Time to switch from the old BITCOINZ wallets – both Light and android mobile- that are based on the CoPay core, to another modern wallet ?
The dev team that used to maintain the BITCOINZ Mobile Android & Light wallets obviously “marginally” keeps it alive, just for a handful of people who still wish to use it. There are many services breaks and it is a general phenomenon after 2018 with the most cryptocurrency projects abandoning almost all the wallets that had been based on the CoPay core. (Maybe because of the vulnerability reports about some versions of CoPay for Bitcoin users?).
Anyway, with so many modern wallet options and some great multi-wallets that can host multiple digital assets, you are still thinking to migrate to another wallet application?
Don’t! It is very easy to do so.
Tired of the “Insight Error” messages?
Time for a change!
First of all let’s make something clear:
Don’t panic anytime that a wallet app doesn’t work. Your coins are 100% safe.
Your coins are somewhere in the blockchain and your private keys are the map leading to your coins. Not your wallet app! The wallet is just the medium where you enter your keys and it is finding the coins for you!
This is why we always say that taking a backup of your wallet by saving your private keys, is the most important thing in crypto. So if you have your private keys (your backup), your coins are safe even with a not working wallet app!
Let’s move…to a new wallet!
First of all you have to decide which will be your next wallet application. BITCOINZ has a great variety of wallets with some excellent choices like Coinomi (for all platforms), Vidulum (All platforms) BITCOINZDEX (PCs), Electrum (PCs), BITCOINZ Core (PCs), Zelcore (All platforms) & more.
You can see a complete list here.
Three ways : Let’s see the first one
There are three ways to move from the BITCOINZ Mobile wallet (or Light PC wallet) to another one.
The most easy way is to just open your new wallet application, make a backup by saving its seed or private keys, press the receive option (for BITCOINZ) and copy the newly generated address. Then you will use it in your old Mobile or Light BITCOINZ Wallet in order to send your coins with the “send” option by just entering your new address. A nice trick is to always first send a small sum in order to be 100% sure that your have copied the address correctly.
After you have completed this transaction, double check that you have saved the new wallet’s backup like we mentioned previously. Since the old one (this of your BITCOINZ Mobile) will be associated with emptied addresses from now on.
Of course this method requires to have your Mobile/Light wallet apps functional and working without disconnection of the service (giving the classic “could not update the wallet” or insight error).
These error messages mean that in practice there is unavailability of the service. We should not forget that any light wallet can potentially have this issue from time to time. Because it actually runs a full node service for us and the rest of its users. So if the servers fail or if there is a synchronization issue with the blockchain, the whole service becomes unavailable.
You can try the aforementioned easy method of migration to a new wallet app when a paused service is restored.
If you cannot wait for its restoration, you have to follow another way: to import your keys into another wallet app. So we are describing two extra ways: using Electrum or using the BIP restoration tool.
Second way: Electrum wallet
You can download electrum bitcoinz wallet from this link https://github.com/btcz-electrum/electrum-btcz/releases/tag/v3.1.3
(it is a light wallet for PCs).
We suggest this app because it accepts directly the 12 words seed phrase that the Copay Light and Mobile BTCZ Wallet generates for backup.
In electrum you will choose:
“New wallet” 》 “I already have a seed” 》 options – check “BIP 39 SEED”
you make sure that the derivation path is right. Usually it is m/44’/0’/0′
(but for some older wallets it might be m/177’/0’/0′
it must be the same with the one of the wallet that you wish to import / it can be found in btcz mobile app in “More Options” 》 “Wallet information” 》 in the lower part you will see the derivation path.)
Your electrum app will synchronize and get you all the coins of your imported wallet. You can then send them to another wallet app of your choice.
In case that electrum doesn’t synchronize (you will understand this from a red circle symbol on the lower right corner), please delete everything inside in certs folder & relaunch the app. In windows the folder can be found at C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Electrum-BTCZ\certs
In case that you wish to resynchronize (maybe because you don’t see all your balance or incomplete history of transactions), you have to delete the “blockchainheaders” file as well in the C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Electrum-BTCZ folder. You re-launch the application and press the “Network” option. You have to wait for resync (the blocks counting) up to the current level (the server’s reported block height). When this is completed, you should have the right balance and history of transactions.
Third way: BIP38 recovery tool
The BIP38 Coleman’s recovery tool is the one that Coinomi also suggests for extracting your private keys from a passphrase. (passphrases are generated by several applications & they have your private keys coded in them).
We strongly suggest to use the OFFLINE .html version instead of the online for maximum security. You can get it here https://github.com/iancoleman/bip39/releases/tag/0.5.3
1) Change the list to 12 words and type your phrase there.
2)Set the “coin” to “btcz”
3)Set the bip32 and select custom derivation path. Set in the path m/44’/0’/0′ (or m/177’/0’/0′ for some older bitcoinz mobile wallets).
4)You will get a list of addresses and their private keys. This list may be somehow longer for older wallets with many transactions but if you get an endless list you most possibly have entered something wrong in the aforementioned settings.
5)You can easily find the used addresses (those with balance) by searching in your brower for these: in the most browsers with the upper right corner options you can click on “find in page” (control + F), enter your addresses that contain balance (like those getting mining rewards etc…) and get the associated private keys for these specific addresses .
If you don’t remember your addresses containing balance, you can get them easily in your mobile app with the relevant option to send them by email.
6) You can then use this private key in every other wallet application where you can import your bitcoinz coins.
* Always remember to backup your wallet and never share your keys with anyone that you would not like to have access to your funds!
