Root Keys Vs Paper Wallet

[paulb787]

I am new and have a couple of questions. I have armory and bitcoin-qt loaded up now and am liking them. Wondering How do the root keys work compared to private keys?

I like how a paper wallet works where you have the private key and no mater what happens you can sweep the account. If armory goes down and I have no exe file. All I have is the root key. How would I get the money out? Is there a way to convert a root key into the private keys? Just curious and really appreciate the help.
 

[achow101]

I am new and have a couple of questions. I have armory and bitcoin-qt loaded up now and am liking them. Wondering How do the root keys work compared to private keys?

I like how a paper wallet works where you have the private key and no mater what happens you can sweep the account. If armory goes down and I have no exe file. All I have is the root key. How would I get the money out? Is there a way to convert a root key into the private keys? Just curious and really appreciate the help.
 

Yes. The root key is for a hierarchal deterministic wallet. The root key is used in a specific math function which every time run, will always generate the same private keys. The only caveat is that armory may not actually use a standard like the bip32 standard for hd wallets.

[teukon]

If armory goes down and I have no exe file. All I have is the root key. How would I get the money out? Is there a way to convert a root key into the private keys?

Extracting private keys from an Armory root key without Armory is not as simple as sweeping a private key.  The Bitcoin base-58 private key format is widely used whereas the Armory root key system is pretty much just an Armory thing.

Still, it's not so difficult.  See here for details.