Topic: Armory Wallet, with Bitcoin Depot issues - deposit is lost? (Read 408 times)

I don't think OP is worried about mistakenly sending coins to the wrong address; rather it's unclear whether the address got declined due to a typo (ie. the checksum doing its job) or due to Bech32 addresses not being supported by Bitcoin Depot (lack of Bech32 support being still way to common IMO).

Legacy Bitcoin addresses come with a 4 bytes checksum. It's virtually impossible to mess it up. Bech32 addresses have even stronger checksums. The only realistic way you could spend to an invalid address is if you are using wallet software that does not verify the checksum.

Not necessarily compromised, but it should not be considered secure. The security risks associated with having private keys stored in plaintext should be relatively obvious.


As HeRetiK has suggest, "sweep" the private keys into a "standard" Electrum wallet. (Wallet -> Private Keys -> Sweep). Although, at this point in time, I would recommend that you ensure you have a "standard" wallet, that was setup using the "Legacy" option. This will ensure maximum compatibility with your wallet and other bitcoin related services (see below).


There is also a chance that the address issues you originally had, may have been related to the type of address that you were attempting to use. By default, Electrum will opt for a "native SegWit" wallet, that uses bech32 addresses (they start with "bc1"). Support for bech32 addresses is still relatively poor across the bitcoin ecosystem and a lot of exchanges and other bitcoin related services do not support bech32 and do not recognise bech32 addresses as "valid" bitcoin addresses

At the moment, using Legacy addresses is not that big of a deal, because fee rates are very low... however, should fee rates spike up into the hundreds of satoshis/byte again, Legacy addresses would suffer given that they will generate slightly larger transactions than SegWit addresses.

It's not as secure as an encrypted wallet file, but you should be save assuming your PC isn't infected with malware. Since malware is fairly common it is recommended to store larger sums on hardware wallets or using a cold storage setup. If you only store a couple of bucks at a time, are fairly careful when browsing the web and don't run executables from suspicious sources you should be fine. Just make sure you don't share the keylist.txt file on the internet and don't store it on an online drive or similar.



By sweeping the funds in a fresh electrum wallet:


This transfers the funds from the old Armory addresses to your new Electrum wallet which leaves the old Armory addresses empty. Just make sure you write down the Electrum seed words and keep them safe.




Legacy addresses (starting with "1") should definitely work. SegWit addresses (starting with "bc1") may or may not be supported (Couldn't find any info on that). Note that sending bitcoins from legacy addresses requires higher fees than SegWit transactions (but still should usually just be a couple of cents, assuming you don't run into a blockchain rush hour).



Exchanges usually require you to send in some documentation as to verify your identity. Assuming you tumble your coins before making any purchases, exchanges and authorities will have little insight on what happens with the coins once they leave the exchange. Note that paying an invoice using BitPay exposes your IP to them (They require wallets to fetch payment information from their servers over clearnet), unless you route all your connections over a VPN (chicken egg problem, anyone?).



Most tumblers let you withdraw your coins instantly after 1-3 confirmations, however it is recommended to let at least a couple of hours (or even days) pass for improved privacy.

Some wallets have built-in privacy measures (eg. Wasabi, which can act as an tumbler using coin-joins), however they can be rather slow and unwieldy (so probably not a good idea after your Armory adventure).

LeGaulois has compiled a nice list here:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/2023-list-bitcoin-mixers-bitcoin-tumblers-websites-2827109

Be extremely careful that you enter the correct domains, there are plenty of phishing sites about.



Assuming they don't ask for your passport or biometric data, yes. But you can improve the privacy of exchange-bought coins using the methods mentioned above.



I assume they refer to mining hardware. Don't bother if you only want to do some occasional spending.

Two standard wallets and an imported wallet.

The imported wallet is compromised because of exporting the entire keylist.txt file to the hard disk?   

So the funds be transferred to another electrum wallet with a different keylist?   How do I do that?

Do you think the Electrum address will work with the "Bitcoin Depot" type ATM?   With the original failed attempt with Electrum, it is very possible that the address could have been entered incorrectly.  On my last deposit with a manually entered address four attempts were required due to being hasty entering in the address.  Second attempt to scan the Armory  barcode with a laptop was successful at a distance greater than six inches.

The incentive to use a Bitcoin ATM for cash is to have a more private VPN.  Certain companies allow you to even mail in cash.  Of course any type of cyber currency might be more private than a credit card.   

If purchasing bitcoin online how does that differ in terms of privacy from using a Bitcoin Depot ATM?

"Tumblers" that provide some anonymity, but that takes a certain amount of time?   The cash ATM is more private, right?   Bitcoin depot told me some people purchase some hardware or "gaming?" things that charge less for Bitcoin because it cannot be charged back.

Electrum allows for multiple wallets... some of which do not have seeds.

I would advise that you take the time to know what type(s) of wallet(s) you have and the backup requirements for each type. If you look at the titlebar for Electrum, it will say in [] the type of wallet that you have.

[standard] - Should have a 12 word seed mnemonic (exception is hardware wallets). You can view this under "Wallet -> Seed" menu option. To view the seed mnemonic, you will need to know the wallet password if the wallet is encrypted or password protected.

[imported] - This wallet only contains one or more individual private keys that have been imported manually. It will NOT have a 12 word seed. You will need to ensure you have backups of the keys ("Wallet -> Private Keys -> Export") OR a backup of the wallet file itself. ("File -> Save Copy"). Again, to export the private keys, you need to know the wallet password if the wallet is encrypted or password protected.

[2fa] - Has a 12 word seed mnemonic. NOTE: For security reasons, you can NOT view this under the wallet -> seed menu option. If you haven't written down the seed when you created the wallet, you have no effective backup mechanism for this wallet in the event that you lose access to your Google Authenticator device (ie. lost/broken/stolen phone).


For your particular situation it would appear so. There are other "cheaper" ways to convert fiat into bitcoins... 18% seems rather ludicrous. As others have suggested, outfits like Coinbase have smaller margins. Also, have you checked localbitcoins to see if there are any sellers in your local area that offer more competitive rates?

There is a seed for the first two Electrum wallets.  The transaction completed for 20.56195 mBTC or about $70.57.  

The $70.57 transaction is for a VPN and they use "Bitpay" in a payment invoice link that expires in fifteen minutes and allows a choice between:

Bitcoin BTC Network cost $0.05 BTC
Bitcoin cash BCH Network cost $0.00 USD.

This leaves a remaining 3.18396 mBTC in the Wallet or about $10.92 left of the $113.00 deposited.  The real cost of this software is 102.08 or $31.51, a 45 percent markup over the normal bitcoin rate.     The good news is that the there is a discount though a website; the normal price is $100.00.  

Seems like everyone has their own fee, so it is easy to for your Bitcoin to gradually erode with each transaction not just from the money spent but from fees that may not be straight forward.

If I recall correction the Bitcion Depot machine does not clearly inform you of their 18 percent increase over market rate.  Knowing about the 18 percent markup and the $3.00 per transaction under $250 fee ahead of time plus another three percent margin for error or other transaction fee markups should be an accurate way to estimate the deposit in terms of USD?

BTC is still quite volatile. Attempting to calculate an "exact" amount in fiat value (ie. USD) is very very difficult. The amount of BTC varies not only with time, but also with the service provider being chosen. As you've discovered the Bitcoin Depot ATM has a stupid mark-up... a lot of "easy purchase" services (like ones that let you buy with a credit card) have shit rates.... in much the same way that credit card companies themselves like to charge 2.5% "foreign currency conversion fee" after already giving you a shitty exchange rate


OP will not have a seed if they imported the private keys from Armory to Electrum (as advised by most users in this thread). They will have an imported wallet that will ONLY contain the private keys imported.

They will only have a seed if they created a "standard" wallet and then used the "sweep" option.

For small amounts that you plan to use frequently, a payment processor "wallet" is much more preferable.
But you can always rely on Electrum as a Hot Wallet for any peer-to-peer transactions.

As for backups, do you remember the SEED (12 set of random words) that Electrum advised you to copy during wallet creation? That's the most important backup that you have and it can be used to restore the wallet and control the funds of any address within it.
As the matter of fact, if you know the addresses of the particular wallet as long as you have the SEED or Private Key(s), you can even receive bitcoins even without any hardware (PC, Phone or HardwareWallet), AKA: Cold Storage.

Might be a stupid question, but why didn't you buy via Coinbase or some other exchange such as Kraken or Bitstamp? Nowadays there are a lot of well established options to convert from USD to BTC and vice versa via wire transfer or credit card.

Now the Bitcoin is showing up in the Electrum wallet, 19.81781 mBTC.  No idea how to complete the transaction with the bitcoin payment address but it does not matter because another $2.68 in BT is needed.

Calculating the sum  for $71.14 USD without calculating the exact amount of the BTC before using the "Bitcoin Depot" ATM is a mistake.

Having only 0.01981781 BTC the transaction is for 0.020593 BTC or $71.14.  That is 0.00077519 BTC or $2.68  less the correct amount.  

That means another twenty miles roundtrip to deposit $20.00 which includes another three dollar fee and gas and time and more bitcoin purchased at an eighteen percent markup.  

So the $71.14 transaction becomes a $113.00 transaction, including $9.00 in fees an eighteen percent markup on BT, about 2.4 gallons of gasoline at 25mpg, or seven dollars in gasoline lost time and with left over BT that might be a nightmare to liquidate to USD?   That brings the total to about $95.68 for a $71.14 transaction that is a twenty six percent markup plus about seven dollars in gasoline and $17.32 left to exchange back to USD from BT.

While all this time and money is lost, if the hard disk fails with no backup of the "wallet key" does that mean the Bitcoin is lost?

Assuming the transaction is finally successful, what is the best way to liquidate or store the remaining $17.32 in BT remaining?
A hardware wallet, but a good one cost $70.00?    How long before the wallet becomes obsolete?  

Have you tried the Armory specific board here? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=97.0


Until Bitcoin Core is fully synced, you will likely not see the transactions and/or correct balance in Armory.


Yes, you can store the block data for Bitcoin Core on a separate hard disk. It is "slower" to sync and can cause problems with data corruption if the connection to the drive is removed during read/write ops etc... but it is doable.

Honestly, for fast easy access to your funds, I would recommend following the advice already given and extract your private keys from Armory and import them into Electrum. This will mean you do not need to download all 250gigs of blockchain, nor will you require Bitcoin Core.

To export your keys, you can use the following menu options in Armory:
- Wallet Properties
- Backup This Wallet


- Select "Export Keys List" (top left box)
- Click "Export Keys List" (bottom box)


- Select the following options: "Address String", "Private Key (Plain Base58)","Include Unused (Address Pool)"... and make sure "Omit spaces in key data" is checked


You'll end up with a list of all the addresses and private keys displayed in the text box. The private keys will be labelled as "Plain Base58". Simply find the key that matches the address you sent the coins to. Then, in Electrum, you use the "File -> New\Restore -> Import Bitcoin addresses or private keys" and copy/paste the key from Armory.

It should also be noted that Electrum will require that you be connected to the net to be able to view your coins and/or send transactions.

Exporting the private Key into Electrum is not straight forward.  The armory menu has limited options for exporting anything, yet they have options for importing.   Armory must be a special application program only intended for very specific purposes.  This does not appear to be a general use program.

Hopefully in the comment links above it will explain to me hew to export a key from Armory to Electrum.

A short note for future reference: Most wallets will currently provide you with one of the following address types -- (a) Legacy addresses starting with "1", (b) nested (P2SH) SegWit addresses starting with "3" and (c) native (Bech32) SegWit addresses starting with "bc1". The latter (c) being the current cutting-edge standard that many services have yet to support; meaning that some services won't accept bc1 addresses. Electrum offers addresses of type (a) and (c) while Armory AFAIK offers (a) and (b), so that might be the reason the Electrum address didn't get accepted by the Bitcoin ATM. Obviously this won't get your wasted time back, but maybe this knowledge saves you some headache in the future (or whoever else may stumble upon this thread).

This is what I was going to recommend also.  If you aren't dedicated to running a node to help the network, use a lightweight wallet and save yourself a lot of hassle.  Electrum is a great one and you won't ever need to download the blockchain.

I noticed the high fee when I first look up your funded address. Bitcoin ATMs rely on either naive users, or users who are willing to pay a large premium to be anonymous.
Too bad your first experience with Bitcoin ended up this complicated. If you use an exchange in the future, you'll pay a much better rate.

I don't make backups of the blockchain, I have 1 copy, and if I lose it, I can always download it again. I just backup my wallet.
As for solving your problem: Exporting your private key and importing it into Electrum is the fastest way to go. You can of course us an external disk to store the blockchain. Armory sure has it's uses, and so do hardware wallets, but it feels a bit excessive for what you need.

The 100gb free on this laptop hard drive now consists of the halted Bitcoin Core application and only 98mb free on the hard disk.  Multiple installs of Amory on a Windows 7 Kernel desktop with no success.   Had to use an uninstaller program for a "successful" uninstall.   All for one transaction.  Forums suggest that hardware wallets are certainly better, but why buy a $70.00 hardware wallet for what might be a single $70.00 transaction?  The complexity of Bitcoin is impressive.   The lack of large font warnings when installing Armory just adds to the damage.

Can Bitcoin core be run in a separate hard disk attached to the laptop?   That must be true because no on wants to share 100gb of Bitcoin core with their OS.  Mechanical hard disks are slow, people store this "Bitcoin Core" on solid state?   Solid State storage is less reliable than a hard disk unless you purchase at the Enterprise level. Even with a hard disk, a backup and of the "core" is expected.

Please do not comment or answer any of these questions below this sentence except to correct incorrect information.  The questions are rhetorical and will ruin the topic of this thread:  

The purpose of using a Bitcoin ATM is to purchase a computer security application.  Brief research in a couple of forums led to the installation of two programs, Armory and Electrum portable.  At the Bitcoin Depot kiosk the Electrum and Armory barcode would not scan.   A manually typed Electrum address with no success, and then the Armory manual address later worked.  The barcode did not scan and multiple attempts to enter in the code manually wasted maybe an hour of time plus the time to go there and back twice ten miles each way.  Even in a vehicle with good gas mileage that is 1.6 gallons of gasoline.

After making the transaction and researching the bitcoin market rate, the next surprise comes from the greedy Bitcoin Depot Company by including arbitrary markups in the currency exchange with no basis in fact.   A three dollar fee of 0.00084930 BTC and by selling Bitcoin on 1/27/2019 at an inflated rate of $4238.76, about $800 over market rate.  
The first deposit is $73.00 for the $70.00 online transaction, then later another $20.00 deposit to cover the inflated greedy, dishonest, hidden  $800 markup over Bitcoin rate including another 0.00084930 BTC fee.  

If this truly is a $3.00 fee, then it should be taken out in cash, not Bitcoin.  By converting the $3.00 to bitcoin it further erodes the spending power of your dollar because of the $800 over market rate "Bitcoin Depot" markup.   The $800 markup over bitcoin should be expressed in a percentage not an arbitrary value.

What type of entrepreneurial exploitation is this "Bitcoin Depot" place?   What types of people will bother to waste that kind of money to have a transaction "less traceable" than a Credit Card?   Why spend $19.00 for one $70.00 transaction at an eighteen percent markup?  Only a USA coin dealer  or pawn shop can make that kind of markup, but coins and merchandise are real and Bitcoin is just 0000's and 1111's.  

The good news is that the Bitcoin Depot people did respond to the phone call and email promptly.   Bitcoin is only a few days old for me.  Only wanted to do one transaction, and now have to do without the security application because the cash appears "lost" in Bitcoin or Armory wallet or Bitcoin core or something.

Using Armory only makes sense if you have a cold storage set up (ie. an airgapped offline computer for secure transaction signing), for everything else it only adds unnecessary overhead.

As recommended by the others, download and install Electrum:
https://electrum.org/#home

You should be able to export your private key from Armory like so (at the bottom of the page):
http://docs.bitshares.org/muse/migration/howto-exporting-wallet-clients.html

(a) And import, or rather sweep your coins into your new Electrum wallet like so:
https://bitcoinelectrum.com/sweeping-your-private-keys-into-electrum/

(b) You can also directly create a new Electrum wallet by importing your Armory private keys like so:
https://bitcoinelectrum.com/importing-your-private-keys-into-electrum/

But in this case I'd recommend (1) creating a new Electrum wallet, (2) writing down the seed words that Electrum gives so you have a backup (very important) and then (3) sweeping the coins into your newly created Electrum wallet (Option (a) from above).

If you want the security that Armory in a cold storage set up provides you combined with the ease of a SPV wallet, I'd recommend getting a hardware wallet such as the Trezor (trezor.io) or Ledger (ledger.com). It is recommended to purchase hardware wallets directly from the respective vendors, lest you receive either a faked or a tampered with device.

Also this thread may be of interest to you, for future reference:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/general-bitcoin-wallets-which-what-why-1631151

If you're that impatient then use SPV client. It's far easier than filling a police report. You can simply install Electrum, open it, import your private key and then you can use your money for whatever you want. Installing a full node is in fact overkill if you just want to send and receive money for once in a week.


Maybe you can learn about Bitcoin first, what's a wallet, what's SPV, what's confirmation and so on before you start using it. Other cryptocurrencies are certainly not better when it comes to network security. Sending a letter to Congress won't help, I don't know what makes you get the impression that government can do as they please with the network when they can't even stop someone when they want to create a new address.

Yes, but not entirely based to the internet speed.
Faster Disk I/O, CPU and Larger Ram all contributes to the speed of verification. It basically downloading data, writing it to the disk, reading and verifying the contents all at the same time, not totally download and write scenario.

It will temporarily stop to the last height before the internet/power loss, but it's resumable.