Coin Control Without Satoshi Client?

[Injust]

Hiya,

I've been using the Satoshi client for a long time now, and since my internet speed and CPUs are horribly slow, well blockchain synchronization takes forever. However, I very much like the coin control feature in the client.

Is there any alternative client where I don't have to download the entire blockchain but there is still coin control features?

Thanks.

[piotr_n]

You can do it using gocoin, in node-less mode. You just need to build fetchbal tool and the wallet

Fetch the balance of your address(es) from a block explorer - e.g.:

Code:

fetchbal 1HZAQy4sq5JHtkbeEpHNB5NooqpskpNYzB 1GysXMDoDDkgrJcAK92SdEohbHvabu1PTX 1MvkVTM8eJ7FKMZnLLHA9FYUhwdPHE2rNt

Now you can edit the file balance/unspent.txt and leave there only the inputs you want to spend.

Then use wallet tool with the balance folder to make & sign a transaction. Obviously first you will need to arm the wallet with proper private keys (better do it on an offline machine).

And then just broadcast the signed transaction file (e.g. using this page: https://blockchain.info/pushtx)

Let me know if you had any questions.

[Injust]

You can do it using gocoin, in node-less mode. You just need to build fetchbal tool and the wallet

Fetch the balance of your address(es) from a block explorer - e.g.:

Code:

fetchbal 1HZAQy4sq5JHtkbeEpHNB5NooqpskpNYzB 1GysXMDoDDkgrJcAK92SdEohbHvabu1PTX 1MvkVTM8eJ7FKMZnLLHA9FYUhwdPHE2rNt

Now you can edit the file balance/unspent.txt and leave there only the inputs you want to spend.

Then use wallet tool with the balance folder to make & sign a transaction. Obviously first you will need to arm the wallet with proper private keys (better do it on an offline machine).

And then just broadcast the signed transaction file (e.g. using this page: https://blockchain.info/pushtx)

Let me know if you had any questions.

Thanks for the input. I was actually looking for something more like the GUI in the Satoshi client, which would be more user-friendly for me
Going the manual selection of inputs method though, I think that brainwallet.org looks interesting.
But if anybody knows of a client that has a GUI for Coin Control but doesn't download the blockchain, please let me know.

[piotr_n]

I see what you mean. You would need the whole client node to have a kind of GUI selection, via its web interface. That's how I do it.

Creating a GUI wrapper (like in Java, C# or even PHP), that would call fetchbal and then allow to edit the unspent.txt file in a more user-friendly way, perhaps even run the wallet at the end - that should not be much of a challenge. But nobody has created it, fwik

[fbueller]

I wonder about the easiest way to implement this. Do you use electrum by any chance? That would really simplify how you learn about transactions.

So - Query an API for tx's to addresses in your wallet, list all unspent inputs, give you a checkbox to select which inputs you want to spend, and then create a raw transaction suitable for electrum, and then broadcast?

[piotr_n]

I would not know about Electrum, but if someone would like to make a coin-control GUI wrapper for Gocoin wallet, that is easy to implement:

1) Run tools/fetchbal to fetch unspent outputs of your wallet

2) Edit balance/unspent.txt file and leave there only the coins you are going to spend

3) Run "wallet -fee 0.001 -send addr=amount -change change_addr" to crate & sign a transaction. You can add "-useallinputs" switch, if you want to force including all the inputs (otherwise it will only use as many as you need for the amount).

4) Broadcast the raw transaction file, e.g. using this page: https://blockchain.info/pushtx

You don't need Electrum nowhere in the process.

[fbueller]

Piotr_n: you posted that already in this thread. Why are you telling me again?

[piotr_n]

Piotr_n: you posted that already in this thread. Why are you telling me again?

Sorry - misunderstanding.

I wasn't sure what you meant asking what would be the easiest way to implement "this", nor who you were even talking to.
You posted it right after the post where I mentioned "Creating a GUI wrapper", so I though that "this" could be referring to implementing the GUI wrapper.

And what was your "this" actually referring to, BTW?

[fbueller]

Piotr_n: you posted that already in this thread. Why are you telling me again?

Sorry - misunderstanding.

I wasn't sure what you meant asking what would be the easiest way to implement "this", nor who you were even talking to.
You posted it right after the post where I mentioned "Creating a GUI wrapper", so I though that "this" could be referring to implementing the GUI wrapper.

And what was your "this" actually referring to, BTW?

Ah ok. I was responding to the OP, asking if he used electrum since he didn't say what he used. I didn't understand why you were telling me about gocoin since I saw your post, but, I guess if you thought I was responding to yours that'd explain the confusion.

This - being one possible solution for the OP. Something to get his UXTOs and let him choose what he spends.

[Injust]

Piotr_n: you posted that already in this thread. Why are you telling me again?

Sorry - misunderstanding.

I wasn't sure what you meant asking what would be the easiest way to implement "this", nor who you were even talking to.
You posted it right after the post where I mentioned "Creating a GUI wrapper", so I though that "this" could be referring to implementing the GUI wrapper.

And what was your "this" actually referring to, BTW?

Ah ok. I was responding to the OP, asking if he used electrum since he didn't say what he used. I didn't understand why you were telling me about gocoin since I saw your post, but, I guess if you thought I was responding to yours that'd explain the confusion.

This - being one possible solution for the OP. Something to get his UXTOs and let him choose what he spends.

For me, I currently use Bitcoin Core with blockchain.info for email alerts, so I don't have to constantly be syncing my blockchain.
I'm perfectly fine with switching to Electrum if it could do what I want, or any other client as a matter of fact.

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

Hiya,

I've been using the Satoshi client for a long time now, and since my internet speed and CPUs are horribly slow, well blockchain synchronization takes forever. However, I very much like the coin control feature in the client.

Is there any alternative client where I don't have to download the entire blockchain but there is still coin control features?

Thanks.

The only other wallet service that I am aware of that allows you to control your coins at the level that Bitcoin-QT does is blockchain.info's wallet. You can us custom send to specify which addresses to use for inputs, the change address and the miners fee (custom send)

[Injust]

Hiya,

I've been using the Satoshi client for a long time now, and since my internet speed and CPUs are horribly slow, well blockchain synchronization takes forever. However, I very much like the coin control feature in the client.

Is there any alternative client where I don't have to download the entire blockchain but there is still coin control features?

Thanks.

The only other wallet service that I am aware of that allows you to control your coins at the level that Bitcoin-QT does is blockchain.info's wallet. You can us custom send to specify which addresses to use for inputs, the change address and the miners fee (custom send)

Yes, I am well aware of that possibility. However, I was looking for something similar to the level of control as Bitcoin Core, where you can control the individual inputs. Per-address input selection is just not fine enough for me.

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

Hiya,

I've been using the Satoshi client for a long time now, and since my internet speed and CPUs are horribly slow, well blockchain synchronization takes forever. However, I very much like the coin control feature in the client.

Is there any alternative client where I don't have to download the entire blockchain but there is still coin control features?

Thanks.

The only other wallet service that I am aware of that allows you to control your coins at the level that Bitcoin-QT does is blockchain.info's wallet. You can us custom send to specify which addresses to use for inputs, the change address and the miners fee (custom send)

Yes, I am well aware of that possibility. However, I was looking for something similar to the level of control as Bitcoin Core, where you can control the individual inputs. Per-address input selection is just not fine enough for me.

I believe there is an option on the blockchain.info website that allows you to push a signed TX to the network without a client. If you were to create and sign a TX with your individual inputs that you want to spend then you could use blockexplorer to keep track of your spent and unspent inputs.

[dabura667]

Electrum 2.0 will have coin control in it.

If you are a developer and can compile the source yourself, the current git head has coin control added.

You must right click an address with a balance and click "send from" (this can be while selecting multiple addresses.) and then in the send tab, each output will be a separate line, you can select and right click > "remove" to remove the outputs you don't want to send.

[Injust]

Hiya,

I've been using the Satoshi client for a long time now, and since my internet speed and CPUs are horribly slow, well blockchain synchronization takes forever. However, I very much like the coin control feature in the client.

Is there any alternative client where I don't have to download the entire blockchain but there is still coin control features?

Thanks.

The only other wallet service that I am aware of that allows you to control your coins at the level that Bitcoin-QT does is blockchain.info's wallet. You can us custom send to specify which addresses to use for inputs, the change address and the miners fee (custom send)

Yes, I am well aware of that possibility. However, I was looking for something similar to the level of control as Bitcoin Core, where you can control the individual inputs. Per-address input selection is just not fine enough for me.

I believe there is an option on the blockchain.info website that allows you to push a signed TX to the network without a client. If you were to create and sign a TX with your individual inputs that you want to spend then you could use blockexplorer to keep track of your spent and unspent inputs.

I've been using raw TXs to do my transactions for the past while, but it got a tad complicated with so many inputs.
I think I'll go away from that path for now because the last time I tried, I sent my output as the fee. #whoops
I know of a site (brainwallet.org) that has a slightly less complicated GUI for creating raw TXs, but AFAIK, you can't use inputs from multiple addresses on there, which I nearly always do.

[Injust]

Electrum 2.0 will have coin control in it.

If you are a developer and can compile the source yourself, the current git head has coin control added.

You must right click an address with a balance and click "send from" (this can be while selecting multiple addresses.) and then in the send tab, each output will be a separate line, you can select and right click > "remove" to remove the outputs you don't want to send.

Sounds exactly like what I'm looking for. I'll probably wait for Electrum 2.0 to be released, because I don't fancy compiling stuff.

Thanks!

[Injust]

Electrum 2.0 will have coin control in it.

If you are a developer and can compile the source yourself, the current git head has coin control added.

You must right click an address with a balance and click "send from" (this can be while selecting multiple addresses.) and then in the send tab, each output will be a separate line, you can select and right click > "remove" to remove the outputs you don't want to send.

Isn't the current git head just version 1.9.8? Because I'm reading through the release notes and it says that 1.9.8 contains features initially planned for version 2.0.

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

Hiya,

I've been using the Satoshi client for a long time now, and since my internet speed and CPUs are horribly slow, well blockchain synchronization takes forever. However, I very much like the coin control feature in the client.

Is there any alternative client where I don't have to download the entire blockchain but there is still coin control features?

Thanks.

The only other wallet service that I am aware of that allows you to control your coins at the level that Bitcoin-QT does is blockchain.info's wallet. You can us custom send to specify which addresses to use for inputs, the change address and the miners fee (custom send)

Yes, I am well aware of that possibility. However, I was looking for something similar to the level of control as Bitcoin Core, where you can control the individual inputs. Per-address input selection is just not fine enough for me.

I believe there is an option on the blockchain.info website that allows you to push a signed TX to the network without a client. If you were to create and sign a TX with your individual inputs that you want to spend then you could use blockexplorer to keep track of your spent and unspent inputs.

I've been using raw TXs to do my transactions for the past while, but it got a tad complicated with so many inputs.
I think I'll go away from that path for now because the last time I tried, I sent my output as the fee. #whoops
I know of a site (brainwallet.org) that has a slightly less complicated GUI for creating raw TXs, but AFAIK, you can't use inputs from multiple addresses on there, which I nearly always do.

My question is, why do you wish to have that much control over your inputs? Any program that gives you this control will have the possibility of making that mistake. With a wallet like multibit this would never happen. Even if you used blockchain.info's custom send, you would have control over where the coins come from.

[dabura667]

Isn't the current git head just version 1.9.8? Because I'm reading through the release notes and it says that 1.9.8 contains features initially planned for version 2.0.

The commit is https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/commit/e699ab6660ba91ccf194bed9d9aa4aa1ed913fb8

This commit is not in the 1.9.8 release. The 1.9.8 release is only up to this commit: https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/commit/f92b483942d3f8ee51506e0436d9b524db33a336

So if you are up to date on the git HEAD, you can access this functionality. Not to mention currently 2 of 3 and 2 of 2 BIP32 wallets are implemented.

If you would like to cherry-pick the coin control commit, it doesn't look dependent on any other recent commits, and only modifies the "send from" function to split up into outputs.

How to use git cherry-pick
http://git-scm.com/docs/git-cherry-pick

[Injust]

Hiya,

I've been using the Satoshi client for a long time now, and since my internet speed and CPUs are horribly slow, well blockchain synchronization takes forever. However, I very much like the coin control feature in the client.

Is there any alternative client where I don't have to download the entire blockchain but there is still coin control features?

Thanks.

The only other wallet service that I am aware of that allows you to control your coins at the level that Bitcoin-QT does is blockchain.info's wallet. You can us custom send to specify which addresses to use for inputs, the change address and the miners fee (custom send)

Yes, I am well aware of that possibility. However, I was looking for something similar to the level of control as Bitcoin Core, where you can control the individual inputs. Per-address input selection is just not fine enough for me.

I believe there is an option on the blockchain.info website that allows you to push a signed TX to the network without a client. If you were to create and sign a TX with your individual inputs that you want to spend then you could use blockexplorer to keep track of your spent and unspent inputs.

I've been using raw TXs to do my transactions for the past while, but it got a tad complicated with so many inputs.
I think I'll go away from that path for now because the last time I tried, I sent my output as the fee. #whoops
I know of a site (brainwallet.org) that has a slightly less complicated GUI for creating raw TXs, but AFAIK, you can't use inputs from multiple addresses on there, which I nearly always do.

My question is, why do you wish to have that much control over your inputs? Any program that gives you this control will have the possibility of making that mistake. With a wallet like multibit this would never happen. Even if you used blockchain.info's custom send, you would have control over where the coins come from.

I get small transactions to my Bitcoin addresses pretty regularly and I like the control over my inputs because it lets me consolidate them easily.
Pretty stupid reason, but oh well.