[Quest¡on] Should I upgrade my wallet (is from 2011) or no risks?

[Lyr2]

Hello,

My wallet (with the datadir, etc) is very old (from 2011 when I was a mining in pools, **** mtgox, etc), unfortunately it has only 0.01% of the credit it used to have (because it was sold for money back in 2011), but now that the market price is raising, is getting some value and I wanted to take some precautions, especially if the price keeps getting higher in the long term.

I'm currently using it with bitcoin 0.15.1 (latest Windows client). It has more than 200 transactions already (most of the transactions are from the past)

Everytime I send a Payment, I do a backup after sending it (just in case, not sure if required....), etc.

However, do you recommend me to transfer the balance from this wallet to a new wallet? Or I can keep using this one without any risks? If there are no risks of using this old wallet, then I'd prefer to keep using it.
I read about some people who messed up their wallets and honestly every time I open bitcoin core I feel like I'm about to mess mine as well. So this is why I've opened this topic, too much happened in the last years, I was not an expert back before, but I'm more novice now.


Thanks!

[aleksej996]

In theory there should be no risk in using the old wallet. Structure of the wallet changed since then, but your client should have automatically upgrade it, as far as I know. So there should be no risks.

However, your wallet might be getting to big for your liking, with all those transactions and you might feel better if you transfer your funds to a new wallet. So you might want to do that eventually. But since the mining fees are a bit high now and you are probably in no hurry, you could wait and switch to a new wallet when perhaps more changes are made to the Bitcoin Core client and perhaps segwit gets implemented and lightning network.

So I wouldn't worry, but there is no reason not to do it eventually.

[Lyr2]

Thanks.

Yeah if there is no risk, then I'll keep my wallet. (Maybe I'll encrypt it in the future but it's always on an external disk, I'm scared of encrypt it and have issue with the password or something like that).

Regarding the tx, I like to have the history of transactions, because if sometime the price shoots (like 1 BTC = 100k USD) and governs inspect money that comes from bitcoin in transactions, maybe all this transaction history counts as evidence for a tax inspection, etc.

But just to confirm there's no risk of having thousands of transactions in the future with this old wallet, right?  (Also thought about creating a new wallet and keep the old wallet for the history).

[aleksej996]

Thanks.

Yeah if there is no risk, then I'll keep my wallet. (Maybe I'll encrypt it in the future but it's always on an external disk, I'm scared of encrypt it and have issue with the password or something like that).

Regarding the tx, I like to have the history of transactions, because if sometime the price shoots (like 1 BTC = 100k USD) and governs inspect money that comes from bitcoin in transactions, maybe all this transaction history counts as evidence for a tax inspection, etc.

But just to confirm there's no risk of having thousands of transactions in the future with this old wallet, right?  (Also thought about creating a new wallet and keep the old wallet for the history).

Oh, your wallet is not encrypted? Well that is a problem right there. That is the biggest point of failure in the whole thing. External disk will not save you always, it is better to have it encrypted.

As for the storing txs, blockcain does that for you. Just keeping your addresses would kind of have the same effect and you wouldn't risk of reaching some kind of limit if there is some.

I assume that if there was any problem with keeping too many transactions that your client will delete the old ones, but I doubt there would be an issue. It is not like they are taking up a lot of space or nothing.

I would create an encrypted wallet if I was you, but again, no real hurry. Might want to wait for more features and lower mining fees.
You should always keep your old wallet. There is no point in risking a loss of money to save up on practically no disk space at all.

[Lyr2]

Ok I'm going to create a new Wallet one of these days and encrypt it.
I plan to use these steps (with 0.15.1):

1) rename wallet.dat to oldwallet.dat
2) launch Bitcoin-QT shortcut (that is pointing to the datadir that now doesn't have a wallet.dat name) --> i think this should create a new HD wallet
3) encrypt new wallet --> restart bitcoin --> copy the new address --> backup new encrypted wallet --> quit bitcoin-qt
4) rename new wallet to walletnew.dat / rename oldwallet.dat back to wallet.dat
5) send the bitcoins (maybe in 2 tx, maybe just in 1) --> quit bitcoin-qt
6) rename walletnew.dat to wallet.dat (put my old wallet somewhere...)
7) start bitcoin-qt and wait for the balance to arrive.

[aleksej996]

Ok I'm going to create a new Wallet one of these days and encrypt it.
I plan to use these steps (with 0.15.1):

1) rename wallet.dat to oldwallet.dat
2) launch Bitcoin-QT shortcut (that is pointing to the datadir that now doesn't have a wallet.dat name) --> i think this should create a new HD wallet
3) encrypt new wallet --> restart bitcoin --> copy the new address --> backup new encrypted wallet --> quit bitcoin-qt
4) rename new wallet to walletnew.dat / rename oldwallet.dat back to wallet.dat
5) send the bitcoins (maybe in 2 tx, maybe just in 1) --> quit bitcoin-qt
6) rename walletnew.dat to wallet.dat (put my old wallet somewhere...)
7) start bitcoin-qt and wait for the balance to arrive.

Yes, those steps would work perfectly. Wish you all the best with your new encrypted wallet Enjoy!