Where does the offline passphrase play into this?
What "offline passphrase" are you talking about? You haven't explained what you're trying to do.
I assume you have a "paper wallet", and you're trying to figure out what to do with the
private key when you want to use (spend or sell) the bitcoins, but I'm not sure.
As of now I don't have anything, but you are right. My questions is exactly what you stated. Do you need the
private key to spend or send the BTC? Does the paper wallet private key have to go online in order to do this?
Thanks
i think you may be confusing some things.
you send your bitcoins to the address on the exchange you wish to use.. it functions as your wallet. so let's say you have some coins in your blockchain.info wallet.. you would need to transfer them to your bitcoin exchange (localbitcoins.com, btc-e.com, mtgox, or whatever) wallet. this wallet is created once you open up an account.
This is not exactly the question. Danny Hamilton had it right in his previous post. The question is: With an offline "paper wallet" and "
passkey" does the "
passkey" have to be used to send or spend the BTC? Does this mean that eventually the "
passkey" will need to go online?
Please take just a few seconds to at least try to learn the right terminology. You'll get better answers and you'll get them faster. You are creating confusion by taling about passphrases and passkeys.
You want to know about the private key. So ask about the private key.
Now, the answer to your question.
You have to use your private key to create a transaction. This can be done on a computer that is not connected to the internet if you have set up armory or have taken the time to learn how to create raw transactions.
In most cases people import the private key into a wallet on a computer that is connected to the internet to create the transaction. Then they create a new paper wallet with a new private key and send any remaining funds to the new wallet after they've spend/used the funds they want to.
If you are using MtGox for currency exchange, you can import the private key directly into MtGox if you want and they will sweep the funds into your MtGox account for you.