Topic: Wallet reader (Read 464 times)

What the person wants is a program independent of the core software.
Why? Probably because they want to collect a bunch of wallet dats, en masse, and check them.
If not, they would have to shut down core, and restart it each and every single time.

Get it?

To put it another way... your "wallet", is essentially like a safe that contains a keyring that has a bunch of safety deposit box keys on it.

Meanwhile the bitcoins are stored in various safety deposit boxes at a secure facility (aka "The Blockchain"™)...

So, to figure out how many Bitcoins you can actually control, you'd need to open up your safe, take out all the keys and then open every box that you have a key for. You can't simply look inside the safe and see a pile of "X.XX Bitcoins".

As Danny explained, this is what wallet software does... it tracks all the transactions being made on the blockchain, finds the ones that are related to the keys it controls and updates it's balance accordingly.

So, the "Wallet Inspector" you are looking for, is the software that created your wallet file... in this instance, Bitcoin Core (specifically, version 0.18.1 as indicated in your other thread)

For Bitcoin Core, you need to start the application, let it sync the blockchain (likely to take a couple of days)... and then once it is finished, it will be able to tell you what your "balance" is.

If you don't want to (or can not) sync the blockchain due to time/diskspace limitations... then you will need to find yourself a different wallet application that does not require a full blockchain download, and then you'll need to transfer your private keys to that.

Perhaps use the "helper" here to find a wallet that meets your specific requirements: https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet

That much is clear.  It is why your questions appear to be presenting an XY Problem.  Instead of asking about what you actually want to accomplish (determine the amount of bitcoins controlled by a wallet), your lack of understanding has led you to believe you can figure that part out if you can just accomplish this other thing (inspect a wallet). So, you ask about this "other thing" and then are confused when it doesn't lead to the solution you want.


Fixed that for you.  Some physical wallets *might* contain *some* money, but they generally hold valuables (credit cards, Identification, Business cards, etc).  The valuable thing that is held in a bitcoin wallet are PRIVATE KEYS.  Private keys give you the ability to create transactions on the blockchain, so they are very important and very valuable.


Not true.


Because there isn't a "how much" in your wallet.  There is a set of private keys.  Those keys may or may not have the ability to add transactions to the bitcoin blockchain.  The ony way to know for certain is to compare the private keys from the wallet against ALL of the transactions that already exist in in the blockchain. As you find blockchain transactions that offer your private keys control over value you can keep trak of that value to sum up the total amount of value you can control.


Each wallet software has it's own format for storing private keys.  There isn't much need for separate special software to read a file when the wallet software that created the file is perfectly good at reading it already.  That being said, there are some tools for some of the more popular wallets (such as pywallet for Bitcoin Core wallet files).

In simple words: Bitcoin wallets clients doesn't work like a wallet.
All of the available bitcoins are stored in the blockchain (nodes) but can only be moved/spent using their respective private keys.
The wallet files (eg. wallet.dat) contain the user's "private keys" (encrypted if it has a passphrase), not bitcoins.
The wallet (eg. Bitcoin core) have the capability to "search" the user's "balance" from the blockchain.
Get it now?

Can you answer the unanswered question from your thread (Bitcoin wallet):
Why did you need to open your wallet.dat without using bitcoin core or What's your goal?

There is something here that I do not understand. A wallet to me is something that contains money or other valuables. A bitcoin wallet sounds to me to contain bitcoins. Why does it seem so complicated to figure out how much there is in my wallet?? Somebody smart must have written a "wallet inspector"??

Manually? That's more troublesome than loading the wallet in the correct client.

If you really need to find the balance (spendable?) without syncing the client, you just have to import the master private key to a light client that supports it(eg. Electrum).

How to get that key?
Remember your other thread about importing a wallet into another wallet?
That dumpwallet file contains the Master Private key, it was saved to the location of your bitcoin-qt.exe if you didn't specified the directory.

I find that hexdump works quite well. I've never yet had an instance where hexdump failed to give the the contents of any file at all.

Seriously, what are you talking about?

The OP asked a way to read wallet files, you are talking about cops and DEA? I hope the mushrooms you took will fade out soon.

OP, if you want to browse a wallet use pywallet and the web tool options, or learn some python and db database, and fork some tools from github and you are good to go

you can find pywallet here: https://github.com/jackjack-jj/pywallet

/KX

Still unsure what you're trying to do here but why not simply use Bitcoin core, sync it and let the software tell you that?

You could also get your addresses and use some portfolio app to keep track of them..

It seems a bit difficult to find out how many bitcoins a specific wallet contains.
How does people keep track of it? Manually??

He has a good point to make that assumption unlike you who's just being a dick.
People come ask questions and disappear when they find their solutions without ever bothering to tell others that hey guys, I got my answer here is the solution. It helps the people who might have otherwise wasted their time thinking up or doing research and at the same time it would help others in the same situation. Like me. I wanted a proper solution to this as well. Without going the public watch only address route.

Bottom line, quit being a dick.

Since you didn't reply within the last 4 days, can we assume that you find what you were searching for?

If not, please be more specific.
1) What wallet file are you talking about (bitcoin core, electrum, etc.. ? )
2) What exactly are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to gain access to private keys without actually opening the wallet ? This is possible, but if you have set a password it definitely is required.

If the wallet is generated from the old bitcoin core wallet I think notepad will work but for the new version of the Bitcoin core wallet, it's encrypted based on what I heard.

Did you add a password to your wallet?
If not try to open it with notepad if you can see the content inside the wallet.dat but if it showing encrypted text well I never heard any tools yet to decrypt the text.



Someone use Pywallet here but it seems he was failed to retrieve the addresses and balances take a look at this post below.

- https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/how-to-see-bitcoin-core-addresses-on-an-encrypted-walletdat-5084053

There are various open source tools on github but you would need to specify what you need to extract?

If you just look for addresses inside the wallet you can sometimes even use a hex editor.

Pywallet is widely used but doesnt always give you correct results if the wallet is damaged or is new. It sometimes need modification. If you ate a programmer you can always extract code from github and create your own custom reader.

It is even possinle to extract info from Android phones but that would require some forensic tools

Why did you asked again?
You've posted the same question in September: Bitcoin wallet: Sept 23.

You can start by telling us your intention or goal,
that way, we can have an idea and be accurate with our suggestions.

For now, that "wallet.dat" file doesn't contain any Bitcoins in it;
as others told you in your previous thread, it contains the private keys to control (your) unspent outputs in the blockchain.
So you wont be able to see your balance just by opening the wallet file or loading it to another program that doesn't have any sort of connection to Bitcoin blockchain (ex. nodes).

Depends on which app you were using. If it is the bitcoin core wallet then take a look at pywallet here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/guide-recover-your-deleted-keys-38004
If you were using a different app there may or may not be other options.

Also take a look here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/guide-recover-your-deleted-keys-38004

-Dave

Is there a standalone program that can read the content of a wallet?