Hello, new armory user here. Quick question:
If bitcoinqt is not synchronized (let's say i'm 50 days behind), can I still run armory and have it connect to qt up to its partial synchronization? I don't have any significant bitcoin income to justify staying current, so my qt client often gets a month or two behind.
Also, if a digital backup is made of an armory wallet file, for an offline wallet, and this backup is somehow stolen and spent, would the offline armory wallet still display a balance as if nothing had happened? Thus, I would only discover the theft if I tried to sign an unsigned transaction from my online armory, at some point in the future, and find (to my horror!) that the private keys needed to sign the transaction have been spent.
@alexanderanon
It might work being 50 days behind, but probably not. You'd be lucky if it does work, and doesn't start choking on all the data that Bitcoin-Qt is sending it. The new version will actually just run it in the background for you, and won't even let you connect until it's synchronized -- because users have so many problems when they do it early
I know backups are confusing, which is why I made
this backups page. There's a better one, coming soon, but that at least has most of the information you could want.
The answer to your question (directly), is that if your wallet is encrypted, your digital backup will be, too. The encryption is very strong, and the attacker needs to know something about the passphrase in order to break it. So in that case, you'd be safe. But you'd probably also forget the password in 2 years when you need it, making that digital backup not very useful (especially if you are trying to restore from backup because you forgot your passphrase!).
I always recommend a paper backup, which is unencrypted. Similarly, if your wallet is unencrypted, your digital backup will be too. In both cases, if someone steals it, they will send all your coins to their own address, and your online Armory will show an outgoing transaction to an unknown address. You won't see anything on the offline computer, because it doesn't have network access (the offline computer doesn't even show balances, it's only for "signing the checks"). If you have online armory open, though, you'll see it right away. And you won't know that anything is wrong until it's too late.
Let me just reiterate one point:
the vast majority of use Bitcoin cases are threatened by online/virtual threats, not physical threats. Unless you have a specific reason to worry about physical security of your paper backups, you should use the unencrypted one.
Because, if you use the encrypted one and forget your passphrase, it's just as good as not having any backup at all!
Congrats etotheipi !
I upvoted your comment on wired.com
That's not much, but that's the least I can do to congratulate you for your time-consuming wonderful work.
Your major update on v.0.88 seem interesting.
Yet, I have this little dream to - one day - be able to use your convenient offline wallet interface with other cryptocurrencies (NMC & LTC in priority). That would be awesome. 'sure I'm not the only one to think it.
'might need to do special Armory fork/version per currency if you definitely mix it with the client.
But 'whatever.
My moral support to continue the good job
Hey thanks! Unfortunately, the other currencies are not in my priorities list, but "simple" variants like LTC can probably be made work with only changing a few constants and updating a couple of functions. I can offer advice to someone making that leap, but I don't have time to do it myself and debug it, etc (also, I don't use the others coins, so I don't even know where to begin)..