From the forum post referenced, it appears that this is untrue. If I backup my wallet today to a thumb drive, then spend 1 BTC of my money, then my backup is worthless as it will only have the keys to an empty address. The only way to backup your wallet safely is to store a backup after the most recent transaction.
That is not true. Your wallet.dat doesn't contain your money, the blockchain does. Your wallet.dat just contains the keys to validate that you can spend the money that exists in the blockchain.
If you restore your wallet.dat and let it catch up to the current blockchain, you will still have all your money, unless you really spent it.
edit: Ok, I guess I am mistaken - I see now how this happened with a really old version of the client. Newer versions of the client pre-generate several addresses in your wallet.dat, so even if you only restored an old version of wallet.dat, you would still have access to any money that is in the blockchain that you spent in the recent past. Of course, you should never let your wallet.dat fall too far behind.
If you back up your wallet prior to the transaction of 1BTC, it will not receive the private keys to the change address. Your private keys in your wallet.dat will point to an empty account. That is what this entire post about losing $81,000 is about.
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From the forum post referenced, it appears that this is untrue. If I backup my wallet today to a thumb drive, then spend 1 BTC of my money, then my backup is worthless as it will only have the keys to an empty address. The only way to backup your wallet safely is to store a backup after the most recent transaction.
That is not true. Your wallet.dat doesn't contain your money, the blockchain does. Your wallet.dat just contains the keys to validate that you can spend the money that exists in the blockchain.
If you restore your wallet.dat and let it catch up to the current blockchain, you will still have all your money, unless you really spent it.
edit: Ok, I guess I am mistaken - I see now how this happened with a really old version of the client. Newer versions of the client pre-generate several addresses in your wallet.dat, so even if you only restored an old version of wallet.dat, you would still have access to any money that is in the blockchain that you spent in the recent past. Of course, you should never let your wallet.dat fall too far behind.
illumin8, can you please read this post and explain why you think it is wrong? http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=782.msg8625#msg8625
If you back up your wallet prior to the transaction of 1BTC, it will not receive the private keys to the change address. Your private keys in your wallet.dat will point to an empty account. That is what this entire post about losing $81,000 is about.