Bitcoin Forum

I'm new to bitcoins, and I've never received any, but last night I bought 16 bitcoins from someone, and it says "162324 Blocks of Transaction History" when I mouse over the green check  mark in the bottom left hand corner of the bitcoin window. Does this mean that I have received the coins that I've purchased, but the the transaction isn't complete or something? My balance still says 0.00 BTC.

Thanks for the help.

It takes some time to download the blockchain. Blockchain being the past blocks of data, coins and transactions. As long as he sent the coins to one of your addresses, you'll be fine. It just might take a while to download all of the history.

Current block count is 162,342.  Assuming you posted this about 4 minutes ago, and also assuming that your client read "162,324" 4 minutes ago, then it has about 18 blocks left to download and should have finished downloading by the time I've finished with this post.

But, if you made this transaction last night, I would think that it would have been more than 18 blocks ago (i.e. your transaction would have been included in a block preceding block #162,324).  If that's the case, I'm not sure why it's not showing up.

When you say you purchased 16 BTC from "someone," who was it and how did you pay them?

Well I purchased them off a community forum that I'm on a lot but I don't even know if he sent me the coins or not yet... that's what I'm worried about because I pay'd $95.

Now blocks counter is 162,344, do you have them all? Did the transaction appeared in the client?

No, nothing appeared in the client saying that I received any bitcoins or any transactions.

Ah...I see.

Still not sure how you sent the $95.  Was it Pay-Pal?  Dwolla?  Something else?  Can you request a chargeback?  Also, what BTC address did you tell him to send the BTC to?

A word of advice...make sure the person you are conducting business with has established reputation.  On this forum, that typically means a lot of posts (300-500+) and a bunch of positive feedback from equally credible members on the "List of Honest Traders" thread in the Marketplace section of the forum.

Also, be weary of selling BTC to people for things like Pay-Pal.  For example:

1)  Person x sends $95 via Pay-Pal to person y for BTC.
2)  Person y sends BTC to person x
3)  Person x complains to Pay-Pal saying they never received their product (even though they did, but it's easy to say they didn't).
4)  Pay-pal completes a chargeback of the payment, so the $95 gets sent back to person x.
5)  Person x essentially steals $95 worth of BTC from person y.  Person y is left without their BTC and without their Pay-pal payment.

It's still the Wild West in Bitcoin land.  You must do as much as you can to ensure the security of your assets.  

Did you give him the address right? Are you sure the client you are using has the same wallet?

If you would care to post the recipient bitcoin address, someone can check the blockchain and see if the bitcoins paid for were sent or not.