private key import says no funds

[hannesvorno]

Trying to import my private key from jaxx wallet but it says it has no funds, even tho it has funds.
Had issue with jaxx where I sent a payment and it didn’t change my balance nor doesn’t show up in transaction history but it definitely arrived to my other wallet.
So now I can’t even send more because there’s wrong balance and idk what’s wrong tried everything

[nc50lc]

From Jaxx to which wallet?
What type of bitcoin address are you trying to import (starts with what letter/number)?

Because almost all wallets do not automatically import/sweep from all the possible script types.

[NeuroticFish]

Trying to import my private key from jaxx wallet but it says it has no funds, even tho it has funds.
Had issue with jaxx where I sent a payment and it didn’t change my balance nor doesn’t show up in transaction history but it definitely arrived to my other wallet.
So now I can’t even send more because there’s wrong balance and idk what’s wrong tried everything

1. Did you check on a block explorer (blockchair.com, mempool.space) if the address for that private key actually had funds?
2. Where did you import the private key, into what wallet software?
3. Is the resulted address the same? For example in Electrum you may have to put in front of private key one of p2pkh: , p2wpkh-p2sh: , p2wpkh:

[hannesvorno]

From Jaxx to which wallet?
What type of bitcoin address are you trying to import (starts with what letter/number)?

Because almost all wallets do not automatically import/sweep from all the possible script types.

Address starts with 1 and private key starts with K.
Tried plenty of wallets - mycelium, coinomi etc
I think it has to do something that my balance didn’t change after I sent a small transaction to other wallet.

[hannesvorno]

Trying to import my private key from jaxx wallet but it says it has no funds, even tho it has funds.
Had issue with jaxx where I sent a payment and it didn’t change my balance nor doesn’t show up in transaction history but it definitely arrived to my other wallet.
So now I can’t even send more because there’s wrong balance and idk what’s wrong tried everything

1. Did you check on a block explorer (blockchair.com, mempool.space) if the address for that private key actually had funds?
2. Where did you import the private key, into what wallet software?
3. Is the resulted address the same? For example in Electrum you may have to put in front of private key one of p2pkh: , p2wpkh-p2sh: , p2wpkh:

Okay checked on blockchair and it doesn’t have funds indeed... thats weird. It shows that it all went to the wallet I sent 50$. Like 50$ to one address and the rest of my balance to other address.
Says “most likely it is the senders change address”

[NeuroticFish]

Okay checked on blockchair and it doesn’t have funds indeed... thats weird. It shows that it all went to the wallet I sent 50$. Like 50$ to one address and the rest of my balance to other address.
Says “most likely it is the senders change address”

The change address should be another address in your initial (Jaxx) wallet, the wallet you sent the funds from. That's the address for which you have to find out the private key (in Jaxx) and import it to another wallet.

[nc50lc]

-snip-
I think it has to do something that my balance didn’t change after I sent a small transaction to other wallet.

You've sent a transaction so it must be in your "change address" instead of the address where the funds are from.

If you want to import the whole BTC wallet, not just the address, you can import the "seed phrase" (12/24-words) instead of a single private key.
Select "legacy" or "P2PKH" if the wallet prompted you to select script/address type.
That's if the wallet where you're importing supports BIP39 seed.

[hannesvorno]

Okay checked on blockchair and it doesn’t have funds indeed... thats weird. It shows that it all went to the wallet I sent 50$. Like 50$ to one address and the rest of my balance to other address.
Says “most likely it is the senders change address”

The change address should be another address in your initial (Jaxx) wallet, the wallet you sent the funds from. That's the address for which you have to find out the private key (in Jaxx) and import it to another wallet.

Hell yeah! It was there, thank you! It just didn’t show that it had balance on my private key list.
Managed to import the second address to another app, thanks a lot!:)

[NeuroticFish]

Hell yeah! It was there, thank you! It just didn’t show that it had balance on my private key list.
Managed to import the second address to another app, thanks a lot!:)

I'm glad I could help.

My advice is to:
1. save that private key safely for a while
2. create a new HD wallet (with a seed), preferably supporting SegWit (so with addresses starting with bc1 or 3) which will allow you smaller fees too
3. save the seed very safely
4. Transfer all your funds from the initial address at (point 1) to this new HD wallet.


If you don't do this, your wallet will always have only one address, which is not advised, especially because it somewhat hurts your privacy.

[Pmalek]

Hell yeah! It was there, thank you! It just didn’t show that it had balance on my private key list.

Bitcoin doesn't work the same way as a bank account or even as Ethereum for that matter.
If you have 1 ETH and you send 0.1 to someone else, your address will now show a balance of 0.9 ETH - the transaction fees.

Bitcoin has inputs and outputs. Look at your UTXOs as individual fiat money bills. Each UTXO is one bill, no matter the amount. It works the same for 1 BTC as well as 0.0087 BTC, for example.

If you have an UTXO of 1 BTC and you send 0.1 to someone else, that entire sum will be spent in the following way:
- 0.1 BTC will go to the receiver.
- the rest (change) will be sent back to a new address in your wallet - the transaction fee.

After you made the transaction, the whole UTXO got spent, so when you imported your private key, it showed you that it had no balance. And that's correct, it doesn't. The remaining coins were sent to your change address. The private key of the change address would have to be imported to be able to spend the remaining funds.

[HCP]

Might be worth having a read of this: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Change
and this: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Coin_analogy

They help explain the fundamentals of how "change" works in Bitcoin.

The important thing to note is that for most modern wallets that are not "paper" wallets, you don't have a single address and single private key. You'll have multiple addresses and private keys... and they'll generally be split into "receive" and "change" address.