Author

Topic: A few questions. (Read 2410 times)

copper member
Activity: 1498
Merit: 1528
No I dont escrow anymore.
January 28, 2015, 03:28:11 AM
#5
-snip-

Thanks for the very thorough answers.

You are welcome.

I've been hodling for a while and have not been paying much attention to development in Bitcoin SW. Basically been keeping all my coins in paperwallets in a bank vault.

Last time I used Bitcoin Wallet for Android there was no way of backing up the wallet and my phone actually got stolen and I lost a few coins. I guess things have gotten better since then. Also, I hope I'm wiser now  Smiley

Yes, HD is a very nice addition in that sense. No backup must have been worse than the bitcoin core/qt dance with the regular backups. On the other hand back in the day people probably were more careless about their coins.

Anyway, I am thankful for your help and have provided a small tip to your address in your profile.

Thanks, Ill invest it in a Pizza some time.

Phones get lost, IIRC its hard to restore the wallet if you do not have another phone that can run the app.

There is an open-source tool which can extract the mnemonic (seed words) from a Bitcoin Wallet for Android 4.x backup file. The mnemonic is a standard BIP39 mnemonic using the English word list. Although there aren't a whole lot of wallets which directly support the importing of a BIP39 mnemonic yet, that's likely to change in the upcoming months.

Nice, Ill keep that in mind. It seems that all the different wallets start to boil down to certain usefull aspects. Usability is allways good as there are plenty stolpersteine[1] left even if the wallet does its best.

[1] https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/sent-20-btc-by-mistake-please-help-938228
newbie
Activity: 55
Merit: 0
January 27, 2015, 05:57:40 PM
#4
So, I'm running the latest app, 4.17. I have a few questions that I hope someone can answer, as I am unable to find good answers googling.
Tips will be provided for good answers!  Cheesy

1. Since the app creates new addresses for every change address and every receiving address, do I need to backup the wallet more than once? If so, how often?

No its HD[1], thus a single backup is enough.

2. There is the possibility to add a "trusted peer". I understand that this can be my own full node, running on a computer I have control over, but I'm thinking that there might be a point in entering a well known and well connected node. Is that a good idea and if so, where can I find such a node?

I keep passing this list of nodes around for people running bitcoin core/qt to sync faster. They are well known in that regard and usually well connected. There is also the site called bitnodes[2] which might help selecting a node of your liking.

As regards whether this is a good idea or not I dont think it should be a problem. A malicious full node could feed you bad information, but the client is checking them anyway. Thus worst case would be that you do not get notifications about your transactions and/or your transactions do not get relayed.

3. Should I enable BIP70? Is there any danger doing so?

It can speed up a payment process which is nice on a phone. I dont see any dangers here as well. More about BIP70 can be found on the bitcoin github[3].

4. Any other things I should think about?

Phones get lost, IIRC its hard to restore the wallet if you do not have another phone that can run the app. There was a post by someone with this problem here I think. If you have an old phone, consider keeping it around for this instead of gifting it away.

Phones get stolen/robbed, keep only what you would keep in a regular wallet.

[1] https://github.com/schildbach/bitcoin-wallet/issues/181#issuecomment-64903274
[2] https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/
[3] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0070.mediawiki

Thanks for the very thorough answers. I've been hodling for a while and have not been paying much attention to development in Bitcoin SW. Basically been keeping all my coins in paperwallets in a bank vault.

Last time I used Bitcoin Wallet for Android there was no way of backing up the wallet and my phone actually got stolen and I lost a few coins. I guess things have gotten better since then. Also, I hope I'm wiser now  Smiley

Anyway, I am thankful for your help and have provided a small tip to your address in your profile.
hero member
Activity: 672
Merit: 504
a.k.a. gurnec on GitHub
January 27, 2015, 02:31:42 PM
#3
Phones get lost, IIRC its hard to restore the wallet if you do not have another phone that can run the app.

There is an open-source tool which can extract the mnemonic (seed words) from a Bitcoin Wallet for Android 4.x backup file. The mnemonic is a standard BIP39 mnemonic using the English word list. Although there aren't a whole lot of wallets which directly support the importing of a BIP39 mnemonic yet, that's likely to change in the upcoming months.
copper member
Activity: 1498
Merit: 1528
No I dont escrow anymore.
January 27, 2015, 05:56:59 AM
#2
So, I'm running the latest app, 4.17. I have a few questions that I hope someone can answer, as I am unable to find good answers googling.
Tips will be provided for good answers!  Cheesy

1. Since the app creates new addresses for every change address and every receiving address, do I need to backup the wallet more than once? If so, how often?

No its HD[1], thus a single backup is enough.

2. There is the possibility to add a "trusted peer". I understand that this can be my own full node, running on a computer I have control over, but I'm thinking that there might be a point in entering a well known and well connected node. Is that a good idea and if so, where can I find such a node?

I keep passing this list of nodes around for people running bitcoin core/qt to sync faster. They are well known in that regard and usually well connected. There is also the site called bitnodes[2] which might help selecting a node of your liking.

As regards whether this is a good idea or not I dont think it should be a problem. A malicious full node could feed you bad information, but the client is checking them anyway. Thus worst case would be that you do not get notifications about your transactions and/or your transactions do not get relayed.

Code:
last updated 2015.01.11
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IP                  - location             - owner[1]  -  speed      - info/stats page[2] - testnet
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
84.200.34.113       - Freinsheim, DE, EU   - Newar     - 1000 mbit/s - yes                - no
185.45.192.129      - Amsterdam, NL, EU    - anon      - 1000 mbit/s - /node.php[3]       - yes
94.23.146.127       - NL, EU               - anon      -  200 mbit/s - /status            - no
213.165.91.169      - Germany, EU          - shorena   -  100 mbit/s - yes                - no
191.236.50.217      - Virgina, US          - grue      -  100 mbit/s - no                 - no
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
!!The following nodes have been unreachable at the time of the last update and might[5] be down!!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
eldinhadzic.org[4]  - LA, USA              - eldinhadz - 1000 mbit/s - no                 - no
50.7.68.180         - New York, USA        - Newar     -  100 mbit/s - yes                - no
5.9.24.81           - Germany, EU          - zvs       -  unknown    - no                 - no
178.79.173.71       - United Kingdom, EU   - zvs       -  unknown    - no                 - no
107.155.104.194     - Dalls, USA           - zvs       -  unknown    - no                 - no
106.185.32.195      - Japan, Asia          - zvs       -  unknown    - no                 - no
94.242.57.173       - Russia, Asia         - zvs       -  unknown    - no                 - no
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] refers to a bitcointalk.org username or anon if requested
[2] same IP, port 80 or path/port given
[3] work in progress
[4] IP is 173.236.158.177
[5] or reached max connections at the time of testing

3. Should I enable BIP70? Is there any danger doing so?

It can speed up a payment process which is nice on a phone. I dont see any dangers here as well. More about BIP70 can be found on the bitcoin github[3].

4. Any other things I should think about?

Phones get lost, IIRC its hard to restore the wallet if you do not have another phone that can run the app. There was a post by someone with this problem here I think. If you have an old phone, consider keeping it around for this instead of gifting it away.

Phones get stolen/robbed, keep only what you would keep in a regular wallet.

[1] https://github.com/schildbach/bitcoin-wallet/issues/181#issuecomment-64903274
[2] https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/
[3] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0070.mediawiki
newbie
Activity: 55
Merit: 0
January 26, 2015, 05:49:11 PM
#1
So, I'm running the latest app, 4.17. I have a few questions that I hope someone can answer, as I am unable to find good answers googling.
Tips will be provided for good answers!  Cheesy

1. Since the app creates new addresses for every change address and every receiving address, do I need to backup the wallet more than once? If so, how often?

2. There is the possibility to add a "trusted peer". I understand that this can be my own full node, running on a computer I have control over, but I'm thinking that there might be a point in entering a well known and well connected node. Is that a good idea and if so, where can I find such a node?

3. Should I enable BIP70? Is there any danger doing so?

4. Any other things I should think about?
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