Imagine you have a third party, you have to convince them to be paid in bitcoin for recurring payments, but they don't trust you about owning said money.
What if you share with them your balance (with a dedicated wallet obviously) so they know you have the money to pay them?
My first thought was to use a watch-only wallet. How would you go about this?
Here is a guide:
https://darthcoin.substack.com/p/deposit-only-bitcoin-wallets
But I do not understand why do you have to share YOUR wallet balance with somebody else?
Or you just want to show them that you are the owner of that amount? You can simply give them a single address to look, not to the whole wallet. You can even sign a message with that specific address and they will know you are the rightful owner of that address.
Thanks, the watch-only was just one of the possible solutions I thought of.
This is just a use case that came to mind earlier (lack of sleep) and was wondering how would I go about it.
What I thought was if someone would say "How can I tell you have the money?", after pointing it out it would be enough to show them a screen with the amount they should expect.
Never show to somebody your private balance. No matter what.
If you really want show a screen balance, use a decoy testnet.
If is a serious situation when you really have to prove the stake, then use as I said, sign a message from that address, so you prove you are the rightful owner of that address.
Then they can check on eny block explorer the balance of that address.
here is a full guide how to use Electrum and sign a message from a specific address
https://armantheparman.com/electrum/
Thanks for the info, if I where to show them a balance directly it would be on a dedicated wallet with just the amount they need.
Also i'm planning to recicle an old laptop as a air-gapped PC with Tails and Electrum.
Thanks for the guide, I see it works with SeedSigner too, it's pretty cool. I have a raspberry pi so I might try it out.
If I would need to have a proof from somebody else about having that amount, I will always ask to sign a message from that address.
I will never trust any screenshot from a wallet. That is NOT proof.
The only proof is Bitcoin Blockchain.
That's a point of view I didn't consider at first, I just imagined this to be just in person, of course don't trust, verify. 😎
Scenario, you ask me to show my balance:
I can show you a wallet, in person, fine. But no details about which address / UTXo etc, just a stupid screen.
But then after that I go and move the funds to another wallet.
So you will not have anymore the real proof of the address and also option to track to see if I still have the balance in that specific address.
So you can give me whatever I want based on your wrong assumption that I still have that balance.
Also another aspect... IMPORTANT!
Let's say will send you the BTC from that balance...
But then after you go, I will make a RBF/CPFP on that tx and push it with a higher fee to another address of mine. You will not receive the BTC because you didn't wait for 6 confirmations and you have bad assumptions that I have that balance for you.
You just have been scammed.
Remember this aspects.
If you do an onchain tx ALWAYS wait for 6 confirmations.
About showing the amount, given your security concerns I could probably go with a temporary wallet where I just move in the said amount from other wallets and then move them back the originals or to other wallets.
I'm aware of the 6 confirmations of a tx, but wouldn't it be fine to go with Lightning payments in case one need a faster feedback?