Peter R’s Theory on the Collapse of Mt. Gox

Re:Peter R’s Theory on the Collapse of Mt. Gox by pygy_ on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @08:18PM (#7344592)

Yes, you can, as long as you have an address (Public key). A wallet is just a private key.

The transaction history, and thus the ballance of an address is held in the blockchain, in the ether.

To spend the coins, you must have at hand:

* the current blockchain

* the private key

* a connection to the network.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Peter R’s Theory on the Collapse of Mt. Gox by Geee on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @08:58PM (#7344745)

However, these can be on different devices. Transactions can be signed on an offline machine. Also, you need just the unspent transactions to sign a new transaction, not the whole blockchain. Bitcoin Trezor works this way, http://www.bitcointrezor.com/

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Peter R’s Theory on the Collapse of Mt. Gox by whyenot on Wednesday March 05, 2014 @12:26AM (#7345469)

Is that true even if you only spend some of coins and not all the coins? I seem to remember there being something very tricky about this if you are using a paper wallet.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Peter R’s Theory on the Collapse of Mt. Gox by paps on Wednesday March 05, 2014 @02:22AM (#7345811)

You can add coins to a paper wallet many times.

What is considered risky is spending only a fraction of the paper wallet, for the following reasons:

- you just used the private key for creating a transaction, so the chances of it being compromised increases

- the client you used might have sent the change to another address while you're thinking the remaining coins are still in the paper wallet

But if it's done well, yes, it's possible to spend a fraction of a paper wallet.

[ Parent | on HN ]