Need a good LTC wallet please

[snarlpill]

Hey guys, looking into getting into Litecoin by trying out some faucet sites, maybe looking into scrypt mining, etc. But I need a good, trusted Litecoin wallet to setup first. Any suggestions? Thanks.

[Sharrow]

Dunno, maybe Litecoin.org would be a good place to get a wallet? 

[El Dude]

Dunno, maybe Litecoin.org would be a good place to get a wallet? 

+1

[snarlpill]

Hmm....    Duh. Thanks man. Reminds me of the time I lost my cell phone but it was in my hand the whole time, lol. 
Dowloaded Litecoin-Qt 0.8.6.2 for Windows. It's synchronizing with the LTC network right now, lot of catching up to do. What all can I do with this program? Just store, send, and receive LTC?

[El Dude]

Hmm....    Duh. Thanks man. Reminds me of the time I lost my cell phone but it was in my hand the whole time, lol. 
Dowloaded Litecoin-Qt 0.8.6.2 for Windows. It's synchronizing with the LTC network right now, lot of catching up to do. What all can I do with this program? Just store, send, and receive LTC?

yes , also consider making a paperwallet here liteaddress.org

[flounderella]

Just get the QT. Surely you have done all this before?

http://www.coindesk.com/get-started-litecoin/

[snarlpill]

I have not, brother. Completely new to Litecoin, fairly new to Bitcoin (though I have been following it for a good while). I downloaded the Qt off of Litecoin.org as was suggested. I will def. check out the site you posted in a little bit, I already have 4 tabs open and the Litecoin program is still catching up on 2 years of transactions, slowing down my computer a little. I'm thinking this might take a while...

[El Dude]

I have not, brother. Completely new to Litecoin, fairly new to Bitcoin (though I have been following it for a good while). I downloaded the Qt off of Litecoin.org as was suggested. I will def. check out the site you posted in a little bit, I already have 4 tabs open and the Litecoin program is still catching up on 2 years of transactions, slowing down my computer a little. I'm thinking this might take a while...

you could speed it up with this https://litecoin.info/Bootstrap.dat

[flounderella]

I have not, brother. Completely new to Litecoin, fairly new to Bitcoin (though I have been following it for a good while). I downloaded the Qt off of Litecoin.org as was suggested. I will def. check out the site you posted in a little bit, I already have 4 tabs open and the Litecoin program is still catching up on 2 years of transactions, slowing down my computer a little. I'm thinking this might take a while...

No worries. Welcome.

You have a few options with how to maintain your wallet:

1. Online with exchanges like Cryptsy
Pros: Easy to trade with. You can use it to buy other currencies if you see a good one. Easy to maintain track of where LTC/BTC is priced, and how much your stake is worth.
Cons: Exchanges can be unreliable, down for maintenance or worse, get hacked. Fees for withdrawals.

My rec: Only keep a very small part of your coins online; preferably none. Remember you can always transfer them to an exchange if needed.

2. Locally (e.g. in the litcoin-qt app)
Pros: Easy to use since its on your own PC.
Con: You need to protect your PC from malware which can steal your dough. Also, you'll need to always sync up the wallet before you can transact. You'll also need to maintain the current version number. For BTC, LTC, version upgrades are infrequent but not so for other coins. If you are on a wrong fork, you may not receive your coins.

My rec: Keep it encrypted with a strong passphrase and don't forget it. Keep a backup of %APPDIR%\litecoin\wallet.dat on a secondary storage. Maybe two secondary storage devices if it has any non-significant amount. Install some good security suites on your PC, e.g. Avast Antivirus/Firewall, Zemana Anti-Keylogger, MalwareByes, Spybot etc. They are mostly free. You'll be surprised at the amount of trojans lurking around these threads. Always download official wallets for Litecoin as well as any others you may get interested in. Best is if you can do linux and build the wallet from github.


3. Completely offline (paper wallet).
Pros: Safest. Well unless you lose the physical wallet
Cons: Somewhat illiquid because you'll need to import it into a qt to transact. But great for long term storage

[snarlpill]

Thanks for the info. flounderella.

you could speed it up with this https://litecoin.info/Bootstrap.dat

Is there anyway you could please break that down into more layman's terms and explain to me how to get that bootstrap file into my Litecoin directory?

[TTM]

Currently only official QT client is trustable, but first time syncing is really a pain. I hope Multibit/Electrum/Amory will soon release a version for Litecoin.

[TookDk]

Thanks for the info. flounderella.

you could speed it up with this https://litecoin.info/Bootstrap.dat

Is there anyway you could please break that down into more layman's terms and explain to me how to get that bootstrap file into my Litecoin directory?

-Make sure Litecoin-QT is closed.
-Copy the bootstrap.dat into "C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\Litecoin" (this is the default path for win7)
-Start Litecoin-QT

When Litecoin-QT start synching with the network, it will load from the bootstrap.dat file first, instead of downloading the entire blockchain by peer-to-peer. That usually save some time when installing a new wallet. If you are not in a hurry, then just let it sync by it self.

By the way I only use Litecoin-QT, not even considering anything else, runs very stable.  

Edit: flounderella pretty much sums up all you need to get a good start, read his post carefully.

[alison03]

I have not, brother. Completely new to Litecoin, fairly new to Bitcoin (though I have been following it for a good while). I downloaded the Qt off of Litecoin.org as was suggested. I will def. check out the site you posted in a little bit, I already have 4 tabs open and the Litecoin program is still catching up on 2 years of transactions, slowing down my computer a little. I'm thinking this might take a while...

No worries. Welcome.

You have a few options with how to maintain your wallet:

1. Online with exchanges like Cryptsy
Pros: Easy to trade with. You can use it to buy other currencies if you see a good one. Easy to maintain track of where LTC/BTC is priced, and how much your stake is worth.
Cons: Exchanges can be unreliable, down for maintenance or worse, get hacked. Fees for withdrawals.

My rec: Only keep a very small part of your coins online; preferably none. Remember you can always transfer them to an exchange if needed.

2. Locally (e.g. in the litcoin-qt app)
Pros: Easy to use since its on your own PC.
Con: You need to protect your PC from malware which can steal your dough. Also, you'll need to always sync up the wallet before you can transact. You'll also need to maintain the current version number. For BTC, LTC, version upgrades are infrequent but not so for other coins. If you are on a wrong fork, you may not receive your coins.

My rec: Keep it encrypted with a strong passphrase and don't forget it. Keep a backup of %APPDIR%\litecoin\wallet.dat on a secondary storage. Maybe two secondary storage devices if it has any non-significant amount. Install some good security suites on your PC, e.g. Avast Antivirus/Firewall, Zemana Anti-Keylogger, MalwareByes, Spybot etc. They are mostly free. You'll be surprised at the amount of trojans lurking around these threads. Always download official wallets for Litecoin as well as any others you may get interested in. Best is if you can do linux and build the wallet from github.


3. Completely offline (paper wallet).
Pros: Safest. Well unless you lose the physical wallet
Cons: Somewhat illiquid because you'll need to import it into a qt to transact. But great for long term storage

Thank you for taking time to write this out. Could you expand on the last line? I'm really new and having a hard time grasping what qt is and how to use it? Or if it's even necessary? Can I just get a paper wallet for my litecoins from liteaddress.org, store coins, and then like send it to btc-e when, in the future, I'm ready to sell?

[TookDk]

Personally I use two QT clients and a paperwallet, which serves different purposes.

1. QT-wallet "hotwallet" on my regular PC for everyday transactions, never keep too much in this wallet, if the ballence gets to high, I transfer some of the funds to my coldwallet.
2. QT-wallet "coldwallet", on a dedicated PC that I only startup when I need to make a transaction.
3. Paperwallet, for long time storage, I never touch this one, hidden away, far way. The private key has super high entropy and is generated manually, the private key has never been exposed to any networks.

[TookDk]

Thank you for taking time to write this out. Could you expand on the last line? I'm really new and having a hard time grasping what qt is and how to use it? Or if it's even necessary? Can I just get a paper wallet for my litecoins from liteaddress.org, store coins, and then like send it to btc-e when, in the future, I'm ready to sell?

Yes, you can store your coins in a paperwallet.

You must understand that a "wallet" is basically a private key that can sign transaction messages.
Only the person who has the private key can sign a transaction from a given litecoin address.
 
It is very safe way to store coins in paperwallets, since you can generate the wallet (privatekey) completely offline.
The problem comes when you want to spend your coins, sooner or later you have to "expose" your key to internet.
(there are some ways to avoid this with applications like "Amory", but that is only for expert-users).

If you have paper wallet, you can import that private key into QT fairly easy and safe, but then is the private key "exposed", and you must make a new paper wallet.

In other words, you can only (safely) redraw funds one time from a paperwallet.

[alison03]

Gotcha. I think that makes sense, thank you.

To confirm though, once I have a paper wallet with ltc deposited, I can just leave it there. Then when I want to sell, I will have to download something like litecoin-qt? I can't just make a deposit to an exchange like btc-e or cryptsy? I would have to take my private key, import it to litecoin-qt and then I can move it to an exchange? I just have a laptop so the idea of downloading all these big files is unappealing.

[flounderella]

Personally I use two QT clients and a paperwallet, which serves different purposes.

1. QT-wallet "hotwallet" on my regular PC for everyday transactions, never keep too much in this wallet, if the ballence gets to high, I transfer some of the funds to my coldwallet.
2. QT-wallet "coldwallet", on a dedicated PC that I only startup when I need to make a transaction.
3. Paperwallet, for long time storage, I never touch this one, hidden away, far way. The private key has super high entropy and is generated manually, the private key has never been exposed to any networks.

This is really the best way to go...

[TookDk]

Gotcha. I think that makes sense, thank you.

To confirm though, once I have a paper wallet with ltc deposited, I can just leave it there. Then when I want to sell, I will have to download something like litecoin-qt? I can't just make a deposit to an exchange like btc-e or cryptsy? I would have to take my private key, import it to litecoin-qt and then I can move it to an exchange? I just have a laptop so the idea of downloading all these big files is unappealing.

Yes, you got it right!

If your wallet is passphrase protected, you will have to unlock the wallet before you issue the "importprivkey" command.  You can do this with the following command in the "Console":

walletpassphrase "yourPassPhrase" ###

Where ### is the number of sec. the wallet should be unlocked

importprivkey yourPrivateKey

Where yourPrivateKey is the private key that you want to import.

The client freeze for a few minutes, this is normal since it has to scan the entire blockchain.

***
I don't know any other options for litecoin, you have to investigate that.
I know for bitcoin that you can import a privatekey into blockchain online wallet, or mycilium can also load a key, actually you can use the webcam, its pretty cool. Mt.Gox also had a "redeem private key" function before he died.


I will recommend that you try loading a paperwallet with 0.001 LTC and try to redeem them again, so you have some experience and know what you are doing the day you need to redeem your saving.

Edit: Maybe else someone knows if there is a litecoin online-wallet that can redeem privatekeys, simular to blockchain-wallet?