Bitcoin Forum

So I read several times on the forms that everytime a transaction goes you wallet address changes.  I think I also read that the "old addresses" where you had previously sent payment still function for sending payments.  Well I wanted to clear out my wallet (had to do a repair on a corrupted blockchain) so I sent about 5 BTC to my old MT Gox address about 2 hours ago.  I don't see them showing up in my Gox account.  Does it take longer than 2 hours to do 6 confirms (I assume that 6 blocks are needed for it to show up and that takes about an hour).  Are my coins forever lost in limbo?  Just curious how the addressing thing works.

The client shows how many times the transaction was confirmed. It is unlikely that it would take two hours, but it could happen. Or else somehow your transaction might not have gotten in a block for some weird reason. You can also check the details of your transactions (number of confirmations, etc.) using https://blockexplorer.com/ or http://blockchain.info/

As a side note, there is no such thing as a "wallet address". Think of addresses as different stores of Bitcoin. You have access to all the coins stored in those addresses by the fact that you have private keys to them in your wallet. You can use any address in your wallet to receive coins, add new addresses to the wallet, etc. When you spend coins however, the client automatically picks the addresses they will be sent from (since coins can only be sent from the addresses they were received by), so you don't have to deal with that detail.

The address you get for depositing BTC to Mt. Gox is permanent regardless of whether or not you've generated another address.  Most exchanges offer this as miners wanted to obtain a static address for having deposits go automatically to their Mt. Gox accounts.

So your BTC deposit transaction to Mt. Gox would normally show in your balance after six confirmations.