Hey,
If I use a paper wallet , my wallet address will be on a piece of paper, right? But, how do I access my wallet and check how many bitcoins I have and how do I send/receive bitcoins? Do I need to download a software or do I need to use a website for this?
Also, is the paper wallet system reversible? Can I switch back to Coinbase if I want to?
Thanks for the replies!
First, there is a PUBLIC and and associated
private address. The PUBLIC address is what you see posted online and in people's signatures, etc. The
private address is what you need to spend the BTC balance and that must be kept secure and protected. The
private address is like having a $100 bill (or actually, like having the cash value of your address in cash). Anyone who gets the
private address can spend the associated BTC and the transaction cannot be reversed. Look at this tutorial for a paper wallet... they
private address is the part marked "SPEND" (
https://blockchain.info/wallet/paper-tutorial ). Both the
private and public are printed on the paper wallet so that piece of paper needs to be protected.
You can get the balance of any BTC address by putting the PUBLIC address into blockchain.info on this page (
https://blockchain.info/ ) You'll see a not very obvious search bar, half way down on the right side. Paste the BTC PUBLIC address into that search bar and it will show you the balance and all transactions on the address.
The paper wallet is like a back up, you can import it into coinbase (on the page where you can print it, you can also import it... separate button) or you can import it into any of the other wallet management tools online or off line. It is a backup to what is stored on your coinbase account. (I also use bitcoin-qt on my computer, I copy off my wallet file to a separate USB drive for storage. Then when I had to reload my computer, I just went and pulled that copy of my file back into the newly loaded bitcoin-qt and it was fine.) The wallet really is only the two addresses. It is the blockchain that knows what coins have gone into or out of those addresses. So, you can print you paper wallet today, store it somewhere SAFE, and just leave it.
NOW - getting from paper to digital?
- You'll have your coinbase account, so you can always just look at your live account
- If you have a smart phone, you can load an app to read the QR code on your paper wallet. (You probably also want some sort of bitcoin app to help in making payments)
- You could retype the character string that is printed on the paper wallet... it would take some concentration, but there is no reason that you couldn't just type it in.
