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I have a Bitcoin wallet for android and I would like to know what happens if I back up the wallet and restore it in other phone. Will I be able to use the bitcoins in both devices? Thanks in advance
What would happen to my bitcoins?
Answers
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Yes you will be able to access the same coins with both devices. You can think about it like if you make a copy of a key to your home, and give it to someone; both people will be able to open the same door.
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Bitcoin Wallet uses a deterministic key derivation, so you are able to use both copies in parallel and see the same balances in either.
Keys/addresses won't diverge. Actually Bitcoin Wallet was the second deterministic wallet, the first being Electrum. – Andreas Schildbach – 2017-01-03T20:49:12.737
@AndreasSchildbach: Thank you for the correction! – Murch – 2017-01-03T22:06:59.293
Okay! Thank you very much. (I up voted but I still don't have sufficient rating.) – Vitor Hugo – 2016-11-21T04:35:42.383
@hisetip: If this completely answers your question, clicking the check mark will mark it as "accepted". – Nate Eldredge – 2016-11-21T14:03:37.667
Note that the wallet software needs to be designed to handle this. Some wallets might get confused by transactions that spend their coins that come from somewhere else. – Nate Eldredge – 2016-11-21T14:05:20.513
@NateEldredge Which wallets don't check the utxo to determine a users "balance"? Are there some that just store it in local memory until the device issues a new transaction? Seems like a bad idea. – m1xolyd1an – 2016-11-21T19:23:34.927
Well, for instance, if you have keys in two wallets, you might accidentally double spend. As I recall from some tests, Bitcoin Core gets confused when this happens, as it refuses to give up on its own transaction even after a conflicting transaction has many confirmations. You have to
-zapwallettxsand rescan to fix it. – Nate Eldredge – 2016-11-21T19:29:35.797