Category: Creating Wallet

A watch-only wallet is a wallet without any secrets in it that could be used to spend bitcoin. That means it does not have the seed or any private keys. A watch-only wallet is useful in situations where you want to be able to view transactions and balances on an online computer without risking your bitcoins. A watch-only wallet is often used to keep track of transactions on a cold storage electrum wallet.

Electrum supports two type of watch-only wallets:

1. Deterministic watch-only wallets: These track transactions in a deterministic Electrum wallet i.e. a wallet with a seed. I cover how to create such a wallet further down in this page.
2. Non-deterministic watch-only wallets: These track arbitrary and unconnected addresses. To create this type of wallet follow the guide here except that instead of entering private keys you enter the addresses you want to watch.

Deterministic Watch-only Wallet

1. Open the Electrum wallet you want to create a watch-only wallet of and go to wallet menu > information. Copy the Master Public Key (MPK) you find there and save it. You will need this when creating the watch-only wallet so if you’re going to create the watch-only wallet on a different system be sure to transfer the MPK to it using a removable drive like a USB drive.
2. On the system where you want to create the watch-only wallet begin a new wallet file according to this guide and then proceed to step 3 below.
3. Choose standard wallet
4.  Choose use a master key:
5. Enter your MPK:6. Electrum will then generate your addresses and display this warning to remind you that this wallet can’t be spent fromThat’s all there is to it. Now you’ll be able to see all your transactions and balance and can even get addresses to hand out to people who want to send you bitcoin.

Before you begin

1. You will need to download and install electrum first. You can download it from here. If you are on Windows you should use the installer version and not the portable one.
2. You will need a pen and a notebook (recommended) or piece of paper to write down the seed mnemonic. The notebook will have to be kept somewhere safe once you are done with the installation process so it can’t be a notebook that you use on a day to day basis.

Creating the wallet

 

1. Start new electrum wallet file by following this short guide. Then come back here and proceed to step 2.
2. Click on next to see the wallet type selection window:
   
   As you can see Electrum supports different types of wallets. If you are just starting out you should just select “Standard wallet”.
3. In the next step electrum asks you choose where the wallet secret will come from
   
   The seed is a secret that unlocks all your bitcoins. When creating a new wallet you want to let electrum generate a seed for you.
4. Electrum displays the seed to you as a 12 word mnemonic. It’s important at this stage to write down the seed in a notebook. You must put it down on paper. Don’t keep it on your computer!
   Also write down “Software: Electrum” in your notebook below the seed mnemonic. You wouldn’t believe the number of users who forget what software they used!
5. Electrum will next ask you to verify that you wrote down the seed correctly by typing it back in:
   
6. You can also set a password to protect your wallet file from other people who might have access to your computer. This is entirely optional:
7. Electrum will then generate your addresses and display your wallet window:
8. Your wallet has now been created. You should put that notebook in which you wrote the seed down somewhere safe. In case you forget your wallet password or your computer crashes and you lose your wallet file you can still recover access to your wallet using your seed. It also means that anyone else can get access to your bitcoins with just your seed. So put it somewhere safe.

Additional resources

• Receiving bitcoin to your electrum wallet.
• Opening the Wallet in future