what after export

[Azarman]

Hi everybody.
I am quite new in bitcoin. I have a dozen of questions .All of them may seem so amateur , even foolish.
I now but I must learn anyway , hmm?!!
well by this topic I want to know:
1- if I can have all my balance in both in an online wallet ( blockchain ) and in an offline one ( like multibit or armory) at the same time ?!
I mean I can access my coins by each of them I wish in case one of them is out of reach or dont work correctly by any reason.

another thing I wish to know is :
2- I am member of some mining sites and some other faucets.
They send me some bitcoins regularly into my blockchain wallet.
What if I export my balance into an offline wallet from now? Do I have to change my wallet in my profile
in all those sites? Or will all future receiving coins add to my new offline wallet automatically ?!
I appreciate your answering and consuming your time in advance.
 

[shorena]

Hi everybody.

Hi, Dr. Nick [1]

-snip-
1- if I can have all my balance in both in an online wallet ( blockchain ) and in an offline one ( like multibit or armory) at the same time ?!

Yes you can. One of the wallets might get confused by the actions of the other, but its possible.

I mean I can access my coins by each of them I wish in case one of them is out of reach or dont work correctly by any reason.

Yes, as long as you can access the private keys you can spend your bitcon from any wallet. Usually each wallet allows you to export those in different formats. E.g. 5JkLqL4Me5E5b6JLS6WYU1rfXSQqx1enewSvtMRrcXzPLE6ymTe is the private key for the address 1DmZzQ65sL5BcpGzBKp3j7EdRHK9WtQmmx

which now should no longer be used.

another thing I wish to know is :
2- I am member of some mining sites and some other faucets.
They send me some bitcoins regularly into my blockchain wallet.
What if I export my balance into an offline wallet from now?

I am not sure what you mean by "export my balance". You can export your private key and store it elsewhere, in which case you could still use the same address as before, its just that your private key would be now in two different places.

Do I have to change my wallet in my profile
in all those sites? Or will all future receiving coins add to my new offline wallet automatically ?!
I appreciate your answering and consuming your time in advance.
 

Where the private key is storred does not matter. The bitcoins are never "in" your wallet anyway. They are allways in the blockchain (not to be confused with blockchain.info which is just a service) and the person that is able to access the correct private key can move the funds. You could even make that private key public (as I did above) which would result in plenty people beeing able to spend the coins associated with it, but thats usually not what you want.

If you are thinking about safe offline wallets (e.g. paperwallets) its probably best to keep your existing online wallet and transfer larger amounts to your offline wallet for long term storrage.


[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlmECL2ED2I

[Azarman]

Thanks you so much dear shorena for your exact and useful answer.
another thing to know.
I found my private key at blockchain.info.
you told that anybody who knows your private key can spend your bitcoin in whole? righ?
but how? in where?
I wanted to test it. my private key at blockchain.info is available in some formats : bitcoin-qt ,hex,etc.
which one of them is in use?for example the multibit ask me to import a " file" from my computer while
all of the mentioned formats of private keys are some letters and number that can be only copied and pasted in a text document
which multibit can not recognize . or can a private key be used to import in only the same service?

[shorena]

Thanks you so much dear shorena for your exact and useful answer.
another thing to know.
I found my private key at blockchain.info.
you told that anybody who knows your private key can spend your bitcoin in whole? righ?
but how? in where?

Yes, anyone that knows your private key can spend the funds associated with it. Almost all wallets have an import feature, which would allow the wallet to create a transaction for you that spends the funds. In theory you could even do this by hand or write a little script that does that.

I wanted to test it. my private key at blockchain.info is available in some formats : bitcoin-qt ,hex,etc.
which one of them is in use?

"in use"? I dont understand that question.

for example the multibit ask me to import a " file" from my computer while
all of the mentioned formats of private keys are some letters and number that can be only copied and pasted in a text document
which multibit can not recognize . or can a private key be used to import in only the same service?

This depends how your wallet exports. E.g. multibit exports (when unencrypted) a file like this:

Code:

# KEEP YOUR PRIVATE KEYS SAFE !
# Anyone who can read this file can spend your bitcoin.
#
# Format:
#   <Base58 encoded private key>[<whitespace>[<key createdAt>]]
#
#   The Base58 encoded private keys are the same format as
#   produced by the Satoshi client/ sipa dumpprivkey utility.
#
#   Key createdAt is in UTC format as specified by ISO 8601
#   e.g: 2011-12-31T16:42:00Z . The century, 'T' and 'Z' are mandatory
#
L35DEFBrrMJHVUquyyvJn9ZiXfwbwKBJBeEbRkXwnqhbjAjnrj23 2014-12-04T23:16:20Z
# End of private keys

You can just create the same format with your unencrypted private key from bc.i and multibit can import it without problem. AFAIK bc.i exports encrypted, thus multibit might not understand the data.

[Azarman]

Thanks a lot