Best way to create watch only wallet?

[cellard]

Im trying to create a watch only address for a wallet.dat file with Bitcoin Core. Last time I attempted this I think the command lines were different. Right now I can't seem to do it.

Do you have a step by step tutorial to do this? I would like to have all the addresses nicely ordered in the watch only wallet. I would also like a step by step tutorial in how to do the raw transaction thing because I haven't done this in years and im not sure if things have changed.

Can I do it through the GUI selecting any inputs I want, then export what I did in a raw text and paste it within the online node? because doing it manually is a pain in the ass:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWKuqP-zTFk

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[LoyceV]

Im trying to create a watch only address for a wallet.dat file with Bitcoin Core. Last time I attempted this I think the command lines were different. Right now I can't seem to do it.

Do you have a step by step tutorial to do this? I would like to have all the addresses nicely ordered in the watch only wallet.

Are you making a new wallet.dat which you'll only use for watch only addresses?
What I do, is just import the addresses into my existing wallet, and write "watch only" in the label. You can sort the address labels, so depending on how you name them, it's easy to find them all back withing a wallet with normal balances too.

I haven't tried it in the latest wallet yet, but this should work: importaddress.
Use "false" to prevent Bitcoin Core from rescanning after each address, it will save you many hours.

[cellard]

Im trying to create a watch only address for a wallet.dat file with Bitcoin Core. Last time I attempted this I think the command lines were different. Right now I can't seem to do it.

Do you have a step by step tutorial to do this? I would like to have all the addresses nicely ordered in the watch only wallet.

Are you making a new wallet.dat which you'll only use for watch only addresses?
What I do, is just import the addresses into my existing wallet, and write "watch only" in the label. You can sort the address labels, so depending on how you name them, it's easy to find them all back withing a wallet with normal balances too.

I haven't tried it in the latest wallet yet, but this should work: importaddress.
Use "false" to prevent Bitcoin Core from rescanning after each address, it will save you many hours.

Just imagine a wallet.dat filled with 100's of transactions. I want to have a 1:1 replica which is watch only in an online node and leave the one with the actual coins in cold storage. Whenever I need to recieve of transact I would load the offline node, create the receiving addresses needed or do a raw tx and pass it into the online node.

Can I import it all in bulk? if I have to do it one address at a time it will be a pain in the ass. Like I said before, we are talking 100's.

[LoyceV]

Can I import it all in bulk? if I have to do it one address at a time it will be a pain in the ass. Like I said before, we are talking 100's.

See this:

create & execute .bat file with lines like

Code:

"C:\Program Files\Bitcoin\daemon\bitcoind.exe" importprivkey L4mP3joYEhSv1ofdsWbz8xEmqCmYK9vGyi8mJmWWbh79Xx2NsS1M addr-1DfyaDvr-1 false
"C:\Program Files\Bitcoin\daemon\bitcoind.exe" importprivkey Ky2EGjWLhfKv1sWnPcuN4SHF2iALj6SfK7hoLWKx5T4zMqXg7aT9 addr-1DfyaDvr-2 false
"C:\Program Files\Bitcoin\daemon\bitcoind.exe" importprivkey KzrZ4DULdVWFqpF48pdJicFJfX5dqrhxBkqDnT4HRkCswdFy3Eo4 addr-1DfyaDvr-3 false
"C:\Program Files\Bitcoin\daemon\bitcoind.exe" importprivkey L2ELWXewr1PQnMwFDpfobHFqspyM6g1noM4uzkCMgoSZTSf3sQJF addr-1DfyaDvr-4 false
...

[aleksej996]

Well I mean, I can write a sh script for you, if you want.
Just run "bitcoin-cli getnewaddress" a thousand times, store it in file, and run "bitcoin-cli importaddress" on those addresses.

Is that what you are trying to achieve?

[pooya87]

unfortunately there are a lot of features missing from bitcoin core although it has the capability of supporting all of them. maybe someone with more insight can tell "why" they are missing?

bitcoin core is already a Hierarchical Deterministic wallet which means you have a master private key that all your key pairs are being derived from. you can use "dumpwallet a file path" to get that master private key in a plain text. having this means you should technically be able to derive all the private/public keys that are currently in use or will be in the future.

but now the problem is in your watch only wallet you want to import a master public key but bitcoin core doesn't have this feature. you can however use another tool to get the addresses from your master public key then use "importmulti" command to import your addresses in your watch only wallet. but then you will have to do it every time you create a new key pair outside of the range that you just imported.

[cellard]

My wallet is from an old version of Core so it shouldn't be HD. Im not sure if the latest versions of Core did something to the wallet and converted it into an HD wallet or not.

Anyway, I need to monitor the public keys. I don't understand why I need to import anything but the public key. It would be the same as using a block explorer but better because it's all inside the Core wallet so you get the sum of all of your balances and you can use it for raw transactions with your offline wallet.

Someone suggested a bat file but the problem is I would like to have the labels too.. so I would need to manually label everything which is hell.

Isn't there really a way to get a dump of all of your balances with the public keys + the labels only so it's ideal to import in an online wallet so you don't risk importing anything that could compromise your wallet (like a master key, which could be used for derivation of private keys so you don't want any of that in an online computer)? I hope this makes sense.

[seoincorporation]

The video you post was about how to create a raw transaction, and that's other topic, after reading your posts i'm not sure what are you trying to do, but it looks like an onchain engine. You need to give more clear ideas about what are you trying.

By the way, if you wan a watch only wallet, you don't need bitcoin core for it, you can use commands like

Code:

curl, wget or lynx

to read the information form the addy direct on the web, that way you can avoid running the full node.

[cellard]

The video you post was about how to create a raw transaction, and that's other topic, after reading your posts i'm not sure what are you trying to do, but it looks like an onchain engine. You need to give more clear ideas about what are you trying.

By the way, if you wan a watch only wallet, you don't need bitcoin core for it, you can use commands like

Code:

curl, wget or lynx

to read the information form the addy direct on the web, that way you can avoid running the full node.

I like to run a full online node better and transact through it rather than trusting some website.

The video was to ilustrate how annoying ti is to do a raw transaction manually. What I want to do is have an online node with all of my balances in watch only, so importing the public key + the label to know from where these bitcoins came from.

For instance you get paid in bc1dfgdsghiihidhgiusdhguisui under label "Chipmixer signature campaign".

Now, that is in an offline wallet, so you can't know if the coins arrived.

The idea is to put bc1dfgdsghiihidhgiusdhguisui in an online wallet (by online wallet I mean synced full Core node) with label "Chipmixer signature campaign". Of course the problem is if you have 100's of different addresses with different labels, you would need to import all manually. I need to dump all this information at once. And be sure to not import anything sensitive in the online wallet, like private addresses or even xpub which I don't trust to be online.

[pooya87]

My wallet is from an old version of Core so it shouldn't be HD. Im not sure if the latest versions of Core did something to the wallet and converted it into an HD wallet or not.

if you created your wallet with a bitcoin core version that is smaller than 0.13.0 then it is not HD and upgrading your bitcoin core to a higher version never changed this so far up to 0.16.x that i have seen.

i would say using Electrum is so much more user friendly than core. of course you should already know that an SPV wallet is not providing you with near as much security or privacy that a full node provides even through Tor.

[bob123]

i would say using Electrum is so much more user friendly than core. of course you should already know that an SPV wallet is not providing you with near as much security or privacy that a full node provides even through Tor.

While you are right with the heavily decreased privacy on an SPV client, the sercurity should be completely independent from the type of the wallet (full node / SPV).

All a wallet needs to do in order to be secure, is to keep all private information secured.
This is not depending on whether the wallet gets the information through an SPV server or through other nodes on the network.

The proper process of gathering entropy, generating private keys, storing/encrypting private keys is what makes a wallet secure / not secure. Not the source of information.

[pooya87]

i would say using Electrum is so much more user friendly than core. of course you should already know that an SPV wallet is not providing you with near as much security or privacy that a full node provides even through Tor.

While you are right with the heavily decreased privacy on an SPV client, the sercurity should be completely independent from the type of the wallet (full node / SPV).

All a wallet needs to do in order to be secure, is to keep all private information secured.
This is not depending on whether the wallet gets the information through an SPV server or through other nodes on the network.

The proper process of gathering entropy, generating private keys, storing/encrypting private keys is what makes a wallet secure / not secure. Not the source of information.

you are correct but i was talking about a different aspect of security which concerns receiving blocks and transaction history. when you run a full node, you receive each block and verify them. so for example when you receive a transaction in block X and then time passes and X+3 block is also found, you can be sure it is deep enough to not be double spent. but when you run an SPV node you can not verify blocks, you trust a node is doing it and is not on a wrong fork and there is no block reorg. depending on how the SPV client works these can be more or less serious. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Thin_Client_Security