Here it is!
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_walletA pretty paranoid piece, so perhaps incorrect, however if you look down to the section that says
Securing the Bitcoin-QT or bitcoind wallet, you'll see what I read. Perhaps I'm understanding it wrongly. Or perhaps it's wrong? Please, smart guys and gals out there, check it out and confirm or clarify for us
Thanks
So when a backup is first created, it has all of your old keys plus 100 unused keys. After sending a transaction, it has 99 unused keys. After a total of 100 new-key actions, you will start using keys that are not in your backup. Since the backup does not have the private keys necessary for authorizing spends of these coins, restoring from the old backup will cause you to lose Bitcoins. I hate to keep bringing this up, but could eduffield, CHAOSiTEC , InternetApe or someone tell me if this is true or not? Thanks so much!
It's my understanding that change addresses usually use the unused pool addresses, then every time you use 100 it will make another new 100 addresses to use. So you technically only need to backup whenever that mass generation happens.
This about sums it up:
The wallet contains a pool of queued keys. By default there are 100 keys in the key pool. The size of the pool is configurable using the "-keypool" command line argument. When you need an address for whatever reason (send, new address, generation, etc.), the key is not actually generated freshly, but taken from this pool. A brand new address is generated to fill the pool back to 100. So when a backup is first created, it has all of your old keys plus 100 unused keys. After sending a transaction, it has 99 unused keys. After a total of 100 new-key actions, you will start using keys that are not in your backup. Since the backup does not have the private keys necessary for authorizing spends of these coins, restoring from the old backup will cause you to lose Bitcoins
Yup, that's what I was reading when I realized I would have to take a more active roll in backing up my wallet and wanted to spread the knowledge. Sorry for being annoying today, but that was my exciting lesson for the day, LOL
So we can summarize this by : When we start to reach 100 transactions in our transction list (receive and send) we can think to make another BACKUP NOW IMMEDIATLY??!!!
As long as you make regular backups of your wallet you'll be fine. Also when i say regular backups, I mean before you do over 100 transactions. Almost impossible unless you've never been proactive with copying your wallet. So really nothing to worry about.
Also, even if you never did backup your wallet and went over 100 transactions and THEN backed it up, you will still have all your crypto. As long as you have access to the wallet. The only time it becomes an issue is when your
restoring a backup of a wallet from months ago.
