managing bitcoins with a bitcoin core official wallet

you can send & receive bitcoins using a full node bitcoin core wallet

to do that you must:

Step 1. download and install the Bitcoin wallet program called bitcoin-qt.exe

Step 2. synchronize the wallet with the bitcoin network downloading the bitcoin blockchain distributed ledger

on 14 mar 2024 bitcoin blockchain weighs 600 GB and blocks=834676

So, to be loose, you need more than 600 GB of free available space and a bandwith and computational resources to download 468 GB of the zipped blockchain files through the net

We are proud to announce that it can be done with a medium power home PC, a middle size stable bandwith connection, the help of our blockchaindownload.store site and with a lot of patience

With these resources we down the time of the bitcoin blockchain full synchronization to a few 10 hours !

step 1.

to download the english version of Bitcoin-qt installer go to https://bitcoin.org/en/download

to download the spanish version of Bitcoin-qt installer go to https://bitcoin.org/es/descargar

to another language, go to https://bitcoin.org , see the upright of the page, choose your wanted language, then find a link to download

Note: til 14 Mar 2024 the latest version of Bitcoin Core official wallet is v25.0.0 When it appear v0.20.1 please consider v25.0.0

Save the Zip bitcoin-0.20.1-win64.zip with the Bitcoin-qt installer in a folder you then remember

UnZip bitcoin-0.20.1-win64.zip in another folder you then remember too

You will see something like that:

Unzipped_files_bitcoin_Qt_wallet_install

In the directory ../bin is the wallet program bitcoin-qt.exe:

run bitcoin-qt.exe for the 1st time

It's happen that windows and its built-in antivirus detects this wallet program as a false positive to prevent its execution

Just click in More Information

Just click in Execute anyway

One more step is to set up where bitcoin blockchain will be saved in your computer

If you have enough 600 GB available space in your C: drive just click the 1st button option

If not, click the 2nd button and redirect the default data directory installation (we recommend the same structure but in the drive D: - make the directories needed)

Click Ok and you will see something like that:

and then:

Click Hide and you will see the Front End of your bitcoin core official wallet:

Meanwhile you look your wallet front end the wallet program bitcoin-qt.exe made the structure and data directories in the place that you set up, is connecting to the network peers and is downloading the blockchain until full sync (last update look like this)

All the blocks mined in the past after the genesis block are saved in the directory ../blocks with an index in the directory ../blocks/index and the state of the blockchain in the directory ../chainstate

All of your bitcoins are saved in the directory ../wallets in a very important file called wallet.dat

Please, always make a regularly backup of your wallet.dat and put it in another safe place -USB media, external drive, etc..

If your bitcoin core wallet broke you can restore it and replace the file wallet.dat with your wallet.dat saved and recover all of your bitcoins !

about configuration and safety of your bitcoin core wallet

to increase security and privacy in managing your bitcoin core wallet it is recommended to encrypt your wallet with a strong password and saved it in a safe place you desire

Go to menu Configuration and click Encrypt wallet

inserting a strong password clicking ok and will appear

Therefore, do not lose your strong password. Click Yes and you will see a padlock indicating that your wallet is encrypted

To see information about the state of the block synchronization go to menu Window --> Information and you will see the Number of blocks downloaded increasing and the date

about receive and send bitcoins with your bitcoin core official wallet

receiving bitcoins

To receive bitcoins you need to communicate an address of your wallet to the sender.

To generate an address of your wallet please click the Receive icon:

and will appear

You can introduce a Label x example Bicoin0 and click in the button Generate new address to receive

Your address to inform to the sender is: bc1qygxl9w7658cpklvtfnd697l3tmn6psq4nymh8k

sending bitcoins

To send bitcoins you need an address of the receiver.

Click the Send icon and will appear

If you got here your bitcoin core official wallet was installed correctly
but it was not synchronized yet and you can not send & receive bitcoins

you need to pass to step 2.

Go to Step 2.

blockchainlife