Questions about the Master Public Key and Public/Private Keys

torusJKL

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Quote from: the_poet on December 29, 2015, 06:17:22 PM

Thanks for your replies. However, about 2), I want to make sure I have a universal backup which can be imported into any bitcoin wallet, in the remote case Electrum disappeared or a new version did no longer support the seed I have. While the seed is a powerful tool, we need to remember it's tied to Electrum, which is only one of the countless wallets around.

You could use pybitcointools to extract the private key (electrum_privkey).
The private key is BIP32 compatible and thus much more universal than the Electrum seed.
You can test this on http://bip32.org/ (don't do this with your main seed, instead create a new one just for testing)

the_poet

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Activity: 1137

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Quote from: torusJKL on December 29, 2015, 04:11:50 PM

1) you don't need to backup the wallet. All you will ever need is the seed.
Every single address in Electrum is created deterministic from the seed.
So no matter how many addresses you will create, as long you have the seed you will be able to recreate them.

2) the seed can create an almost infinity number of addresses.
I don't see the point in exporting all of them in advance.

Thanks for your replies. However, about 2), I want to make sure I have a universal backup which can be imported into any bitcoin wallet, in the remote case Electrum disappeared or a new version did no longer support the seed I have. While the seed is a powerful tool, we need to remember it's tied to Electrum, which is only one of the countless wallets around.

torusJKL

hero member

Activity: 619

Merit: 500

1) you don't need to backup the wallet. All you will ever need is the seed.
Every single address in Electrum is created deterministic from the seed.
So no matter how many addresses you will create, as long you have the seed you will be able to recreate them.

2) the seed can create an almost infinity number of addresses.
I don't see the point in exporting all of them in advance.

the_poet

legendary

Activity: 1137

Merit: 1035

Bitcoin accepted here

As a new Electrum user, I'd like to ask a few questions:

1) Does the Master Public Key work like the seed or the wallet backup in listing the addresses in our wallet in read-only mode? I mean, if I create some new addresses in my wallet in addition to the pregenerated ones, the seed will always be the same, while the wallet needs to be backed up and this needs to be done every time a new address (and its private key) is added to the wallet. So, is the MPK fixed or does it change with every new address added to the stash?

2) How can I export a list containing the public and the private key for each address in the wallet? My goal is to have a "universal" backup which I can later, for example, write down on a piece of paper to use as a paper wallet or import in *any* Bitcoin wallet application.

Topic: Questions about the Master Public Key and Public/Private Keys (Read 682 times)