Hey everyone
As the title suggests, I'm trying to figure out how to send a transaction without relying on Bitcoin Core or any wallet software. I'm aware of the potential risks involved. I know how to manually set up a proper transmission message for an output, but I'm stuck on how to actually send it to the mempool. Is it possible to do this through the terminal or something similar? If so, can someone break it down in simple terms for me?
Please don’t suggest using Core or any software wallet since I’m not looking for that. I’m just curious if it’s feasible to send a transaction without those tools and, if it is, I'd love to hear how.
Thanks
I wish I was a Senator...
How to send a transaction without Core or software wallet
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Wallets are important because they generate the keys and addresses and are needed for signing transactions because they generate the keys which are needed for the transaction. I mean the private key needed for signing the transaction is generated by the wallet. You will always need a wallet for this purpose.
No, I have the wallet. A paper wallet. Its possible to create a transaction on the information I have without importing/sweeping to a software. So please, the information I would like to know is how to send the transaction to a mempool. Terminal?
Thanks
I have explained it above that is not possible without a wallet. You need a wallet for it.
But if going online is your concern, you can spend some of the coins or all the coins without the paper's wallet private key go online. You can import the key on a wallet on an airgapped device (offline/cold wallet), sign it there, and broadcast the signed transaction using watch-only wallet.
This guide should be of help if this is what you want: https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/coldstorage.html
humbleledgerLegendary
Posts: 1027 · Reputation: 6554
#5Jul 16, 2025, 01:01 PM
If you want to manually create a transaction, try coinb.in (copy it to a system that will never go online).
If you want to broadcast a transaction you've created, coinb.in can do that too (copy the signed transaction to an online system).
Reading between the lines, I think what you're really looking for is offline signing. Like this:
Yes, it is possible to broadcast (send) a Bitcoin transaction without dedicated software. There are online tools that can help, like https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/assets/btc/broadcast-transaction or others listed here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_broadcasting.
However, while these tools can broadcast a transaction, they do not let you sign it directly with your private key. Signing a raw transaction requires good coding knowledge - but, if you have that kind of expertise, finding the necessary libraries shouldnt be too difficult, right?
Thanks all, but Stalker22 gave the advise I was looking for. So once again thank you all.
Having a paperwallet doesn't necessarily mean you can't use a trustworthy wallet software offline, e.g. Electrum.
To play safe, you need an offline (air-gapped) computer or amnesic TAILS without any network connection (TAILS has Electrum pre-installed), on which you could install the Electrum wallet. Then you can safely import the private key of your paperwallet, sign a transaction to spend it (or parts of it, but be sure to correctly transfer the unspent change back to your paperwallet address so it doesn't end up as transfer fees).
You could copy your transaction's hex code and e.g. submit it via https://mempool.space/tx/push which is another example to submit raw transactions.
Make sure to safely delete the storage media on that offline computer. TAILS if used properly doesn't retain any data from sessions, unless you have a persistant partition and save something there. I would highly recommend TAILS or a live Linux that only runs in RAM and also doesn't store anything persistantly.
Frankly, I've no idea why you can't find answers yourself with a simple DuckDuckGo search like "send raw Bitcoin transaction" or "send hex Bitcoin transaction".
A nicely detailed explanation of what composes a Bitcoin transaction can be found here: https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/transaction/
You could use it to verify that your own process is correct.
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