Bitcoin Forum

Hi there,

I run a small Tshirt brand and I started taking Bitcoin as payment because it's pretty philosophically inline with the designs and I thought it'd be a good way to start getting into the currency. So far I've had two people make purchases with it using the "Bitcoin Payments for WooCommerce, version: 2.12" plug-in. It seemed to be the best reviewed.

Also, being completely new, I had to set up a wallet, which I did through Electrum. My understanding was that after an order, I would be able to run Electrum and see the money in the wallet automatically, but this hasn't happened. I spoke with the app developer who speculated that the buyer didn't include the "txn fee" and it may take a long time. Well, I've waited a month and neither has come through for either order.

I have tried to contact the buyers but they left out their email and phone number and only game me a physical address to send the shirts to. Of course I could send a snail mail letter, but I'm hoping I can just get this sorted out.

I'm wondering how I can track this payment or retreive it from the abyss. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I would hate to disable it or give up on Bitcoin because of stuff like this, I'd rather live and learn.

The website is http://www.conspiratees.net if it's helpful to examine the payment processing page. Thanks in advance!

What is your bitcoin address?
You can check transactions on blockchain.info

Maybe the NSA blocked the transactions?  ???

Thanks for the reply, so my "Master Public Key" is:

f55c4d640fe2a77676262b38760148b01112c5e3e9ed4f4715f0e72e6b8a7e2843c94990d41f99d 308469d5155c56d379ae91498345b0778b7c884675b2efecc

I went to the site you mentioned and put that in for a search and it said "Unrecognized search pattern"

Can you post the transaction ID (txid) and/or bitcoin address for both of the two purchases?   I imagine these should be logged/stored somewhere by the woocommerce plugin.

I dug around and found one of them as: 17wFxP3TEGMt1w2KNLPCAUdp3CQErciAZG
So I put THAT in on the site you recommended and got a little info but curiously it said zero under "# of transactions"

I just can't help but think this is my fault, is using my "public master key" correct? Is it possible I'm just sending people to a dead end? That would really suck because as I understand Bitcoin, people may be losing their funds?

Bitcoin address 17wFxP3TEGMt1w2KNLPCAUdp3CQErciAZG did not receive any btc: https://blockchain.info/address/17wFxP3TEGMt1w2KNLPCAUdp3CQErciAZG

Here you can an unconfirmed transaction: http://blockchain.info/fr/tx/1314cfbaa7556a995463a070e4ccec8412492b338594a7067a2067ea167e8391 (it will confirm after some time)


But you never received anything

Understood, but the above address is from one of the buyers, so it would have been sent from there, not received. Either way, the transaction seems stuck in limbo. I would guess they cancelled it because of the long wait time, but I also thought bitcoin transactions weren't reversable, so I'm not sure.
Why is it that when I put the buyers wallet address into Blockchain.info I can get results, but when I put in my own Public Master Key: f55c4d640fe2a77676262b38760148b01112c5e3e9ed4f4715f0e72e6b8a7e2843c94990d41f99d 308469d5155c56d379ae91498345b0778b7c884675b2efecc I get an error? Does it seem like my account/wallet is not set up correctly?

what is your bitcoin receiving address?

Is my bitcoin receiving address different than my Master Public Key? If it is, how do I find my receiving address and could someone explain the difference between the two? I thought these two were the same, although my Master Public Key seems much longer than other people's BTC addresses.
My Master Public Key is: f55c4d640fe2a77676262b38760148b01112c5e3e9ed4f4715f0e72e6b8a7e2843c94990d41f99d 308469d5155c56d379ae91498345b0778b7c884675b2efecc
Again, really appreciate the help, I'm hoping I can get this down because I have a lot of faith and hope for BTC.

While many people might want to help you, all of them are asking... wtf is a Master Public Key and why is it so long? Can you link to the documentation where this is needed?

Should you need to investigate this further, ask the buyers what are their addresses. Or does the plugin you mentioned provide this at least? Can you see if your clients made the transactions?

The address 17wFxP3TEGMt1w2KNLPCAUdp3CQErciAZG never received any btc, so obviously it could never have sent any btc.
If the buyer address is 17wFxP3TEGMt1w2KNLPCAUdp3CQErciAZG, then he could never have paid for it, unless it was free.

Otherwise you would have seen some btc received and sent from there, on blockchain.info

I googled "Master Public Key".  Apparently it is a concept used by Electrum.

I sort of doubt that the blog plugin would accept a master public key.  It's going to want a regular bitcoin address.

I think that people here could be more helpful if OP would provide the configuration of the blog plugin and any logging it spit out for the two transactions.

Again, what we are trying to get at is a transaction id, or the receiving bitcoin address for both transactions.

My logic is that if the blogging plugin approved the order, then it must have been configured with a bitcoin receive address, and the money must have been sent somewhere.   We just need to identify where.

no one has snet you any BTC i don't think  provided a real address to send to, the orders may have gone into your system but i don't think they were paid

It seems the plugin really works with electrum, didn't knew that, from http://wordpress.org/plugins/bitcoin-payments-for-woocommerce/

Maybe he can get help here: http://wordpress.org/support/plugin/bitcoin-payments-for-woocommerce

BTW: I don't think it is a good idea to post your master public key, we could import that to electrum and watch all your transactions I think,
not sure you want that  ::)

Thanks guys, I was out for a bit, but this wordpress plug-in and Electrum are my introductions to BTC, so I apologize if that term (Public Master Key) is exclusive to Electrum.

btc4ever makes a good point, in that I'm trying to be cautious and don't know what's okay to share and what isn't..but now I'm starting to realize that some of what I'm working with might be Electrum based. In that case, I really don't know that I have a typical bitcoin wallet address. All I did was go with the best reviewed plug-in which again is "Bitcoin Payments for WooCommerce" and followed the instructions.

I've been told to steer away from Online Wallets for security concerns, so I thought Electrum was a good, well reviewed choice for a local pc wallet. From within Electrum that one "master" key seems to be all I can get out of it, and the plug-in specifically asks for it- but nowhere have I seen something more in the style of a typical BTC address. Are there any Electrum users that might know the difference?

Or maybe I should scrap where I'm at and use a different plug-in/wallet creation service? I'm open to either option really, since I'm feeling more confident based on responses that maybe those orders kicked back to the buyer since I didn't have the proper address in there somehow. (Although again, from the plug-ins prospective, it's all filled out as it asks for)

When btc4ever says:" I sort of doubt that the blog plugin would accept a master public key.  It's going to want a regular bitcoin address.

I think that people here could be more helpful if OP would provide the configuration of the blog plugin and any logging it spit out for the two transactions.

Again, what we are trying to get at is a transaction id, or the receiving bitcoin address for both transactions.

My logic is that if the blogging plugin approved the order, then it must have been configured with a bitcoin receive address, and the money must have been sent somewhere.   We just need to identify where."

I would love to provide the "configuration" but I'm not sure exactly what that means except to say that the plug-in gives just a few simple steps to add bitcoin into WooCommerce (which is a popular plug-in for eStores that has about 6 or 7 different payment options) The only verifying piece of info I was asked for was that "Public Master Key" so if this isn't making sense to people who are familiar with BTC- I'd rather just start over and ask:

For people who are taking btc payments from an eStore, with a wordpress site, what plugin do you use- and what channel would you go through to get a proper wallet address that's trustworthy?

can we see the documentation for the plugin?

I would think this would be OP's best bet.  Unless someone here with the knowledge of woocommerce or electrum master keys chimes in.


I still have to think that the bitcoin transaction ID must have been recorded in a log or database by the plugin when it authorized the order, but OP seems intent on ignoring that suggestion, as I have asked for it twice now.

From that log, I don't see why you would have shipped the order.  The only order statuses I see are "processing", "pending", and "on-hold".   None of that sounds like "received" or "confirmed".

So for this transaction, it looks like order instructions were given to the customer to pay 0.24885652 BTC to address 17wFxP3TEGMt1w2KNLPCAUdp3CQErciAZG.

However, we see on blockchain.info that no payment was ever sent to that address.   And eventually the plugin changed its internal status to "on-hold".

So the evidence indicates that the customer bailed out before sending payment.  No transaction ID is available because no payment to that address ever hit the blockchain.

Did the plugin's User Interface ever tell you that the payment was received/confirmed?  It shouldn't have...

You haven't provided details for the other transaction.   Likely the same thing happened.

Possibly you misunderstood what the User Interface was telling you, and confused some sort of "payment_instructions_sent" status with "payment_received" status.   Just guessing here.

No, we're on the same page. I never sent the product. I realize nothing has hit my wallet. My concern has just been that this is due to an error on my part, or that the funds were stuck in limbo because of me.

Both transactions look identical as far as the logs. So while it's possible two people just ended up backing out, it seems unlikely. If nobody's missing money, or waiting on a product they haven't gotten, I guess it's not a big deal. I just want to know that there's nothing about my set up that is causing an issue with accepting BTC. But yes, I've been careful not to send any product until I see something other than "0.0" in my Electrum wallet.

Oh, I misunderstood then.  I thought you had shipped product.  I don't see any evidence of mis-configuration.

If you just want to know if the system is working correctly, why don't you try buying a product from yourself?

Always a good idea to test end-to-end before putting any payment system live with real customers in the first place.

/caseclosed.

Check your transaction id maybe?

Look here: https://blockchain.info/address/17wFxP3TEGMt1w2KNLPCAUdp3CQErciAZG

This is an address mentioned in your log. It does not have any transactions, pending or finished. The only thing you can do customer-side to solve the situation is to check if they really sent money ANYWHERE (ask for their transaction/address), and plan for some kind of contingency, and second, test your system yourself. Get a few bitcents and create a custom cheap product and buy it yourself.

perhaps it's worth mentioning: the payment processing service BitPay has a WooCommerce plugin, among others

https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-shopping-cart-plugins

Don't use your "master private key" again. make a new one.
people can use this to steal your coins from addresses made with this master key iirc.

Why is it called Public master key and not Private master key?

Because it is the PUBLIC master key not the PRIVATE mater key.  B!z is being incomplete but the advice is good.

However the OP likely should:
a) stop using this public master key
b) generate a new public master key
c) keep master keys secret.

There are some potential vulnerabilities from an attacker knowing the public master key.  The first is that all future transactions can be traced.  From the public master key it is possible to determine all future transactions involving the OP.  Not a good idea to compromise the anonymity of your clients like that.  The second is that IF an attacker obtains a single private key, they can use that combined with the public master key to calculate the private master key and steal all coins from the wallet.   It would require the OP to reveal more information but given the OP has no balance there is really no reason to take the risk.  Just start fresh and keep all master keys a secret.

Electrum uses deterministic wallets. I wouldn't think it's any more dangerous than a watch-only wallet on Armory. I mean - ideally, you don't want people to know your pubkeys at all, but it's really not a huge deal. There are plenty of published addresses with thousands for months which haven't been broken.

ETA: D&T trumps my response, as always. Assumed OP would switch key after resolution.

To echo what others have said.  It does not appear that you received any payments.  You indicated there were two orders, the second order should have a unique payment address (not the public master key).  I only saw one so you may wish to find the payment address for the second order and verify no funds have been sent to it.

Going forward I would
a) following instructions in the post above to "start over"
b) TEST YOUR SYSTEM.  Buy something from your store, make a payment and track the progress in the plugin and on blockchain.info.   

I find it kinda hard to believe you setup a site involving real money and it never occurred to you to test the system to see with your own eyes what your users will see/experience.

I use this plug in and it works very well, I suggest opening electrum going to
file -> preferneces -> wallet (change the gap limit to nice and high I go around 200)

In woocommerce under payment gateways in settings go to bitcoin, I'm guessing you put your master public key here already. Put the confirmations to 6 for your safety.

The plugin will assign a unique address to each order (only if the address is unused it will reuse them if they don't get used), that address is listed in your order details page, the plug in should also monitor the blockchain to see if the address it assigned has received the payment in full then it will change the order to processing.

You can also manually check the blockchain by taking that address that it gives you for the order in the order detail page and enter it into blockchain.info if that address has the total amount of BTC that it says in "total expected btc" or something similar to that the order was paid for.

The problem with the plugin is that the user can not pay and it will still sit there "on-hold" while reducing your stock I usually cancel the orders after 24 hours.

@OP

There is an alternate bitcoin network exist. It is called testnet. The main purpose of this testnet is to test anything without financial risk. Check with Electrum if it possible to run their services on testnet. If this is feasible, then ask them to provide you with account that is running against testnet. Then either switch your running site to that account or deploy a test bed. Ask someone to gift you some test bitcoins (they are really worth nothing, PM me for example) and learn and check all the bitcoin related functionality of your site.

Good luck