I am completely new to bitcoin. I recently received bitcoins from a poker site, using a receiving address that I created in Bitcoin Core. When I realized that synchronization takes forever, I installed Electrum instead and added the receiving address to the default wallet, which is watch only. Now I want to deposit my coins to Neteller but they are on this watch only wallet and I can't make a payment with it. The wallet doesn't seem to have a private or public key (I read somewhere that i might need a private key that I would then import to a new wallet?). What the hell do I do?
2 Answers
In electrum there is an option to sweep private key , dump your private key from bitcoin core and then sweep it into electrum. Then you can spend your coins in electrum
You need the private key for the watch only address.
Assuming you've kept the wallet.dat file for Bitcoin core (otherwise you're out of luck), open the console under help in Bitcoin core, then type dumpprivkey x
where x
is your Bitcoin address. You may need to unlock your wallet first with walletpassphrase XXXX 99
where XXXX
is your password.
The dumped privkey will be in WIF format (5J/K/H... or K/L...).
Use Electrum's console tab to import this key: importprivkey WIF
where WIF
is the WIF key