5

I'm using the standard Mac Bitcoin client and I added a passphrase. I'd like to remove that passphrase. Is that possible?

Shamoon
  • 2,819
  • 3
  • 34
  • 52
  • I don't know if the client allows you to do it without tricks, but in the worst case scenario you can still send all your coins to another address, create a new wallet, and send them back into this new one. – o0'. May 06 '12 at 18:41
  • I have the same problem with a wallet that is encrypted. I tried to remove it and if I reinstall a new client it comes back as the old wallet. I installed to a new location, did a registry cleaner and it comes back as the locked wallet. The trick of sending the bitcoins to another wallet don't work. It requires a passphrase to send them. –  May 14 '13 at 06:13
  • "I have the same problem with a wallet that is encrypted. I tried to remove it and if I reinstall a new client it comes back as the old wallet. I installed to a new location, did a registry cleaner and it comes back as the locked wallet. The trick of sending the bitcoins to another wallet don't work. It requires a passphrase to send them." Start of Winkey + R type %appdata% and found folder Bitcoin. Save the file wallet.dat in case! Delete it form folder and the program will generate a new address for the wallet! ;) –  May 14 '13 at 11:14

3 Answers3

6

You can dump your old wallet to a backup file, restart the program to generate a new wallet and import your old wallet into it.

Assuming you are in the directory where your wallet file is located, using the command line that would look like this:

bitcoind walletpassphrase "xxx" 60
bitcoind dumpwallet "wallet.dat.backup"
bitcoind stop
mv wallet.dat wallet.dat.old
bitcoind -daemon
bitcoind importwallet wallet.dat.backup

I would be interested in a less dirty way, if anybody knows one.

gosuto
  • 702
  • 6
  • 16
4

The Bitcoin.org client does not yet have the feature to remove encryption from a wallet. You can use a single space as the encryption key but there no way to get it to no longer use encryption.

That is expected to be implemented in a future release.

In the meantime, those that want this will create a new wallet and leave it unencrypted, and send their coins from the encrypted wallet to it.

Stephen Gornick
  • 26,990
  • 12
  • 67
  • 141
3

Yes. It is possible.

Either the UI supports it or it does not. You are better equipped to find out than I am but I suspect it does not (yet).

If it does not you can either:

  • Export the keys, move the wallet files (rather than deleting it, so you can move it back if things to wrong, on Mac the wallet files are here: ~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/), import the keys.
  • implement it yourself / pay someone to implement if for you
  • find an alternative client to do it for you (Armory might have it, a list is here)
  • find an alternative client to open it and export the private keys, so you can import them into a new unencrypted wallet.
  • when all else fails: transact your Bitcoin towards a new unencrypted wallet and ditch the old, encrypted, wallet. Be sure to tell people you've migrated, your old addresses are still in your encrypted wallet.
Lodewijk
  • 1,585
  • 10
  • 15
  • 2
    * pay someone to implement it for you * use the standard client to export your keys, make a new wallet, and import the keys – Chris Moore May 07 '12 at 05:27
  • I guess that's almost mentioned in the third bullet, and is the most obvious answer. I'll correct. Maybe I didn't really understand the question last time? – Lodewijk Dec 11 '14 at 12:54