Bitcoin Forum

thread title pretty much says it, say I've had someone send me coins directly to my wallet, how long will it take to process?

This is the first time I've ever dealt with this and I had someone send me a few coins a few hours ago, am I just being impatient or is something wrong?

A couple of hours is pretty long.

Usually not longer than an hour.  He may have scammed you.  Make sure your client shows connections.

So if I wanted to meet someone and trade cash for bitcoins in person, we'd have to sit around a coffee shop with wifi for an hour or so to confirm the transaction?

You probably haven't downloaded the whole blockchain yet. Check on blockexplorer.com what the latest block number is.

You know, this would be an outstanding feature for the/a client to have.  How many questions like this does the board field per day? 

3rd party infrastructure is required for more immediate transactions, yes. Although it's as easy as exchanging between MyBitcoin accounts. But even then this is only necessary if you want to protect yourself from double spending.

If a fee is payed you should see the first confirmation on average within 5-10 minutes. Often you will see the transaction before it goes into a block. How long you wait is simply a matter of how much you trust each other.

Yea, the Bitcoin client and economy is very beta right now, so it's not very intuitive and user-friendly just yet. A lot of these issues are definitely being worked on however.

I thought fees were mandatory nowadays...  (but I'm new and could easily be mistaken)

Thanks for replies everyone, I'm sure you have to answer questions like this all the time :P

No I didn't get scammed, I made a thread on another forum I use about tor/bitcoins and a member mentioned he bought around $300 worth of coins back when they were .70 , and was amazed when I told him how much the price had gone up. So I asked him to send me a coin so I could try a transaction and he offered to send a few, but I haven't recieved anything yet. I'm gonna try the blockchain thing but I'm guessing he may just not have ever sent them.

Alright I'm not sure what I'm looking for here, do I download the "getblock" patch? Is that it or am I clicking the number or hash under latest blocks?

the bitcoin client downloads the block chain from other users on its own. You can check your progress downloading it by comparing the number in the bottom right of your bitcoin software with the number of the latest block on blockexplorer.com.

ahh ok, my bitcoin client says "128916" while the newest on blockexplorer is "128915"

edit: nvm they are both now 128916, so I'm guessing that means he never sent it lol

Blockexplorer will normally appear to be 1 block behind because their counting starts at 0 rather than 1.

The last thing you can do is to check http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/ and search for the address the coins were supposed to be sent to. If it shows up there that means the transaction is still waiting to get into a block. Given how long it has been finding it there would mean a fee should have been attached but wasn't.

Go to address book, receiving, click "new address", label it "bitcoin forum", click ok, then copy to clipboard and paste it here.  I'll send you .01 so you can see how it works ;)

So I am also having an issue with a large delay in transferring bitcoins from Mt Gox to Bitcoin client. It has been over 2 hours with 1 connection and no change in block number :-[. I wasn't having this problem two days ago. I hope my coins are not in limbo and lost somewhere!

here ya go 17rHiuCV82iZCWcyDnkJzLGsNcfHCSWfBs

much appreciated :)

Sent...you should see it in your transactions window in the bitcoin client no later than 10 minutes from now but probably sooner.

wow that was fast

"1/unconfirmed"  Soo I'm gonna have to have a talk with this guy lol


thanks again, I'm glad I found this place :P , now all I need to do is get my computer out of the stone age and start mining!

 ;D welcome to the revolution!

Bitcoin Block Explorer counts the same way Bitcoin does. It just has a slight delay.

Ah I just assumed since the software seems to list number of blocks instead of block number there would be a difference of one since the first block was number 0.

lol I do feel like I'm privy to some top secret information, whenever I mention buying/mining bitcoins people are like "lol are you serious?" just wait til they see :P

Both Bitcoin and BBE consider the genesis block to be block 0. Bitcoin's getblockcount is named very misleadingly (for historical reasons): it actually reports the block number instead of the block count. There's actually getblockcount+1 blocks if you count the genesis block.

You can wait as long as you want. Its the credentials for spending your coins that are stored on your computer not the coins them self.

Well the coins are stored on your computer but also every other computer with a copy of the block chain.

Is anyone else having problems with the client. I have waited so long to get my bitcoins transferred to my client from Mt Gox. I know its not Mt Gox, my transaction shows on block explorer, but for some reason I fluctuate from 1 to 2 connections only, with no change in block number. Opened port 8333 on my router, updated to 0.3.22 and still no luck. Can any one help?

I've had "1 connection" until I configured port forwarding in my router to forward 8333 to the machine I have Bitcoin running on. Now I usually get 100+ connections, and my blocks update really quick. ATM, it says 128786 blocks for me (I just started Bitcoin up, so this may not be perfectly up to date).

I checked port 8333 on canyouseeme.org.  Everything checks out, but still 1 connection.  I'll try again later.

I sometimes experience exactly the same problem but most of the time it fully connects. I did not modify my configuration.