Newbie question re transfering bitcoins

[m3110w]

Hi All,

Back in 2011 I got 0.05 bitcoin for installing the Bitcoin wallet (version 0.3.20.1 BETA) on my Win 7 laptop. I recently installed Electrum on my laptop. So I want to now learn how to play around with bitcoin.

I want to transfer say 0.001 bitcoin from my old Bitcoin wallet to my fancy new Electrum wallet. It looks like all I need to do is the following steps:

* Make sure my laptop is connected to the internet.
* Click on SEND on my old Bitcoin wallet.
* Copy and paste one of the Receiving addresses listed in my Electrum wallet.
* Enter in Amount, From and Message fields.
* Click Send
--- Then the 0.001 bitcoin goes out to the internet and comes back to my Electrum wallet and appears in the Balance column of the correct Receiving address.

Is it really that easy? Or am I missing something?

How long should it take before it appears in my Electrum wallet? Does the transfer happen only after my transfer request is confirmed in the blockchain?

Thanks for helping a newbie,

Advait

[jackbox]

Hi All,

Back in 2011 I got 0.05 bitcoin for installing the Bitcoin wallet (version 0.3.20.1 BETA) on my Win 7 laptop. I recently installed Electrum on my laptop. So I want to now learn how to play around with bitcoin.

I want to transfer say 0.001 bitcoin from my old Bitcoin wallet to my fancy new Electrum wallet. It looks like all I need to do is the following steps:

* Make sure my laptop is connected to the internet.
* Click on SEND on my old Bitcoin wallet.
* Copy and paste one of the Receiving addresses listed in my Electrum wallet.
* Enter in Amount, From and Message fields.
* Click Send
--- Then the 0.001 bitcoin goes out to the internet and comes back to my Electrum wallet and appears in the Balance column of the correct Receiving address.

Is it really that easy? Or am I missing something?

How long should it take before it appears in my Electrum wallet? Does the transfer happen only after my transfer request is confirmed in the blockchain?

Thanks for helping a newbie,

Advait

Yes that is all you need to do.

[m3110w]

OK, I followed the steps, clicked Send and got an error message saying "Error in Amount". Any way to fix this? I'm scared to transfer the full amount for fear of losing the 0.05 bitcoins.

Thanks,

Advait

[picolo]

Hi All,

Back in 2011 I got 0.05 bitcoin for installing the Bitcoin wallet (version 0.3.20.1 BETA) on my Win 7 laptop. I recently installed Electrum on my laptop. So I want to now learn how to play around with bitcoin.

I want to transfer say 0.001 bitcoin from my old Bitcoin wallet to my fancy new Electrum wallet. It looks like all I need to do is the following steps:

* Make sure my laptop is connected to the internet.
* Click on SEND on my old Bitcoin wallet.
* Copy and paste one of the Receiving addresses listed in my Electrum wallet.
* Enter in Amount, From and Message fields.
* Click Send
--- Then the 0.001 bitcoin goes out to the internet and comes back to my Electrum wallet and appears in the Balance column of the correct Receiving address.

Is it really that easy? Or am I missing something?

How long should it take before it appears in my Electrum wallet? Does the transfer happen only after my transfer request is confirmed in the blockchain?

Thanks for helping a newbie,

Advait

It is that easy, you answer your own question. Try a few times and you will get more confortable with the system. Always try with small amounts before doing something new (like a brain wallet) with bigger amounts.
You seem to understand the basic concepts.

[m3110w]

OK, I followed the steps, entered in 0.001 bitcoin to send, then clicked Send and got an error message saying "Error in Amount". Any way to fix this? I'm scared to transfer the full amount for fear of losing the 0.05 bitcoins.

Thanks,

Advait

[jackbox]

OK, I followed the steps, entered in 0.001 bitcoin to send, then clicked Send and got an error message saying "Error in Amount". Any way to fix this? I'm scared to transfer the full amount for fear of losing the 0.05 bitcoins.

Thanks,

Advait

There should not be an error in the amount. You should have 0.001 in the amount box and it will put 0.0001 in the fee box. Is you old wallet fully synced to the blockchain? If not fully synced it won't let you send anything until it completes syncing.

[OnkelPaul]

It is possible that your old bitcoin client might be not working correctly right now because there have been some changes in the blockchain which it probably can't handle properly.
But a new version of the bitcoin-qt client should be just as able to work with your wallet as the old one.

In any case, you should make sure that your old wallet.dat is copied to a safe place, i.e. a place where it can neither become lost nor be stolen.
Wallet.dat contains the private key for the address in which your 0.05 bitcoins are held, so you need that file to spent those bitcoins or part of them.
After saving the file, you should install the newest bitcoin-qt. It should find your wallet.dat and is hopefully able to read it.
Now comes the hard part: If you did not use bitcoin for 4 years, your bitcoin client will need quite some time to catch up on the blockchain (I presume you have enough free disk space for the blockchain database).
You might be better off with a fresh download of the blockchain (it's available as a torrent, you should look at the official bitcoin websites for a pointer so you don't fall for some bad stuff).
You can only spend coins from the wallet when the client has been synchronized, because it needs to know whether the amount has been spent before.

Overall, it might be a time-saver to export your private keys from the old wallet.dat and import them into electrum, then you would see the balance immediately and did not have to wait for the download. However, I don't know anything about how you'd do that with electrum, I just suppose that it's possible. Of course, doing that means that you would not experience how sending and receiving bitcoins works in practice, so the other option might be preferrable even if it is painful :-)

Onkel Paul

[m3110w]

Hello Onkel Paul, Thanks for your reply. OK, I bit the bullet and set the Bitcoin wallet transaction fee to 0.01 and the SEND amount to 0.04. I then hit send and a few seconds later the 0.04 bitcoins showed up in my Electrum wallet.

Electrum says the transaction is "Pending" so I guess that means the transaction is getting confirmed by various miners? Is that true? Is my understanding correct?

Update: The transaction now has one confirmation so it looks like everything went OK. About how many confirmations will it get? Thanks,

Advait

It is possible that your old bitcoin client might be not working correctly right now because there have been some changes in the blockchain which it probably can't handle properly.
But a new version of the bitcoin-qt client should be just as able to work with your wallet as the old one.

In any case, you should make sure that your old wallet.dat is copied to a safe place, i.e. a place where it can neither become lost nor be stolen.
Wallet.dat contains the private key for the address in which your 0.05 bitcoins are held, so you need that file to spent those bitcoins or part of them.
After saving the file, you should install the newest bitcoin-qt. It should find your wallet.dat and is hopefully able to read it.
Now comes the hard part: If you did not use bitcoin for 4 years, your bitcoin client will need quite some time to catch up on the blockchain (I presume you have enough free disk space for the blockchain database).
You might be better off with a fresh download of the blockchain (it's available as a torrent, you should look at the official bitcoin websites for a pointer so you don't fall for some bad stuff).
You can only spend coins from the wallet when the client has been synchronized, because it needs to know whether the amount has been spent before.

Overall, it might be a time-saver to export your private keys from the old wallet.dat and import them into electrum, then you would see the balance immediately and did not have to wait for the download. However, I don't know anything about how you'd do that with electrum, I just suppose that it's possible. Of course, doing that means that you would not experience how sending and receiving bitcoins works in practice, so the other option might be preferrable even if it is painful :-)

Onkel Paul

[jackbox]

Hello Onkel Paul, Thanks for your reply. OK, I bit the bullet and set the Bitcoin wallet transaction fee to 0.01 and the SEND amount to 0.04. I then hit send and a few seconds later the 0.04 bitcoins showed up in my Electrum wallet.

Electrum says the transaction is "Pending" so I guess that means the transaction is getting confirmed by various miners? Is that true? Is my understanding correct?

Update: The transaction now has one confirmation so it looks like everything went OK. About how many confirmations will it get? Thanks,

Advait

It is possible that your old bitcoin client might be not working correctly right now because there have been some changes in the blockchain which it probably can't handle properly.
But a new version of the bitcoin-qt client should be just as able to work with your wallet as the old one.

In any case, you should make sure that your old wallet.dat is copied to a safe place, i.e. a place where it can neither become lost nor be stolen.
Wallet.dat contains the private key for the address in which your 0.05 bitcoins are held, so you need that file to spent those bitcoins or part of them.
After saving the file, you should install the newest bitcoin-qt. It should find your wallet.dat and is hopefully able to read it.
Now comes the hard part: If you did not use bitcoin for 4 years, your bitcoin client will need quite some time to catch up on the blockchain (I presume you have enough free disk space for the blockchain database).
You might be better off with a fresh download of the blockchain (it's available as a torrent, you should look at the official bitcoin websites for a pointer so you don't fall for some bad stuff).
You can only spend coins from the wallet when the client has been synchronized, because it needs to know whether the amount has been spent before.

Overall, it might be a time-saver to export your private keys from the old wallet.dat and import them into electrum, then you would see the balance immediately and did not have to wait for the download. However, I don't know anything about how you'd do that with electrum, I just suppose that it's possible. Of course, doing that means that you would not experience how sending and receiving bitcoins works in practice, so the other option might be preferrable even if it is painful :-)

Onkel Paul

That fee was too high. Should have been .0001.

[OnkelPaul]

That fee was too high. Should have been .0001.

IDK but that old client might have had that as the default minimum fee - in 2011, bitcoin was worth much less.
Anyway, 0.01 is just $2.40, so although that was unnecessary, it's not a big financial loss, and some mining pool out there will be grateful for this generous fee

Onkel Paul

[m3110w]

The old wallet had 0.01 as the minimum possible fee. And $2.40 is no problem. I'm happy to support those hard working miners. :-)

The transaction now has 11 confirms. OK, now I'm a bitcoin pro! I'm now listening to some bitcoin/blockchain podcasts so I'm learning a lot.

Thanks everyone for your kind help,

That fee was too high. Should have been .0001.

IDK but that old client might have had that as the default minimum fee - in 2011, bitcoin was worth much less.
Anyway, 0.01 is just $2.40, so although that was unnecessary, it's not a big financial loss, and some mining pool out there will be grateful for this generous fee

Onkel Paul

[Abdussamad]

@m3110w was your old bitcoin wallet running automatically at start up all these years? I mean was it running in the background day in day out since 2011?

It's difficult to believe how it could be up to date with the blockchain otherwise.

[m3110w]

@m3110w was your old bitcoin wallet running automatically at start up all these years? I mean was it running in the background day in day out since 2011? It's difficult to believe how it could be up to date with the blockchain otherwise.

No, I carefully restrict what runs at start up and bitcoin was not allowed. I went to the bitcoin directory and the blkindex.dat file was 212mb and the blk001.dat file was 500mb. So it appears the original blockchain files were never updated. (however, both files are dated Feb 25, 2015) And I only briefly opened the wallet about 5 times since 2011.

The wallet version was circa 2011 and was never updated.

So you're saying its strange that I was able to successfully send my btc out of my old wallet? Maybe the Electrum system had something to do with the success?

Thanks,

[Abdussamad]

You would think that outgoing transactions would not be allowed until bitcoin core was up to date with the blockchain. Looks like that is not the case.

[JessicaSe]

You would think that outgoing transactions would not be allowed until bitcoin core was up to date with the blockchain. Looks like that is not the case.

yes your wallet need to be sync till the date it received the fund, after that even if it not sync you can still transfer btc from it
like you recieved money to your walet on 14 oct and today you wallet is sync till 20 oct then still you can transfer that btc to other wallets without sync to current date