Test deposit and withdrawal

It’s important to make sure everything is working properly before proceeding. You’ll verify this by making a token deposit to, and withdrawal from, your cold storage address.

Depositing funds requires the Internet, and does not require handling any critically sensitive cold storage data, so you can use any Internet-connected computer for this section.

1. Open your electronic copy of the Cold Storage Information Page (see Section II for details).
2. Perform a test deposit.
   1. Use the wallet software or service of your choice to send the approximate equivalent to fund 1000 bytes of transactions to your cold storage address. As of January 17, 2018, with a fee rate of 510 sat/B and $11185 USD/BTC this is a deposit of approximately $57. Fees have since declined, but the user is advised to check the current fee rate before making the test deposit. The Bitcoin network requires a very small, flat fee to process transactions. We recommend you use a wallet service that recommends (or pays) a fee for you automatically, which most do.
      1. Copy-paste your cold storage address from the Cold Storage Information Page into the wallet software.
   2. Wait for the Bitcoin network to confirm the transaction at least once. The way you tell whether a transaction has been confirmed varies depending on the software or service you are using to send funds, but it should be displayed prominently.
3. Perform a test withdrawal.
   1. Execute the Withdrawal Protocol to withdraw the remaining balance ($6 USD - deposit fees) from cold storage to a regular Bitcoin address of your choice.
   2. Wait for the Bitcoin network to confirm the transaction at least once. (Instructions for doing this are in the Withdrawal protocol.)