abandoning bitcoin-qt wallet.dat to a different wallet

[wirmola]

Hi..

How can I convert or use my wallet.dat file in multibit?
My problem with bitcoin-qt is my internet connection and download time for the blocks.
 Looks like multibit would work much faster.
 Is there any other client you would recommend?

Best regards.

[DannyHamilton]

Hi..

How can I convert or use my wallet.dat file in multibit?
My problem with bitcoin-qt is my internet connection and download time for the blocks.
 Looks like multibit would work much faster.
 Is there any other client you would recommend?

Best regards.

Is there a reason that you need to continue to use the same addresses?  Why not just send the entire balance from your Bitcoin-Qt wallet to the new address at your MultiBit wallet and then stop using the Bitcoin-Qt wallet (perhaps store the wallet.dat file from the Bitcoin-Qt wallet somewhere safe just in case someone re-uses an address you gave them in the past)?

[Mike Hearn]

Yep, that's the right way to do it. Just send the money from one to the other.

[DannyHamilton]

This is just one of many reasons why its a bad idea to allow people to have an expectation that they can re-use an address to send you bitcoins.

If everyone already expects to need to get a new address from you each time they send you bitcoins, then abandoning an old set of addresses becomes insignificant.

[wirmola]

sry my wrong, I should have explained that I have payments coming to this wallet for a few years time every week. I think :/ otherwise I would have just done as said earlier:)

[wirmola]

And the worst part is I am not sure where all the payments are coming from, some of them might be since bitcoinica time or when GLBSE was running..

[DeathAndTaxes]

sry my wrong, I should have explained that I have payments coming to this wallet for a few years time every week. I think :/ otherwise I would have just done as said earlier:)

Use pywallet and extract the private keys.  You can then import them into another wallet.  You don't need to import all the keys just the ones you get regular payments on.   I would save a copy of the encrypted wallet.dat and an encrypted copy of the pywallet dump offline just to be safe.