importprivkey

importprivkey "privkey" ( "label" rescan )

Adds a private key (as returned by dumpprivkey) to your wallet. Requires a new wallet backup.

Hint: use importmulti to import more than one private key.

Note: This call can take over an hour to complete if rescan is true, during that time, other rpc calls may report that the imported key exists but related transactions are still missing, leading to temporarily incorrect/bogus balances and unspent outputs until rescan completes.

Argument #1 - privkey

Type: string, required

The private key (see dumpprivkey)

Argument #2 - label

Type: string, optional, default=current label if address exists, otherwise “”

An optional label

Argument #3 - rescan

Type: boolean, optional, default=true

Rescan the wallet for transactions

Examples

Dump a private key:

bitcoin-cli dumpprivkey "myaddress"

Import the private key with rescan:

bitcoin-cli importprivkey "mykey"

Import using a label and without rescan:

bitcoin-cli importprivkey "mykey" "testing" false

Import using default blank label and without rescan:

bitcoin-cli importprivkey "mykey" "" false

As a JSON-RPC call:

curl --user myusername --data-binary '{"jsonrpc": "1.0", "id":"curltest", "method": "importprivkey", "params": ["mykey", "testing", false] }' -H 'content-type: text/plain;' http://127.0.0.1:8332/