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Author Topic: Bitcoin Client Balance  (Read 1418 times)
Arsenal (OP)
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May 02, 2011, 06:19:48 AM
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I've been using BTCs for a while now, but I have one question that is always making me paranoid about whether I actually have as many as the client says I have.

Let's say I have a wallet.dat with 10 BTC.  I then exit the client, copy the wallet.dat file, encrypt it, and store it somewhere.
I go back into the client that is still using that same wallet.dat with 10BTC and I send out 5BTC to a friend's wallet.
Now if I replace that wallet.dat file with the encrypted one (after its been decrypted) what will the balance that is shown in the client say?

Will it say 10BTC and someday I'll try to send more than 5BTC out and I'll suddenly discover that I don't have as many BTC as I thought I did?
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Will it say 10BTC, but update once the client downloads the block-chain and correctly show that its balance is 5BTC?
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There are several different types of Bitcoin clients. The most secure are full nodes like Bitcoin Core, which will follow the rules of the network no matter what miners do. Even if every miner decided to create 1000 bitcoins per block, full nodes would stick to the rules and reject those blocks.
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koin
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May 02, 2011, 07:32:52 AM
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I go back into the client that is still using that same wallet.dat with 10BTC and I send out 5BTC to a friend's wallet.
Now if I replace that wallet.dat file with the encrypted one (after its been decrypted) what will the balance that is shown in the client say?

if you restore it properly (either download the block chain again, or -rescan) the client will show either 5 btc or a lesser number -- even 0 btc is possible.

why might it show 0? it depends on whether or not at the time you made your backup that in the key pool at the time was the address that your client ended up using as a change transaction when you spent the 5 btc.

because the key pool holds 100 addresses, if the only transaction was the 5 btc spend or there were under 100 new addresses needed, then your restore will have all your bitcoins and will show the correct amount.

 http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address
 http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet
 
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