Topic: Can a Ledger wallet incorporate the private key of physical Bitcoin ? (Read 1152 times)

Yes, a silver wallet more precisely.

@mocacinno , thanks for the insight !

I'm not sure about this... Ledger nano S is a HD wallet, it means it's deterministic, so it derives private keys from an xprv.
By defenition, a "thirth party" private key can not be derived from the same xprv.
I think, theoretically, it should be possible to generate a wallet that uses a seed to generate an xprv and derives new private keys from this xprv AND allows you to import "random" private keys... However, i don't think such a wallet exists at the moment (AFAIK). Such a wallet would combine two completely different methods, and just share the functions to scan for new unspent outputs and generate transactions...


In electrum, you have 2 kinds of wallets: a HD wallet can not import private keys, it can sweep wallets tough. When sweeping a private key into a HD wallet, what happens is: a new private key => public key => address is generated deterministically using the xprv. Then, electrum generates a new transaction using all unspent outputs controlled by the swept private key and generates a new transaction using all these unspent outputs as input, and it generates one new output, one that can be spent by the newly generated address.

A non-HD electrum wallet does not use an prv to derive new private keys/public keys/addresses, it just imports "random" private keys and keeps track of their unspent outputs.

AFAIK, when coupling a ledger nano S to electrum, it's always a HD wallet, so you cannot import new private keys, merely sweep them.

It should do it, the Ledger Nano S has the feature to import private keys as far as I know. I guess you are talking about importing the private key from a physical funded bitcoin ? Anyway the Electrum wallet lets you do that, import private keys and I am sure about Electrum but Legder Nano S should do it too since it is compatible with Electrum.

Hi ! and sorry if that question might be silly , but I'm still strugling to understand if a Ledger wallet could display the amount of a said funded coin ? And possibly control the transactions between it ?

Sorry but I'm still new in this world...