Setting Up Two Bitcoin Core Wallets: A Guide

I need a step-by-step guide for setting up two Bitcoin Core wallets. One should be on an offline laptop with the wallet.dat file, and the other online as a watch-only wallet. The wallet is from the Bitcoin v0.8.0 era, so I guess it might need to be updated? Details please.

Honestly, I doubt there's a tutorial that covers everything you've described. You might have to create that guide yourself after figuring it out.

You can get a public key and use it to set up a watch-only wallet. If you only have a private key, import it first, grab the public address, then create the watch-only wallet. Remember, you can’t spend from that.

My old wallet has like 100 addresses and notes on each transaction. I’ve heard there's a newer system (PSBT) that can help with offline signing and watch-only setups, but I really need a detailed tutorial to avoid mistakes. Plus, with the wallet being so old, I guess it needs converting to a new format.

I think @Churchillvv is right; a specific tutorial likely doesn’t exist. Since Bitcoin-qt 0.8.0 uses BDB, it should still open in the latest version without issues but yeah, conversion may be necessary.

If you haven’t set an HD seed in versions after 0.13, your wallet stays non-HD, which can complicate things. Migrating to a descriptor wallet could work, but you'll have a ton of single key descriptors to deal with.

I haven't tried this with a legacy wallet, but for the watch-only wallet, make sure to import only the public key descriptors. Don’t mess with the private keys!

Wouldn't it make more sense to use combo(pubkey) descriptors for the watch-only wallet? They match any address type except taproot. You can use getaddressinfo <address> to get the pubkey.

That’s a good point. After migrating to a descriptor wallet, it should be HD. If you start with only one address, Bitcoin Core might not let you create a transaction due to no available change.

Can you create unsigned transactions with the GUI? Maybe import some empty addresses along with the ones that have balances and then transfer funds to new bc1 addresses?

You can create unsigned transactions, but you might need to use the console. If the wallet is watch-only, you can copy PSBT to clipboard. But why risk higher fees?

True, if it's a watch-only descriptor wallet, the 'Send' button changes to 'Create Unsigned'. Just keep in mind it should be made with 'disable_private_keys'.

Great tip! I'll check the GUI client. Can I use the same data directory as Bitcoind? Can the GUI client hide behind a full node like Bitcoind?

Absolutely, the GUI can do everything bitcoind can. You can even use your existing bitcoin.conf for the GUI as long as it points to the right path.

I usually stick with the standard '.bitcoin' directory in my home folder. If I accidentally run both clients simultaneously, could that cause data corruption?

I appreciate the input! Gonna study this more and test with a testnet wallet. Might build a non-HD wallet using v0.12 to safely replicate the process.

Yeah, you can do that. The last one started won’t access the data directory. You could duplicate your wallet.dat and use that for testing.

Hey, just starting to install Debian and compile Bitcoin Core. So, there's no way to create a non-HD wallet on the latest version?

Correct, you’ll need to build v0.12 to get a non-HD wallet. After that, you can upgrade to the latest version but make sure the wallet works first.

I think getting testnet coins will help with migration testing. Hope everything works smoothly!