet was never been online and in that case you will not see the balance in the Electrum wallet

Edit:
Alternatively, take the wallet Master Public Key. Restore the wallet using the Master Public Key in an online device. This will be a watch only wallet. You can see your balance in the watch only wallet.

[Charles-Tim]

Why sending to Electrum hot wallet first before sending it to cold storage? You can send the coins to one of the addresses of the cold wallet directly.

You can also setup watch only wallet if you import the master public key of the cold wallet seed phrase into Electrum online wallet. Not the seed phrase that you will import but the master public key and use it for tracking transaction. You can not use the wallet for spending.

https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/coldstorage.html

As for your question, you have nothing to do after you send the coins. Just setup the watch-only wallet or use blockchain explorer to track the sent transaction.

[promise444c5]

~

It's  in a cold format... you shouldn't expect it to load a transaction  since it doesn't connect to the Internet,everything  works manually  it's either you load it manually  or create a watch-only wallet just as it's being mentioned which will serve as a hot storage   but inform of view-only ( although you can initiate transactions that needs to be signed before broadcasting)..

[bitmover]

Can someone tell me from where and what information I can pass to the cold wallet to complete the transfer?
Thanks.

There is no information to pass to the cold wallet.

You get the address FROM the cold wallet. Insert the address in the desktop wallet and transfer  that is it

Just check the balance of the address of the cole wallet using any block explorer   such as mempool.space

[127bit]

The cold wallet was never online.
I specifically did the exchange -> hot -> cold steps to get familiarized with each.

blockstream.info shows:
.Cold wallet 2 tx; .00091904 received and .00091904 spent
.Hot wallet 1 tx; .00090639 received and .00090639 unspent

I think this establishes that I attempted one necessary step and that the coin is correctly in the cold wallet?
Thanks to all if one of you can confirm or correct my conclusion.

[nc50lc]

Can someone tell me from where and what information I can pass to the cold wallet to complete the transfer?

There's no need to import anything there since it's the seed phrase that makes you in control of the transactions you've sent to it.
As long as the address that you used as recipient is correct, it's now safely stored in your cold-storage.

The transactions that you see in your Hot wallet aren't due to being sent from wallet to wallet.
Those are recorded in the Bitcoin Blockchain which is stored in every Bitcoin node, your wallet just shows the ones it can spend with its private keys.
So generally, the transactions that you see in the history are merely for balancing purposes only.

Same principle in your Cold storage, it doesn't hold transactions but private keys derived from your seed.
If you do not want to "see" the transactions, there's no need to populate its history since its private keys can spend the transactions you sent to that wallet.

But if you insist on saving the raw transaction to your Electrum on Tails (which will just be deleted if the wallet file isn't in a persistent storage)
You can export the raw transaction with:

• Double-click the transaction in the history.
• Click "Share->Save to file" save that transaction to a flash drive.
• In your cold-storage, click "Tools->Load transaction->From file" and load that exported txn.
• Click "Save" to save it to your history as a 'local transaction'.

Take note that it isn't necessary to do this since all you need is your seed phrase or private key (for single address paper wallet)

I think this establishes that I attempted one necessary step and that the coin is correctly in the cold wallet?

Yes.

[NotATether]

But if you insist on saving the raw transaction to your Electrum on Tails (which will just be deleted if the wallet file isn't in a persistent storage)
You can export the raw transaction with:

• Double-click the transaction in the history.
• Click "Share->Save to file" save that transaction to a flash drive.
• In your cold-storage, click "Tools->Load transaction->From file" and load that exported txn.
• Click "Save" to save it to your history as a 'local transaction'.

Take note that it isn't necessary to do this since all you need is your seed phrase or private key (for single address paper wallet)

But you should import the transaction into the Electrum wallet on Tails because that's the only way you will be able to easily create a transaction without resorting to 3rd party tools.

Even if the transaction does get wiped from Tails after a reboot or shutdown, you can just import it again. After all, it's not like you'd need to have the transaction imported at all times.

Also, additional coins that are spent from the cold wallet also need to be imported too. I guess this is where a watch-only wallet would be useful.

[Abdussamad]

You can't expect the cold wallet to show you any transactions. It's offline so it doesn't know about any of your transactions.

Create a watch only wallet on an online device if you want to see transactions. Grab the master public key of the cold wallet using the wallet menu > information window. Then on an online device install electrum and create a deterministic watch only wallet as per this guide:

https://bitcoinelectrum.com/creating-a-watch-only-wallet/

To spend from your cold wallet see this guide:

https://bitcoinelectrum.com/creating-a-cold-storage-wallet-in-electrum/

[nc50lc]

-snip-

But you should import the transaction into the Electrum wallet on Tails because that's the only way you will be able to easily create a transaction without resorting to 3rd party tools.

OP was asking as if it's necessary to do to receive the transaction to his cold-storage Electrum in tails, which is not.

If it's about creating transactions, then he can just create a watch-only wallet on an online Electrum.
Export the transaction to be signed with that cold-storage Electrum, then export it back to the online Electrum to broadcast.
There's no need for any third-party tool in that "established" way to spend from Electrum cold-storage.