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Okay, I want to start offering Bitcoin as a payment option on my e-commerce site. For now, I just want to keep it simply as an option for those overseas customers who don't have credit cards/PayPal so I don't anticipate a high number of transactions. I have gone to Bitaddress.org to generate a bulk wallet, I have loaded the private keys (together with the related public address) on a USB drive and on an old non-networked computer. I plan to email a new Bitcoin address to each customer that wants to pay by Bitcoin. I have loaded a list of these addresses into bitcoinmonitor.net so once a customer pays I get an email notification after 4 confirmations and then I can ship out the product.

2 Questions:

  1. How can I install Bitaddress.org on my non-networked computer so I can generate future paper keys without even being online, for added security? I know it's possible, but if anyone can help with a step by step would be great.
  2. I do have the regular Bitcoin client. Eventually I may want to consolidate all these coins into one wallet but still be secure. So I figured I could then import all these private keys into the wallet that is part of the Bitcoin client (using these steps https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/How_to_import_private_keys_v7%2B). The question is does the private key somehow change upon import? To put it another way, if the computer which runs the Bitcoin client explodes, and I did not backup the wallet.dat file, am I still safe, because the private keys that are kept on my USB or even just written down can still be used? or did the action of importing the address somehow change the private key? If it is safe, I suppose there may still be a little loss of bitcoins if any "change" transactions created new addresses? Any help is appreciated (including any problems you see with my plan). I can't program (even html), but I am very excited about Bitcoin!
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3 Answers 3

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1.) The web page at BitAddress.org can be loaded from a file on a thumb drive or other storage. Most browsers let you save the web page using a View Source (right click maybe), and then Save File to a thumb drive.

Then from the offline computer you open the file from the browser and the BitAddress page will load.

2.) The private keys don't expire or invalidate after they've been imported into the client. You correctly identified the problem with that is how if you spent any of the incoming funds, the client creates a new address for "change" and thus the wallet may show a balance that includes funds not in any of the addresses from the imported private keys. So wallet backups are still important.

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Random numbers are used for all sorts of things besides games. They can be used in integration (finding areas and volumes), gambling simulations, determining lottery results, testing how something behaves under a variety of conditions. Then there is cryptography when you don't want anyone to guess what they were.

In other words, other people need higher quality than you do.

see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/truerandom.html http://mindprod.com/jgloss/pseudorandom.html

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Why do you need to use bitaddresss.org you could simply use a tool that generate key from your offline computer? The tool I think would fit is pyWallet, you just need to start ./pywallet.py --web (you need python installed) and access:

http://localhost:8989

But if anyone would be able to tell us a better graphical offline wallet manager it would be nice.

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