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Wallet Management

Bitcoin Knots provides extended wallet functionality including legacy wallet support.

Wallet Types​

Descriptor Wallet (Default)​

Modern wallet using output descriptors:

bitcoin-cli createwallet "mydescriptor"

Legacy Wallet​

Traditional wallet with BIP32 HD keys:

bitcoin-cli createwallet "mylegacy" false false "" false false

The last false disables descriptors, creating a legacy wallet.

Basic Operations​

Create Wallet​

# Descriptor wallet
bitcoin-cli createwallet "wallet1"

# With encryption
bitcoin-cli createwallet "wallet2" false false "passphrase"

Load/Unload​

bitcoin-cli loadwallet "wallet1"
bitcoin-cli unloadwallet "wallet1"

List Wallets​

bitcoin-cli listwallets

Receiving​

Get Address​

bitcoin-cli -rpcwallet=wallet1 getnewaddress
bitcoin-cli -rpcwallet=wallet1 getnewaddress "label" "bech32m"

Check Balance​

bitcoin-cli -rpcwallet=wallet1 getbalance

Sending​

Simple Send​

bitcoin-cli -rpcwallet=wallet1 sendtoaddress "bc1q..." 0.001

Advanced Send​

bitcoin-cli -rpcwallet=wallet1 send '{
  "bc1q...": 0.001
}' null "unset" null '{"fee_rate": 10}'

Knots-Specific Features​

Sweep Private Keys​

sweepprivkeys takes a single options object and sweeps all coins controlled by the given WIF private keys into the loaded wallet (it scans the UTXO set directly — no rescan needed):

bitcoin-cli -rpcwallet=wallet1 sweepprivkeys '{"privkeys": ["5K..."], "label": "swept coins"}'

The destination and fee are handled by the wallet automatically; the call returns the sweep transaction id. As of Knots v29.3, sweeping covers legacy (P2PK/P2PKH), SegWit (P2WPKH and P2SH-P2WPKH), and Taproot (P2TR) outputs. The GUI also offers a Sweep private key dialog in the File menu.

Dump Master Key (Legacy)​

bitcoin-cli -rpcwallet=legacy dumpmasterprivkey

Import Codex32 Seeds​

Knots supports codex32 (BIP 93) seed backups via the seeds argument of importdescriptors. Pass a codex32-encoded seed (or a list of codex32 shares to be recombined) alongside the descriptors that use it:

bitcoin-cli -rpcwallet=wallet1 importdescriptors '[{"desc": "wpkh(...)", "timestamp": "now"}]' '[["ms1..."]]'

Backup​

Descriptor Wallet​

bitcoin-cli -rpcwallet=wallet1 backupwallet "/path/backup.dat"

You can also export the descriptors themselves as a text backup. With private=true, the output includes private keys — sufficient to fully restore the wallet via importdescriptors:

# Public descriptors (watch-only backup)
bitcoin-cli -rpcwallet=wallet1 listdescriptors

# Include private keys (guard this output carefully)
bitcoin-cli -rpcwallet=wallet1 listdescriptors true

Legacy Wallet​

bitcoin-cli -rpcwallet=legacy dumpwallet "/path/dump.txt"

Migrating Legacy to Descriptor​

To convert a legacy wallet into a descriptor wallet (a backup of the original is created automatically before migration):

bitcoin-cli -rpcwallet=legacy migratewallet

Security​

Encryption​

bitcoin-cli -rpcwallet=wallet1 encryptwallet "passphrase"

Lock/Unlock​

bitcoin-cli -rpcwallet=wallet1 walletlock
bitcoin-cli -rpcwallet=wallet1 walletpassphrase "pass" 60

See Also​