Multibit bitcoin address checking account

It's very unlikely you'll ever have to type a Bitcoin address by hand so don't worry about having to memorise them. Bitcoin addresses are intended to be used just once since for technical reasons see later they become a little less secure after you have spent the bitcoin received by them.

QR codes are a convenient way to transfer information from one machine to another. This makes it easy for you to request payment from smartphones with Bitcoin wallets installed. Once you have requested a payment it appears in the Payments screen with the status 'You requested'. At this point you are waiting to get paid, the general process is as follows:. The other person sends you bitcoin and the status moves to "Unconfirmed" to indicate that the Bitcoin network is processing it.

You will also get a green alert bar with a message indicating that bitcoin is incoming. You cannot spend unconfirmed transactions in MultiBit HD since they could fail to confirm for many reasons. When your request has been paid and before it is confirmed the status of the transaction moves to "Receiving". If the other person only sends you part of the bitcoin you requested, the status is "Part paid" until they send you all that you requested. Bitcoin miners process all the unconfirmed transactions and put them into blocks.

Once this happens your transaction is confirmed and you can spend it. This normally takes between 10 minutes and an hour. Once your transaction is confirmed in a block its status changes to "Received".

Use the Payments screen. You can undo this if you select the wrong one. This requires a technical explanation of how Bitcoin addresses are created. This process makes the address short so it doesn't take up much space in the block chain, and also makes it very hard to work back from the address through two different hashing algorithms to arrive at the original public key.

During the Bitcoin spending process the public key is exposed in the block chain for all to see. For this example, transfer 0.

Localbitcoins, like other exchanges, does not always send funds immediately. Delays of a few minutes are to be expected because transfers are often batched to minimize fees.

In my tests, Localbitcoins took on average ten minutes to process a withdrawal. As the Bitcoin network processes this new transaction, its status will be updated in the transactions listing.

The network sends a confirmation once every ten minutes or so. MultiBit considers transactions fully processed after receiving six confirmations. Processed transactions are designated with a green checkmark. Only two fields are required to make a payment: Amounts can be denominated in bitcoin BTC , or local currency. Fees must be accounted for in every transaction. The network expects a transaction fee of 0. Paper wallets are sometimes received as gifts from another Bitcoin user.

Unfortunately, the procedure described here for securely importing paper wallets into MultiBit is complicated. If you received a paper wallet and simply want to spend it, consider using another Bitcoin wallet program - for example, Electrum. Create a text file called import. The timestamp should represent a time safely before the first payment into the wallet was made. An example file might look like this:. Unfortunately, mis-assigning the timestamp in an import file is both easy to do and can cause confusing MultiBit behavior.

Should MultiBit not display balances as expected after importing a private key, see the Stuck Transactions section. When prompted for a filename, enter paper-wallet.

The newly-created wallet should be empty. Next, import the paper wallet. After synchronization, you should see two wallets, one of which contains the balance of the newly-imported paper wallet. Enter an amount that will fully transfer funds from Paper Wallet when transaction fees are taken into account.

Why not directly import the private key into the default wallet? The answer has to do with change addresses. Leaving an imported private key in a MultiBit wallet makes it possible for bitcoin to be stolen in the future. As of version 0. However, this concern may not apply if you only import private keys securely created by you.

Select a convenient filename for the backup in this case, petty-cash. Many instances of theft have been caused by MultBit users storing unencrypted backups to cloud storage. Anyone finding such a backup file can take the funds in your wallet - with or without access to your your computer.

Add a secure password to any backup of a wallet holding non-trival amounts of bitcoin. Unfortunately, testing backup recovery is not easy in MultiBit. The next two paragraphs describe a procedure to simulate a clean MultiBit installation. Use it only on a backed-up wallet containing a trivial amount of bitcoin, and only if you feel comfortable modifying system files. The MultiBit data directory resides at an operating system-specific path that is also displayed at the top of the MultiBit main window.

Having found this data directory, close MultiBit. Next, delete the data directory. On restarting MultiBit, your previous wallet will have been replaced by a new, unfunded wallet. This ends the procedure for simulating a clean MultiBit installation.

Starting with a clean installation of MultiBit, the procedure for restoring a backup is similar to the one outlined under Sweep a Paper Wallet. The backup file plays the role of the manually-created import. If you enter the wrong password, MultiBit will respond with a message to that effect. MultiBit will synchronize with the network, which could take a minute or two.

When synchronization is complete, your wallet should be restored to its previous condition. The MultiBit wallets used so far have not been protected by a password. Without a password, anyone who can access your computer or read from your had drive can, in principle, steal bitcoin from the wallet. Adding a password makes such theft more difficult. Wallets protected by password behave differently than unprotected wallets. They must be unlocked before spending or backing up.

They also display a lock icon in the wallet view.