So I have transferred the entire balance of an old Electrum wallet to a hw wallet, for security reasons. I’m not gonna use the Electrum wallet anymore because there’s no Electrum app for iOS, is there such a thing as deleting an empty wallet “from the blockchain“? I’m afraid that this a dumb question, I just wanna make sure that if that would free up space, I’m doing it?
Posted by Phantasizer
4 Comments
Wallets are just keys to open a certain vault in the blockchain. If you transfer the vault content to another vault, the old vault is empty and you can safely throw away the old key as well, as in, just delete the app. Deleting an app changes nothing in the blockchain.
No need.
In simple terms, the blockchain is just a ledger of all existing bitcoins alongside a script indicating which keys can move them.
The wallet, whether software or hardware, just holds these keys.
If the keys generated by a wallet no longer control any bitcoin, the wallet is basically redundant.
Keep it. Delete it. Makes no difference to the blockchain.
> is there such a thing as deleting an empty wallet “from the blockchain“?
No, blockchain contains only the records of transactions, and all transactions are immutable. The transaction which emptied your wallet will be visible there forever.
I would hold on to the seed phrase for that wallet. When it comes time to cash out the coins, an exchange might ask you to prove where they came from. Retaining possession of the old private keys could make it easier to prove the origin of the coins.