This will depend on the crypto and the Wallet or Wallet App you want to transfer crypto to. First, it is important to understand that when you transfer crypto on a blockchain, it does not actually move anywhere. There is no crypto stored in your wallet app, your hardware wallet, your paper wallet, or any wallet. Even when you pay for items in crypto, the crypto does not actually “go” or transfer to anywhere. Crypto is always and forever on the blockchain, not “in” a wallet.
Crypto, including bitcoin is always kept on the blockchain. When you “transfer” crypto, what actually happens is that an entry is made in the blockchain ledger that says you paid or transferred crypto from one wallet to another. Nothing actually moves, the ledger simply notes and secures the transaction.
What wallet applications and hardware wallets actually do in simplified terms is to store your key information which in-turn allows you to access that part of the blockchain ledger for your wallet transactions and sign new transactions. So in short, when you transfer or pay in crypto you cryptographically sign a ledger entry, much like making an entry in any accounting ledger that says funds moved from one account to another even though nothing physically actually moved.
This is why “paper wallets” work. Your crypto is on the blockchain, the paper wallet is simply your key to the blockchain distributed ledger. This is why it is so important to protect your private key at all times.
Here is an example of transferring Bitcoin from a Paper Wallet to a Wallet Application called Mycelium:
Step 1: Download the Mycelium Bitcoin Wallet. …
Step 2: Touch “Cold Storage” on the home page of the app.
Step 3: Touch “Scan QR code” to scan with your phone camera
Step 4: Scan your PRIVATE KEY on your paper wallet with your phone camera.
It may be necessary to scratch away the covering that hides the private key to access the private key QR code.
Step 5: Now your Mycelium app has your private key and access to the crypto
It would be advisable to destroy the paper wallet if the key is revealed or to transfer the crypto again to another wallet with a new private key. For example, in the Mycelium wallet App, generate another NEW wallet. Keep any keying information private and secure for the new wallet. Now from the original you created with the paper wallet private key, initiate a transfer to the brand new wallets public QR. Now the crypto will only be accessible to the new wallet.
The same fundamental steps apply to transferring crypto to any wallet. Here we used the Mycelium wallet app as an example, but this basic fundamental operations of crypto wallets is universal as it is part of the protocol. A wallet may look different, use different buttons, use different terms, but the underlying operations of transferring crypto and using keys is the same.
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