Topic: Transferring bitcoins from a paper wallet to Electrum wallet for Android (Read 214 times)

For making a transaction offline, first you create an unsigned transaction on your watch-only wallet. Then you export the unsigned transaction and import it into your offline wallet. You sign the transaction on the offline wallet and after that you import the signed transaction to the online device and broadcast it to the network.

Ok, got it...because that one online is a watch-only wallet

Sorry but...how the two wallets get in touch with each other then?
I mean, one of the two wallets is always offline!

Interesting thank you, I will get ,more info about that and see if I am able to do it

Probably you meant " offline"

A paper wallet should be generated offline and the private key should never connect to the internet. Otherwise, you would defeat the purpose of a paper wallet.
If you generated your paper wallet using on an online device, that's not really a paper wallet.

You can import your private key into a hot wallet and spend your fund, but that's not recommended. For more security, it's recommended to import your private key on an offline device (preferably to be air-gapped) and sign your transaction there.
Take note that for making a transaction offline, you would need two wallets. You would need to create a wallet with your private key on an offline device and a watch-only wallet on an online device.
The offline wallet is used for signing the transaction. The online wallet is used for creating the unsigned transaction and broadcasting the signed transaction.


I edited the post to fix a typo.
Thanks Roberto12345 for the correction.

Why? I just purchased a card...anybody can do that, even me.

How am I supposed to use my bitcoins to pay for something by a paper wallet? That’s why I need a hot wallet, right? Do I have any other choice?

Why do you want coins on a device that is prone to be stolen or lost, which is used for all kind of daily internet shit, which security status is rather hard to assess depending on its origin and apps installed? But of course, you do yours... I'm just not a huge fan of Bitcoin or other coin wallets on mobile phones, unless the wallet's value is in the ballpark of pocket money sums.

Think about it: how safe is your keyboard app on your Android device? Why? Because you type the private key with it. How safe is the QR code app if you scan a paper wallet's QR code for the private key? Are you sure your private key stays local and safe??

Next question would be: you use a paper wallet and have basically no knowledge how to use or sweep it? That's a bit odd...

Did you create the paper wallet yourself? If not, chances are high that you could've been scammed.
If yes, chances are still high for some pitfalls depending on which tools you used to create the paper wallet and how safe your used computer environment was.


To be a bit more constructive:
You could import the paper wallet's public address into a watch-only Electrum wallet on your mobile phone. That way you should at least see the funding transaction of the paper wallet and if the public address still has some funds "on it". If that is actually the case, then you can work with the past remarks here in this thread to properly import the private key. The public address of your paper wallet's private key should match the public address on the paper wallet, too. If not, something's clearly wrong (not accounting a wrong address type issue).

I mean the address which has been generated by your private key in electrum. Is that correct?

As I already said, to check the address generated by your private key, you can tap on your wallet name at top left corner of the screen and go "Addresses/Coins".

What is the derived address?
Yes, the circle located at top right corner of the screen is green
The bitcoins are still all in the paper wallet

- Is the derived address also correct?
- Is the wallet synced? (If the wallet is synced, the circle located at top right corner of the screen should be green.)
- Did you check the transaction history of the address on a block explorer?  Is there any transaction associated with the address?

The key is correct.
Electrum wallet added "p2pkh:" before the private key by itself, even if the key doesn't start with bc1

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I clicked on "Receive" but no receiving address was generated. Only a window popped up, with a request of "Description of payment and amount"

What character does your address starts with?

Maybe your address starts from 3 or bc1. Use this format to import the private key:

p2pkh:your private key. For address that starts from 1. Adding p2pkh is not necessary for addresses that start with 1.
p2wpkh-p2sh:your private key. For address that starts from 3
p2wpkh:your private key. For address that starts from bc1

You mean p2wpkh.

Tap on your wallet name at top left corner of the screen and go "Addresses/Coins". After that, you will see a bitcoin address. Is the address same as your paper wallet address?
If the address is not correct, either you entered a wrong private key or imported a correct private key but with wrong script type. Note that if your address starts with bc1, you should add "p2wpkh:" before the private key.


I edited the post to fix a typo. Thanks Charles-Tim for the correction.

This is what I am going to suggest too for OP.

If the private keys exposed then the chances of any funds left in the wallet/address is minimum so if there is any coins available the I consider my wallet is safe and I will keep as it is, by importing the wallet into airgapped device then broadcast the transaction using another device.

Edit:


Copy the address and paste it on any blockchain explorer to see the history of the address and if you see any transaction that swept your balance then your privkeys are exposed and some stole your funds and if you don't see any transaction then you never actually funded the address or you imported wrong address.

I created another wallet and imported the private key, but the balance is 0.
What now?

If you want to spend from a paper wallet and be sure that the private key is not exposed online, you can import the private key on a wallet on an airgapped device and use a watch-only wallet to make an unsigned transaction, use the wallet on airgapped device to sign it and transfer the signed transaction to watch-only to broadcast it. In this way, the private key is not exposed.

You may not needed to transfer your bitcoin and just do the steps above which is to import your wallet to electrum using the private key that you have used in your paper wallet but if you want to use the wallet that is generated by electrum then you can do the same way which is to import the wallet using the private to the electrum and then send it to the address of the new wallet you created on electrum. Make sure to make a back up the seed phrase or recovery phrase just like you make back up of your private key.

Just as said above you can either import that private key to your electrum wallet or you try to sweep the the wallet to a new one. Sweeping means that the whole coins on that wallet will be moved to another wallet you created there. For sweeping you need to pay for transaction fee. Why I actually advise sweeping although it requires transaction fee which is external cost is because you never can tell where that private key from the paper wallet as been exposed to.