How to start again with an empty wallet?

[btccomm]

So, now that I've used the bitcoin faucets & other daily/hourly 'free' bitcoin sites and have all my addresses linked together.  And  now my transaction fees are rising.

How do I start again with an empty wallet?

I would like to

    -  NOT have to download the block chain again.
    -  transfer the balance of my personal wallet back to the exchange (or would that make everything traceable?)
   

[Aseras]

sign up for an online insta wallet type service

wait 144 transactions past your last balance to be able to send fee free.

send your coins to the insta wallet in some random manner.

withdraw them in a random manner later in time ( over say 1-2 weeks )

that pretty much launders any amount of coins.

The other option is to "sell" your coins to someone who doesn't care, a service or a miner and have them launder them for you and purchase mined virgin coins.

[evoorhees]

1. Send all funds to a new Instawallet or Blockchain.info wallet
2. Delete your original wallet file (don't uninstall Bitcoin, just delete the wallet file)
3. Open up Bitcoin app, and a new fresh wallet will be created. The blockchain will already be there, no new download.
4. Send all funds now to your new wallet address.

[GroundRod]

@btccomm - Great question, been trying to figure this out myself...

@Evoorhees - Did exactly that, while the local wallet was @0.00 balance, up to your step 3.

Except what happened was I lost all my address book entries, and receive addresses which are now scattered all over the place.  That kinda freaked me out, as I've no idea if any of those addresses would still be linked to my wallet or what?  Then it occurred to me, is this what having signed payments received at my various addresses would be good for?  Just one of many questions, like would any payments in the future at those addresses always find me, no matter what?  Don't think so.  How do I get them to once again show up in my Receive BitCoins tab list?  Can I just clear all the transaction history, but keep the received & address book entries?  

To many questions, so I closed the client and restored the original file, transferred my stash back into the local wallet and been wanting to get this topic figured out!

GR

ETA: What I did was changed the display transaction tab, to just show me the last week.  All the older stuff that I no longer cared about is simply not displayed.

[rjk]

Send them all to yourself to one address. To avoid the fee, use a hacked up client with fees removed, but it may take a while for the first confirmation.

[Aseras]

Send them all to yourself to one address. To avoid the fee, use a hacked up client with fees removed, but it may take a while for the first confirmation.

I highly recommend creating the "hacked client" yourself by downloading bitcoin-qt yourself. In the src folder edit main.h and change both to zero

static const int64 MIN_TX_FEE = 50000;
static const int64 MIN_RELAY_TX_FEE = 10000;

compile with the makefile and save it.

and make sure you send more than .1 btc or it's possible the transaction will never confirm.

[GroundRod]

Interesting Aseras & rjk, guess it's time I figured that level of things out, compiling the source myself.

Kinda started figuring out how to answer my own questions too, will share as things come to mind...

Like for example, if I start with a blank wallet file, those private keys associated with addresses I've used (made public) in the past, are not going to be available, so if you do blow away your wallet.dat file, so goes all those connection points to your wallet and you can forget about ever receiving any coin from them ever again.  Note: Assume all of this discussion pertains to the basic bitcoin-qt client.

...may need to be corrected from time to time though, a long learning curve up from reading the original paper on this stuff...

[rjk]

Yes if you delete your old wallet, you are screwed in terms of getting payments to old addresses.

[Stephen Gornick]

Yes if you delete your old wallet, you are screwed in terms of getting payments to old addresses.

Unfortuantely, those providing advice didn't say:

Step 1.)  Make a backup of your wallet.dat before you do anything

Fortunately, this individual was smart enough to do that anyway.

In trying to help, we should consider a promise that is part of the hippocratic oath ... Primum non nocere (First, do no harm):
 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_non_nocere