<p>The problem was not a technical problem. More like stupidity.</p>

<p>The address I received the bitcoins to is not one of the addresses in the address book. The address book is like your contacts on your phone. Your actual addresses are under the receive coins tab.</p>

<p>So I saved someone else's address to my address book for whatever reason. Then I was trying to extract the private key of that address from my wallet which of course I could not.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-02-20T10:51:57.440Z
2013-02-20T10:51:57.440Z
Emre K.
<p>Haven't opened my wallet in a while so it's not in sync with the network. 5400 blocks remaining as I write. The wallet is not encrypted.</p>

<p>Received some bitcoins to my address in this wallet. Now I want to get the private key of the address and import it to my wallet on blockchain.info</p>

<p>The output of pywallet's dumpwallet command shows a lot of address/private key pairs but none of them are the address I see on my address book which I received the bitcoins to.</p>

<p>Launched BitcoinQT's debug window, tried the dumpprivkey command. Result: Private key for address is not known (code -4)</p>

<p>Thank you.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-02-19T20:10:53.687Z
There are at least two versions of pywallet.  If I remember correctly Joric's works with compressed public keys, JackJack's does not.
Stephen Gornick
<address><private-key><rpc-error-4>
Dumpprivkey or dumpwallet won't show my private key for the address in my wallet
Emre K.
# Dumpprivkey or dumpwallet won't show my private key for the address in my wallet

(Asked by: username_0 on 2013-02-19)

Haven't opened my wallet in a while so it's not in sync with the network. 5400 blocks remaining as I write. The wallet is not encrypted.

Received some bitcoins to my address in this wallet. Now I want to get the private key of the address and import it to my wallet on blockchain.info

The output of pywallet's dumpwallet command shows a lot of address/private key pairs but none of them are the address I see on my address book which I received the bitcoins to.

Launched BitcoinQT's debug window, tried the dumpprivkey command. Result: Private key for address is not known (code -4)

Thank you.

**Tags:** address, private-key, rpc-error-4

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: There are at least two versions of pywallet.  If I remember correctly Joric's works with compressed public keys, JackJack's does not.  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_0 on 2013-02-20. Score: 2 | Accepted answer

The problem was not a technical problem. More like stupidity.

The address I received the bitcoins to is not one of the addresses in the address book. The address book is like your contacts on your phone. Your actual addresses are under the receive coins tab.

So I saved someone else's address to my address book for whatever reason. Then I was trying to extract the private key of that address from my wallet which of course I could not.


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