Paperwallets, reporting on current balance and string integrity

Hello guys,

New potential “cryptonite” here, glad to be here.

In spite of a really lousy first run where www.liteaddress.org would not successfully decrypt my BIP38 private key on my first ever (paper)wallet made on the same site, I’m not all out of hope yet, but I do have a couple of questions before risking another loss.

  1. When I tried to decrypt the private key via liteaddress.org in my first attempt at this crypto-thing, I got “string not recognized”. Is this a known problem? If yes, will I be absolutely in the clear if I just don’t encrypt the private key of a paperwallet and instead just guard it really well and create it with a live CD while detached from the net? I know the decryption password for the wallet was correct, so that ain’t it.

  2. When I now create a new paperwallet and a few moments later check the brand new and still empty wallet’s public address via http://explorer.litecoin.net/ it tells me:

“Address not seen on the network”

Does this mean that this (non-encrypted) paperwallet public key is corrupt, that it’s non-existing or that it exists, but is just not yet loaded? If the latter, it would be a lot more reassuring if it would at least confirm the existence of the wallet in spite of it not having been loaded yet.

I hope for some reassuring answers as my confidence in the maturity of this technology is somewhat shaken right now.

Thx for reading.

R.

you need to check there is any coins in the address first…block explorer:
blockcypher.com
and then your encryption method should be recognized as long as that address is on the network…when you sent the coins to the paper wallet did the transaction get confirmed? any and all address have a corresponding private key which can be obtained with core software…and simply writing down the public and private keys is the same thing as making a paper wallet…so the real question is…when you created that address at liteaddress.org was the node live and broadcasting transactions and address’ at the time? check the balance first and go form there…download core 0.14.2 form litecoin.org for your system and after the chain completely syncs…click help then click console and type
importprivkey (followed by the private/spend key on the wallet) (followed by passphrase )
once that is done type
importaddress ( followed by the public address on the wallet )(followed by passphrase)
then type rescan and your coins should pop up when its done syncing…let me know how it goes

Thx for replying bakd247,

“when you sent the coins to the paper wallet did the transaction get confirmed?”

Yes. I could also see the funds when looking up the public key of the wallet afterwards.

“when you created that address at liteaddress.org was the node live and broadcasting transactions and address’ at the time?”

I have no idea how to test that at the moment of creating a wallet. I just popped in an Ubuntu live CD, went to liteaddress.org, downloaded the site, disconnected from the network, opened the locally stored version of the site in Firefox and created my wallet. That should be good enough?

Anything to share on question 2)?

Again, thx for responding.

if the public address on the paper wallet shows up on block explorer then it was broadcast and the money is on the paper wallet…that’s the main thing you need to be sure of…then you can “sweep” the private key to any digital wallet form there and send the coins digitally…
so yes it should be enough…now what you have to do is download litecoin core wallet or electrum or something like that…any wallet that will allow you to import a private key…

But that’s the whole problem. I can’t get to the private key, because the BIP38-encrypted string won’t decrypt and Electrum will not take the encrypted string in it’s sweep dialogue.

if you have a paper wallet…the “spend address” is the private key

Yes, I know and it’s encrypted and will not be decrypted, so I cannot get to the private key string = no sweeping possible.

private keys are not encrypted…they are passphrase protected so the string of letters and numbers on all paper wallets labeled “spend key” is the private key and can only be imported using the passphrase…if it is passphrase protected…the passphrases are encrypted…
you would just type your passphrase after the private key so it would be under console importprivkey (followed by private key ) ( followed by passphrase) then just importaddress after that…don’t need a passphrase for the public key import…just the private key…and even if you forgot your passphrase you can recover it using hashcat by setting the rules correctly