<p>I hope he meant that they can get the private key for any address in their wallet. Obviously, the software cannot dump a key it does not have.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-12-13T19:41:04.653Z
So, this command needs wallet and the address to operate right. Correct?
Efe
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-12-13T19:44:23.183Z
The wallet needs to be unlocked, the key needs to be in the wallet, and you need to specify the address whose key you want.
David Schwartz
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-12-13T19:31:47.050Z
2019-12-13T19:31:47.050Z
David Schwartz
<p>In an online course the instructor told us that anyone can find the private key of a wallet by using dumpprivkey(address), address being the address that is created from the key (which is public in a transaction on the bitcoin chain).He said that this command returns a WIF object. I assume that is not true because then anyone would steal anyone's bitcoin by looking up the addresses in tx's on the cahin and running the command. Can someone enlighten me about this <strong>dumpprivkey</strong> command please ?</p>

<bitcoin-cli>
How is someone not able to steal my bitcoin with Dumpprivkey command?
Efe
# How is someone not able to steal my bitcoin with Dumpprivkey command?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2019-12-13)

In an online course the instructor told us that anyone can find the private key of a wallet by using dumpprivkey(address), address being the address that is created from the key (which is public in a transaction on the bitcoin chain).He said that this command returns a WIF object. I assume that is not true because then anyone would steal anyone's bitcoin by looking up the addresses in tx's on the cahin and running the command. Can someone enlighten me about this **dumpprivkey** command please ?

**Tags:** bitcoin-cli


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2019-12-13. Score: 4 | Accepted answer

I hope he meant that they can get the private key for any address in their wallet. Obviously, the software cannot dump a key it does not have.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: So, this command needs wallet and the address to operate right. Correct?  
> **username_1**: The wallet needs to be unlocked, the key needs to be in the wallet, and you need to specify the address whose key you want.  

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