Cold storage wallet shows zero balance? (Warning: NOOB!)

[rustbucket]

hi there,

i'm pretty much a noob so i plea for your patience....

went through the most excellent tutorial series from 'coding in my sleep' on creating a cold storage wallet with Electrum and successfully transferred to my cold storage wallet a token bitcoin amount as a test, returned the signed transaction to my watching-only wallet and broadcast it to the network.

so now i'm wondering, and i'm sure there are a bunch of you who know exactly what question is coming next, why it is that my offline wallet 'transactions' tab is still blank and the receive address used shows no transactions (in the offline wallet). i know it's offline, i know the transfer has anyway been confirmed by the network, but where do i see that 0.01 bitcoin entry in my cold storage wallet?

I know it's offline so it can't synchronize with the network but will it never show a balance at all? That's rather a freaky prospect all told.

This is the final step before shutting away all those luvverly coins so i'm keen for an answer and would appreciate all help. Thank!

Adrian

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[1715386064]

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[mr_burdell]

You should have a corresponding watch only online wallet.  You create that with the public key from the offline wallet.  The online watch-only wallet is where you can view your balance.

[rustbucket]

thanks for the speedy reply!

oooooookaaayyy....so then i should steel myself for the fact that i will never see any balance or transaction history of any kind in my offline wallet? that although i'll be transferring the greater part of my bitcoins into this wallet, the offline wallet itself will never look any different than it did upon first installation and all information on deposits to it will be kept in the watch-only wallet and only the watch-only wallet?

it seems a little counter-intuitive so i just want to double-check.

thanks again for the speedy reply!

adrian

[dabura667]

thanks for the speedy reply!

oooooookaaayyy....so then i should steel myself for the fact that i will never see any balance or transaction history of any kind in my offline wallet? that although i'll be transferring the greater part of my bitcoins into this wallet, the offline wallet itself will never look any different than it did upon first installation and all information on deposits to it will be kept in the watch-only wallet and only the watch-only wallet?

it seems a little counter-intuitive so i just want to double-check.

thanks again for the speedy reply!

adrian

Think of it this way.

Your offline Electrum exists ONLY to sign transactions. As it can never touch the internet it doesn't know anything about the blockchain, and has never seen the blockchain before in it's life.

Your offline Electrum wallet becomes useful ONLY when an online watch-only counterpart exists to create transactions and manage balances for it.

Honestly, I think that when Electrum is in offline mode, it should shrink to a minimalistic GUI that just has one button. "Open unsigned transaction" and doesn't show the tabs for receive addresses or anything.


You don't need all that info for your offline wallet, all you need is to sign with it.

[Abdussamad]

Honestly, I think that when Electrum is in offline mode, it should shrink to a minimalistic GUI that just has one button. "Open unsigned transaction" and doesn't show the tabs for receive addresses or anything.


You don't need all that info for your offline wallet, all you need is to sign with it.

No this would be bad. I'd like to be able to see the addresses on my offline wallet so that I know they match the ones on my online one.