Importing Private Keys?

Hi everyone

Paul here from the UK…I am a newbie here and I need some advice.

I have several LITECOINS which I bought a few years ago and I have them in Paper Wallets. Each has a Private Key.

How do I import these into an online account? I am in Coinbase but they do not allow Import Private Keys??

Your help is much appreicated.

Regards
Paul

you cant import private key to coinbase

you can download a core wallet for your device at: litecoin.org and after the blockchain is done syncing (takes about 1 day on most connections) you can open console under the debug window in Help and type importprivkey (followed by the key) and this will put them in the digital wallet on your computer…
MAKE A BACKUP!!!
and once your coins are in the wallet and the wallet is synced you can send the coins to your coinbase wallet form there…

1 Like

Hello bakd247

Can I ask a question its similar , I have a new wallet created and LTC in wallet , I have the paper wallet safe but I encrypted it with BIP38 and now I require to send some LTC for the first time and when I tried to decrypt and use exeduos it is telling me pass phrase is incorrect. I am all ways very careful to write down passwords correctly, so don’t know what is up , is it possible to use litecoin.org with my BIP38 private key and not have to decrypt
Regards
Roco

Not exactly…all wallets use the same encryption methods…your passphrase is encrypted with AES 128 and sha512 most of the time…

If you have a private key you don’t need a passphrase though
private keys are encrypted using the passphrase in a wallet but if you have a bip38 private key then you can download electrum or exudous and import it to that and like I said you just need a passphrase to access your private keys in a wallet for signing transactions and such…
if you have the private key you can even create a raw transaction in a different wallet and sign it using that private key

you can use any wallet you’d like but make sure the format of key you are trying to import is supported in that wallet…

I would go to liteaddress.org (be sure to type in the address manually to the address bar as https://liteaddress.org instead of http://liteaddress.org to secure your connection) and once your there move your mouse around until it go to the next screen and then click “wallet details”…now enter that BIP 38 private key in the “Private Key” box and you will get a WIF private key at the bottom on the right side.
Now after you have downloaded litecoin core form litecoin.org for your pc or mac and it is fully synced you can open Console under the “Help” tab/ Debug window and using the following command:
importprivkey (WIF key)

then you can send your coins without a passphrase or re-encrypt from there…DON’T FORGET YOUR PASSWORD more than likely your doing something like you wrote down a 5 that looks like an S or a 2 that looks like a z or something like that…passwords are case sensitive as well and all characters and symbols as well as spaces are acceptable in Bitcoin and Litecoin wallets for passphrases.

1 Like

Thanks for the reply so quick. No problem is I tried 50 times over the past few days on https://liteaddress.org to get the WIF with the private key and its asked for pass phrase and is telling me its incorrect , I wrote it down as words so cant see how its wrong. What I’m trying to ask is, can I access my LTC so to transfer to another wallet using my private key that is BIP38 and not the WIF format? as the pass phrase doesn’t seem to work, will litecoin core form litecoin.org work with the private key and not WIF?

Thanks Again Roco

the only reason that would happen in that the private key you have is an encrypted private key…so then no you cannot use it without a password…
only way to find out is to try…not like you have anything to loose since you already lost the password right?

if you paste a private key into liteaddress.org iand click “view details” and it does NOT say “this is not a valid private key” then you do’nt need a password if you use the WIF private key
WIF stands for “Wallet Import Format”

BIP38 is an encryption method so you cannot use that key without a password…a BIP38 key is not a true private key…
so if you have a BIP38 key…this is not a private key…it is an encrypted version of your private key or a password hash…which will be what the private key and passphrase hash to be…

BIP 38 is actually not a private key format at all…it is a encryption method for the private keys…your gonna have to find your 256bit 32byte private key…some wallets contain base64 keys or 64 byte private keys too…

Now BIP 32 on the other hand is a private key format for electrum style wallets…
and you may be able to extract the key using python pybitcointools but I do not use Exudous so I am unsure of this…I know you can extract BIP32 private keys for electrum with pybitcointools

1 Like

Thanks again , its not coming up an invalid when I tried again with the private key in liteaddress.org and clicked "view details , its asking for pass phrase , as this seems to be wrong, Ill have to do what you said and “BIP 38 is actually not a private key format at all…it is a encryption method for the private keys…your gonna have to find your 256bit 32byte private key…some wallets contain base64 keys or 64 byte private keys too…” I can see the LTC in my public address on the blockchain so at least its safe :frowning: Just need to figure out the rest , Ill keep trying the pass phrase for a while maybe one letter is out. Have seen on other forums here that guys can crack them. Ill leave it today as head melted, is it ok to send you a massage in a few days for some advice, if I get a solution?
Your a gentleman for the help.

roco

Hello, I have Paper Wallets with some Litecoins.
I am looking for someone to help on how to convert the Paper Wallet to an secure online wallet.
All I have is the Paper for now. I am looking for a step by step process if possible.
Thanks so much.

online wallets are NOT “secure” for storing coins because you cannot control the signing and brooadcasting of transactions with them.

download a wallet from litecoin.org and see this post:
https://litecointalk.org/t/importing-private-keys/9594/2
towards the bottom it explains how to use the command
importprivkey (privkey)

to import your keys to a litecoin core wallet that you have full control over
if you do NOT download a full copy of the blockchain with your wallet then the wallet you are usig is relying on an “external server” to broadcast transactions…(constant problems)

download a wallet fro you device from litecoin.org…let the blockchain sync and import your private key…then send the coins to a new address if you want to from there…or just make a backup and keep you digital wallet instead of paper…

DO NOT THROW AWAY THE PAPER WALLET AFTER IMPORTING THE KEY!!!

unless you already sent all the coins that are locked behind the “L” address that is on the peice of paper

by importing your key you will have a digital representation of your coins and a paper representation…first one to spend the coins is the only valid transactions…

Do you need to set your public wallet as an active wallet for the command to work or something? I got this message
00:49:15

Executing command using “” wallet

and thought it meant I needed to set my public wallet first. Also is that something you can only do after the app is done syncing?

no you would only have to specify to use a specific address type…not public key type…the public key is the same for all 3 address types(legacy, segwit and bech32)

Yeah, you are right.