Bitcoin Core 0.17.0 has arrived! Bitcoin Core has updated their code on October 3rd, 2018. This update contains many small points and a few more notable ones. We have scoured over the official update notes to bring you some of the most important parts.

Bitcoin Core 0.17.0 Update

BIP 174 Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions Support

Now Non-HD Wallets Can be Upgraded to HD

HD Master Key Rotation

Dynamic Loading and Creation of Wallets

Some GUI/Config Changes

Log Timestamp Format is Now ISO 8601

Dropped Support for Python 2

Thanks in part to Andrew Chow for the work in GitHub for the code, BIP 174 PSBTS is now live in Bitcoin Core 0.17.0. This is an interchange format to work with Bitcoin transactions that are not yet fully signed. By using the partially completed work and relevant metadata the transaction can be signed. This is meant to simplify the process in which more than one party must work together to form a transaction.

Examples:

Hardware Wallets

Multisignature Setups

CoinJoin Transactions

BIP 32 Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) wallets have been supported by Bitcoin Core since version 0.13.0, however, older non-HD could not be converted. This changed today with Bitcoin Core 0.17.0, now non-HD wallets can be converted into HD wallets using a specific input in the command line. The notes say that a new backup must be made when upgrading the non-HD wallet to the HD wallet so keep this in mind when making this change.

Now Bitcoin Core allows for the creation of new HD-seeds. Once a seed is re-created the wallet must be backed up.

No longer do you have to shut down your Bitcoin Core client to load or create a new wallet. Loading, creating or unloading a wallet can be done with a simple command. Currently, this feature is only available in the RPC interface.

There have been some changes in how the client looks and may take a small amount of time to get used to the changes.

The new Bitcoin Core timestamp is now is ISO 8601. This means the date and time of each transaction now follow this format “2018-02-28T12:34:56Z”. This may be the least interesting of the updates but it is good to stay abreast to the latest updates in Bitcoin Core.

Support for Python 2 has been discontinued for all test files and tools.

There are many other portions of this bitcoin core update but these are some of the most interesting points to us. If you would like to read more about the most recent update click here.