Setting Up Watch-Only Wallet with Electrum and Bitcoin Core

Hey folks. I’m trying to figure out how to set up my offline Electrum wallet as a watch-only wallet in Bitcoin Core. Need to sign some transactions, and I think importing the public key is key... but can’t find much guidance on it. Any tips would be awesome. Thanks!

Go to wallet settings and check out the wallet info. You can snag your master public key from there. When creating your watch-only wallet, just select the option to use a master key and plug in your xpub. Just remember, your main wallet should be offline for security.

So, you’ve got your cold Electrum wallet, and now you wanna make a watch-only wallet in Bitcoin Core? Electrum uses that older key pair setup, while Bitcoin Core now rolls with descriptors by default. You can’t just import the Electrum public key directly. You’ll need to create a descriptor for that key and then import it into Bitcoin Core.

If I’m gonna import an xpub from Electrum, I’ve noticed it’s in p2wpkh format. But to get it into Bitcoin Core, I gotta convert it to legacy format. Open the Electrum console, then run this command to switch from zpub to xpub. Easy peasy.

I don’t see why you’d wanna use Bitcoin Core as your watch-only wallet with an Electrum public key. Just keep using Electrum offline. Copy that master public key, then fire up Electrum on an online device and import it for watch-only access. No need for the heavy lifting of Bitcoin Core.

Totally agree. Using Electrum means you’re not depending on those sketchy third-party servers to sync. You could set up your own Electrum server, but that just complicates things since you’ll still need to sync Bitcoin Core anyway.

If you’re set on using Core, just make sure you know what values to include when importing the descriptor. If you’re moving from Electrum to Bitcoin Core, hitting up Sparrow wallet might help you generate the necessary descriptor without too much hassle.

Using Sparrow is a smart move. Import your Electrum wallet file into it and check out the xpub/zpub field in Sparrow settings. That’ll give you the descriptor you need to import into Bitcoin Core.

I tried the first command and it worked, but the second one threw an error at me... Something about invalid syntax. Maybe I’m using an older Electrum version? What gives?

You might’ve missed the fact that the getdescriptorinfo command needs to be run in Bitcoin Core’s console, not Electrum’s. Just double-check the instructions, and it should work out.

Exactly what I was thinking! The OP should’ve just created the wallet in Electrum and used it for watching too. Sure, you can technically watch an address, but having a public key is the way to go. It’s like having full access without the risk of signing transactions.

No worries on that front. Regardless of the server you use, whether it’s public or your own, the coins are safe. Just keep in mind that any Electrum node records your IP and wallet info. But if you’re running your own server, that info stays private. Just my two cents.