Bitcoin Forum

For example, I have a Wallet and made a request of amount X of BTC to XXX wallet number, If I let it open can I use this request after some years?

i am not sure about this but as long as you save both wallet in safe place, i am sure that in some years later, you can open it and you can use it so you can trying to send your bitcoin from wallet into another wallet. i don't have this experience before so i only say what its in my mind. maybe other member can explain more about this.

In theory it'll be yours forever.

The only exception is if your wallet is with a company (e.g., Coinbase, Circle, Xapo, etc.). Any of those company's can go out of business, and if so you'll lose that wallet when they do.

You know that you can have your wallet forever if you have the private key (along with the public key). The private key is proof of ownership.

Now Coinbase and other bitcoin "banks" are fine, they're good, they're convenient. People will say "if you don't own the private key to your wallet, you don't own bitcoin." Technically this is true, you just own an IOU from the bank. BUT, the same applies to every single bank in the world. Your Dollars, Euros, Pounds, etc. aren't literally yours unless they are in your physical possession...like stacks of cash in your home. So, don't let that hype worry you.

Edit: Wait, are you talking about a transaction? Where would you write a transaction and not click "send"?

Not about the wallet, but I'm talking about the request order, will it be open (and usable) forever?

Yes, imagine that I opened a request order, it is open now and I set it to receive XXX BTC, but I don't deposit, I let it open, and after some Years I finally use this adress to make a deposit.

Is this possible?

Yes. Anyone can send bitcoins to any address at any time. It doesn't matter when the address was displayed by your wallet. However, in order to spend any bitcoins sent to that address, you will need the private key, or the seed that generated the private key. I assume that any wallet that displays an address will save the private key to that address. It would be very bad if it didn't.

But once the coins are received by the destination address the transaction is closed. The OP is asking if a request for payment can remain open indefinitely.

To the OP, give us a scenario where this would be a useful option for a transaction?

I'm not sure what you're asking, but let me explain in a way which may help. The network doesn't monitor 'requests'. The network only monitors payments. If you use a wallet, or a company, or invoice or whatever to request payment from someone, the only thing that matters is that person being able to send you bitcoins. When you generate a bitcoin address correctly (done by your wallet software) that address should work forever*. You don't need to change it; even years later any sender can still send bitcoin to it.

*Bitcoin is powered by software, and this software is certainly likely to change over time meaning the way it works may change. However, developers writing for Bitcoin will usually be careful to make fundamental usage changes, like bitcoin address formats, backward compatible because they know people may not expect addresses to expire. In this case, wide announcements would likely be made.

If you're using a normal wallet, yes, the addresses will be yours forever.  The Blockchain wallet, for example mentions what addresses you have to accept Bitcoin from and gives you the option of archiving addresses so that you don't own them anymore.  Basically, you can do what you want with the addresses forever - they're yours.

It depends a bit on the system. Some sites have time limits for receiving payments, and will not accept any payments after that time period has expired.

However, let's say you have your own wallet, with access to the private keys (like Bitcoin Core or Electrum). Then the short answer is no. This is because the private key for the address will be saved regardless if you receive a transaction or not, as it will be required when you later on want to actually send the money you have received. Also, you can receive an indefinite amount of payments. So as long as you control your private keys, you can receive an unlimited amount of transactions distributed over any period of time.

There is really no "request for payment". All that feature does is shows a QR code containing information such as an address and amount that another wallet can use to create a transaction. There is nothing being opened or closed, other than the app itself.

This one is the best question to answer because both wallets should be actively synchronized with the bitcoin database, in order to send your bitcoin to another wallet, first of all, your both wallet should be active. But if you keep safely both the wallet, then you can send easily.

You could use an escrow like feature like localbitcoin uses and the request will expire after a certain amount of times and the funds released again back to the owner. Is it for some kind of website you running ? You selling something ?