I've redacted all the long numbers just in case there's anything sensitive there. The big 'gotcha' it seems is that if you're not careful and don't either spend the lot in one transaction or create a second output going back to yourself, then any change will go to the miners. The intuitively sensible thing to do is to send one bitcoin just to test and see whether it works, with the intention of sending the rest later. This would be a very bad idea as you would be donating a mining fee of 49 bitcoins!
So there ends the limits of my understanding of raw transactions. I'd be very grateful if anybody knowledgeable could look over the redacted transaction and tell me whether there's anything else I might have gotten wrong?
You don't know what you are doing with raw transactions; you should not be attempting to create a raw transaction manually.So there ends the limits of my understanding of raw transactions. I'd be very grateful if anybody knowledgeable could look over the redacted transaction and tell me whether there's anything else I might have gotten wrong?
The following assumes that you don't want to have your private key exposed to a machine that is on the internet, if it is, let me know and I will give you modified instructions.
On a machine connected to the internet, install Bitcoin Core, start it up and then use the importaddress command to import your address. This will import just the address, not the private key, so your coins are still safe. Do this as soon as possible so that you don't have to wait for it to rescan the blockchain later.
Once the address is imported, let Bitcoin Core sync. If you don't have the disk space for the blockchain (~180 GB), then you can use pruning. There should be an option for pruning in the settings somewhere.
Once Bitcoin Core has synced, make sure that it has the balance that you expect.
Now using createrawtransaction, create a raw transaction with no inputs and the output you want. So your command will look something like this:
Code:
createrawtransaction '[]' '{"":50}'
Note that using the full value of your coins (~50) there is okay, the fee will be handled later. Additionally any change outputs will be handled later.Take the output of that and pass it into the fundrawtransaction command with the options I will specify in the example:
Code:
fundrawtransaction '{"includeWatching":"true", "subtractFeeFromOutputs":[0]}'
What this command does it lets Bitcoin Core fill in the inputs and the transaction fee necessary. The includeWatching parameter lets it choose the inputs from your watching-only address and subtractFeeFromOutputs will subtract the fee from your outputs so you can send the maximum amount possible.Take the result of the above command and pass it into signrawtransaction. Then broadcast that result with sendrawtransaction.
