seed and wallet validation

[jon_btc]

So I heard that when first creating your wallet it is a good practice to send a small amount first ($20) erase the wallet, recreate using seed and check you still have your funds. Just as an extra step to verify your seed is working fine and you got everything right. Which made sense to me. I read recently someone mentioning that they also make a send test to verify they can also send from that wallet. I am not sure about if send test is really necessary. What is your opinion about these steps ? Do you perform any of these ?

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[DireWolfM14]

So I heard that when first creating your wallet it is a good practice to send a small amount first ($20) erase the wallet, recreate using seed and check you still have your funds. Just as an extra step to verify your seed is working fine and you got everything right. Which made sense to me. I read recently someone mentioning that they also make a send test to verify they can also send from that wallet. I am not sure about if send test is really necessary. What is your opinion about these steps ? Do you perform any of these ?

Yes is a prudent to validate that you wrote down the seed correctly, but you don't need to send any funds to do so.  Create the main wallet, then use the seed to "restore" another wallet with a slightly different name.  If both wallets have all the same addresses you're good to go.  To see the wallet addresses click on "View" then select "Addresses" to activate the address tab.

[FatFork]

What is your opinion about these steps ? Do you perform any of these ?

Honestly, I do. I think it is always prudent to send a small amount first before a large transaction if possible.

As for verifying you can send from the wallet (signing transactions), you don't even need to send anything outside.  Just create a test transaction within the wallet, sending back to itself.

[Zaguru12]

So I heard that when first creating your wallet it is a good practice to send a small amount first ($20) erase the wallet, recreate using seed and check you still have your funds. Just as an extra step to verify your seed is working fine and you got everything right. Which made sense to me. I read recently someone mentioning that they also make a send test to verify they can also send from that wallet. I am not sure about if send test is really necessary. What is your opinion about these steps ? Do you perform any of these ?

Just as said above you don’t need to send anything to verify a bitcoin wallet, once the seed phrase is correct which is checked by re importing it to another wallet or most at times wallet takes you back after creating the seed to re enter it again, which to me solves the issue.

The only time I think you need to transfer a small fund after creating a wallet is if the wallet created is a multi sig and you have done just as stated above for single sig wallet. You need to send small amount first or better still use testnet to learn how to send transactions with a multi sig too.

[Marvelman]

I totally agree with the initial test transfer.  Send a tiny amount (like $10-$20) to a different wallet you control, just to make sure everything goes smoothly.

[_act_]

Honestly, I do. I think it is always prudent to send a small amount first before a large transaction if possible.

I totally agree with the initial test transfer.  Send a tiny amount (like $10-$20) to a different wallet you control, just to make sure everything goes smoothly.

Why?

After you paste the address, check the address, make sure the address is correct. Check the address again and again. If it is correct, then send the amount of bitcoin that you want to send.

The reason someone may not want to send all the coins at ones is because of privacy and he will send to other addresses.

[jon_btc]

Why?

Since it is irreversible I guess we just need phycological confirmation. Even the big whales are observed doing this. People operating those balances cannot be noobs about how wallets or bitcoin works  but they still do it

[Marvelman]

I totally agree with the initial test transfer.  Send a tiny amount (like $10-$20) to a different wallet you control, just to make sure everything goes smoothly.

Why?

I just feel safer doing it that way. Obviously, I wouldn't do it for every transaction, just for the first one on a new wallet, like a new hardware wallet.

[Yamane_Keto]

Since it is irreversible I guess we just need phycological confirmation. Even the big whales are observed doing this. People operating those balances cannot be noobs about how wallets or bitcoin works  but they still do it

You do not need to test the wallet seed with a small amount, what you need is to verify the deposit address several times. big whales often does that to test the watchonly wallet, where the cold storage is set up separately and watchonly wallet is managed in an independent device, so the system is tested with a small amount to ensure that all was set up correctly.

will find such cases in some cold storage addresses that contain thousands of bitcoins.

[nc50lc]

I read recently someone mentioning that they also make a send test to verify they can also send from that wallet. I am not sure about if send test is really necessary.

That's probably for those who do not trust the ECDSA implementation, private, public key or address derivation of the hardware/software wallet that they are using.

Reason is; re-creating the wallet from the seed phrase only ensures that it can restore the same private keys and addresses as the original wallet without confirming if those are derived correctly.
You wont know if the public keys where the addresses are based from are the correct pair of those private keys until you try to sign a transaction.
or if its public key to address derivation has a bug somewhere that'll derive the wrong but valid addresses.
So if the wallet has some sort of bug that computes the wrong address, restoring the seed phrase to the same wallet and version will just repeat those same bugged operations.

While testing a "spend transaction" ensures that those private keys can really sign the test transaction which would ensure that the future transaction wont have any issues.

[jon_btc]

That's probably for those who do not trust the ECDSA implementation, private, public key or address derivation of the hardware/software wallet that they are using.

Thank you for the explanation. Do you think it is necessary to do this with a battle tested wallet like electrum ?

[decodx]

That's probably for those who do not trust the ECDSA implementation, private, public key or address derivation of the hardware/software wallet that they are using.

Thank you for the explanation. Do you think it is necessary to do this with a battle tested wallet like electrum ?

No, it's not necessary. Electrum's been around awhile, so you probably don't need to do a test send in the same wallet before moving your coins. As long as you download Electrum from the official source and verify its legit, and not some malware, you should be fine. 

But I get wanting extra peace of mind though.  Especially if you're moving a lot and,  personally, I'd test a small amount first, just to be 100% before I sent everything.  But that's just me being paranoid probably. 

[Yamane_Keto]

Do you think it is necessary to do this with a battle tested wallet like electrum ?

You can do this if you are using a recent version of Electrum that was released hours ago, where the possibility of errors is higher, or when you are setting up cold storage for the first time, but in general and for stable versions of wallets like Electrum, you do not need that.

[pooya87]

This is an excellent idea and I'd even go as far as advising others to test things first using testnet so that they are not even wasting their money. This is even more important for newcomers who are using a Bitcoin wallet for the first time and it is even more important for certain setups such as creating a cold storage.

In fact in such setups, you must test things out first. Create the cold storage, send some small amounts to it. Then try to spend it to both test your setup and also familiarize yourself with the whole process of
(1) creating an unsigned tx on a watch only online wallet
(2) transferring it to cold storage without compromising its security
(3) signing it there
(4) transferring the signed tx back to watch only online wallet again without compromising your security
(5) broadcasting
This whole process is something you should have done at least once to become familiar with it before using it with large amounts.

[nc50lc]

That's probably for those who do not trust the ECDSA implementation, private, public key or address derivation of the hardware/software wallet that they are using.

Thank you for the explanation. Do you think it is necessary to do this with a battle tested wallet like electrum ?

As of now, there's no know bug that'll create Electrum wallets that have different set of addresses and private keys.
But in the quite older versions, there was a certain condition that could cause a newly created wallet to end-up with a "master public key" from another loaded Electrum wallet.
There's now a system that could detect if something like that happens; you'll be notified with an error message.

Since the occurrence of bugs is "unpredictable",
I'd say that it could be done after wallet creation as a precaution in case you're going to store a significant amount, but it's not always necessary.

[Pmalek]

I have both types of wallets. I verify the signatures of all the wallets that make that possible.

Regarding the sending and returning a test transaction, it depends on how much I intend to store in said wallet. The wallets I have for long-term hodl have been tested in such a way. I generated a new seed, recovered the wallet from seed, checked if the addresses of the old and new wallet match, and I deposited a small amount and sent it back to see if everything works as it should. But I also have wallets for other purposes where I haven't deposited and sent a return transaction that I use for smaller amounts.