Skip to main content
13 votes
Accepted

In a multisig wallet setup what needs to be backed up and why?

Ben Kaufman answered this on Twitter. The main caveat in a multisig wallet is that, while you need only a threshold of devices (ie. 2 of 3, 3 of 5, etc.) to sign a transaction, losing access to even a ...
Michael Folkson's user avatar
7 votes
Accepted

What are 'accounts.sqlite3' and 'emergency.recover' and why might I want to back them up?

The accounts.sqlite3 file is managed by the built-in plugin bkpr (the bookkeeper plugin). It tracks each individual coin movement that was performed while the plugin was running, and will give ...
cdecker's user avatar
  • 9,563
5 votes

c-lightning node backup-restore

The hsm_secret is used to derive keys for both onchain and offchain (channels commitments) transactions. On chain To retrieve on chain funds you can rescan the block chain for your utxos by using the -...
Antoine Poinsot's user avatar
4 votes

How do I retrieve my backed up wallet to Bitcoin Core?

Restoring a wallet on a fresh machine: Start Bitcoin-Core (daemon or Qt), shut it down after it has started up (you only do that to create the necessary data directory) Replace wallet.dat with your ...
Jonas Schnelli's user avatar
4 votes

Where is blockchain located on Mac for Bitcoin-Qt?

Quoting https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Data_directory#Mac : Mac By default Bitcoin will put its data here: ~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/ You can access that folder by ...
Matt Popovich's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

How do Ledger Backups get stored?

Using words to back up wallets is a process described in BIP 39. Basically, the mnemonic is converted into a seed. This seed is then used as the seed to a Heirarchical Deterministic (HD) wallet, as ...
meshcollider's user avatar
  • 11.9k
4 votes
Accepted

How do I restore a Lightning Node with active channels that has crashed causing data loss? Is it similar to restoring a Bitcoin wallet?

Unlike bitcoin stored in an on-chain wallet, funds in the lightning network are stateful. Some channel data cannot be deterministically reconstructed like keys derived from a BIP32 seed. If you do not ...
selfishminer's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

How to migrate bitcoin node from one computer to another

This method is used by Bitcoin Core (and few others) and comprises of backing up a wallet.dat file. It's a file that holds keys to spend outputs, addresses, transaction information, and other metadata ...
Zombie's user avatar
  • 548
4 votes
Accepted

What software can I use to calculate my private key from a seed (e.g. Trezor or Ledger)?

Any wallet software that allows restoring from a BIP39 mnemonic will allow you to do that, such as Electrum. However, you should not do this on your regular computer, since putting your private key on ...
ieatpizza's user avatar
  • 2,068
4 votes

Paper backup of Core descriptor wallet

This is working now, with version 23 of the bitcoin-core: How to create the descriptors wallet? createwallet("my_wallet", False, False, "", False, True, False) getnewaddress("...
mountrix's user avatar
  • 141
3 votes

Backing up an Electrum wallet

There are 3 approaches to backup/restore your Electrum wallet with Bitcoin, depending on whether you use Electrum to manage a HD or non-HD wallet, you may or may not have a 'seed'. If your wallet is ...
bitcoin-en's user avatar
3 votes
Accepted

Backing up Bitcoin using only private keys?

It depends on what kind of wallet you have. Traditionally each private key was generated randomly by your wallet software. In this case every private key needs to be backed up. Recently ...
Adam Millerchip's user avatar
3 votes

How do Ledger Backups get stored?

It is a common misconception that there are actual objects or chunks of data that are Bitcoin and that your wallet receives. That is actually not the case; your Bitcoin are just values attached to ...
Ava Chow's user avatar
  • 71.5k
3 votes
Accepted

What would happen to my bitcoins?

Yes you will be able to access the same coins with both devices. You can think about it like if you make a copy of a key to your home, and give it to someone; both people will be able to open the same ...
m1xolyd1an's user avatar
  • 5,666
3 votes

How to restore from backup of Android Bitcoin Wallet

The best way to restore a backup file is always to use the same app used for creating the backup. In other words, install the app again, then use Options > Safety > Restore wallet.
Andreas's user avatar
  • 549
3 votes
Accepted

What happens if the Exodus company and servers shut down?

exodus allows you to backup your private keys (look here). so if exodus will stop their service and you do not want to use exodus anymore (or maybe you can not) you can import your private keys in an ...
anion's user avatar
  • 746
3 votes
Accepted

Backup of a bitcoind wallet using the extended private masterkey only

1) If I only backup that extended private masterkey, would I be able to recreate the wallet entirely in case my application crashes? Or do I really need to backup the wallet file itself? (Let's say I ...
Ava Chow's user avatar
  • 71.5k
3 votes

is it safe to share the indexes folder between computers?

Yes, indexes is safe to copy. It only contains transaction data and is completely unrelated to the wallet. In fact, indexes used to be part of blocks so with older versions, if you had txindex=1, then ...
Ava Chow's user avatar
  • 71.5k
3 votes
Accepted

Why isn't the backed up sqlite3 exactly same as the lightningd.sqlite3?

The replication using the --wallet=sqlite3:///file1.db:/file2.db works by applying the SQL statements against both databases in sequence. The main replica gets is executed first, followed by the ...
cdecker's user avatar
  • 9,563
2 votes
Accepted

Bitcoin Core 0.13 BIP32 support

Correction: I had thought that Bitcoin Core implements BIP44, which it does not. Thus, what I previously wrote about the gap-limit was wrong. To restore your wallet-backup you place the wallet.dat ...
Murch's user avatar
  • 76.9k
2 votes

Is it possible to use the same BIP39 list of seed words to create addresses for different crypto assets?

BIP 43/44 gives each coin a unique derivation root. Many wallets use this, including some multi-currency wallets. Be careful when using multiple wallets with the same mnemonic though; the least ...
Sjors Provoost's user avatar
2 votes

Cryptocurrency Wallet Seed - mental backup?

Uninstalling the wallet will not make anything more secure. Deleting the wallet also does not guarantee that the wallet file is gone; it is usually still on disk for some time after it has been "...
Ava Chow's user avatar
  • 71.5k
2 votes
Accepted

How can I recover my MultiBit HD wallet words?

If you have both your wallet file (named mbhd.wallet.aes for MultiBit HD) and its password, you can use this tool to extract its mnemonic sentence/seed. Note that the terms "brute force" and "crack" ...
Christopher Gurnee's user avatar
2 votes
Accepted

Making a backup of my wallet

If you made the second transaction to same Bitcoin address so yes you will not miss that second transaction even if you made the transaction after the backup. if you made the transaction after the ...
Tailer's user avatar
  • 3,669
2 votes

How to migrate bitcoin node from one computer to another

You need to copy your wallet.dat from your old computer to your new computer and replace the file. Otherwise you could take a look on Electrum, it is a light wallet (so you do not need to sync the ...
Emil Engler's user avatar
2 votes

How do non-deterministic wallets violate the principle of address reuse?

The text indeed doesn't make it's case clear, but the idea is that random key generation makes for inconvenient backups. The more keys you generate, the more frequently you will have to back up the ...
arubi's user avatar
  • 1,864
2 votes
Accepted

Question regarding LN node backups

As pointed out in similar questions backups are tricky with lightning. In the case of lightning each payment channel is a 2 of 2 multisig wallet. One of the keys is in your possession and it differs ...
Rene Pickhardt's user avatar
2 votes

c-lightning node backup-restore

Hsm secret is only used to derive your keys but you need more than that - which is the state of your channels (meaning the most recent commitment transaction and revocstion secrets). This information ...
Rene Pickhardt's user avatar
2 votes

What's the easiest way to create a backup node?

You can just create a backup of the datadir folder, which could be saved on another hard drive in case your node’s chain state becomes corrupted. In case of corruption, just copy the saved data into ...
chytrik's user avatar
  • 18.3k
2 votes

Permission denied when attempting to backup wallet using backupwallet

You need to check ownership and permissions for the files and folders involved. Your current user needs permissions to read /home/bitcoin/.bitcoin/new_wallet/wallet.dat and permissions to write to the ...
RedGrittyBrick's user avatar

Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible