Transaction-less transfer of value #84

As a user, I would like to move bitcoins between wallets without having to use transactions (which could incur fees).

It's important for this to be a "move" operation rather than a copy or export/import. For the user, it should feel like moving value between wallets (like a transaction, but without the need for it to enter the block chain and possibly incur fees). The wallets should be both presumed to be active, hence you would only want a given key to exist in one active wallet at a time. This feature should not be viewed as a backup mechanism.

What you are describing is exactly what bitcoin transactions are for. It's impossible to break a coin into two smaller ones without making a transaction.

Except that transactions will eventually cost money...I'm talking about moving private keys between wallets in order to consolidate bitcoins into a wallet without having to use a transaction and potentially incur a transaction fee.

I suggest generalizing this to a much more useful feature, the ability to create a bearer transaction that includes the private key (no need to mention amount), and obviously a text box to copy the transaction from instead of broadcasting it to the network. We'd need an input field to paste in the transaction (which is really just a key pair). It's really just export/import with the official client by default deleting the private key on export (possibly with a huge warning to make sure you copied the text somewhere safe). It makes sense to work on this feature after a mechanism for controlling which coins get included in a transaction, since the user will want to know how many coins are at a specific address before sending off the private key (to another wallet or another person).

Appropriate new API calls should be created too.

Sipa's pull request would implement this, please contribute to #220 regarding this feature