Bitcoin Forum

why would my receiving BTC addresses from my client be getting an "invalid bitcoin address" error over at MtGox for under $1K?  BTC client is actively generating BTC's so i know its connected to the network.  owners of MtGox aren't responding via email.

Hi cypherdoc. Try #bitcoin-otc channel on freenode. Look for MagicalTux. As far as I know he is in charge. If you get no answer there, he's probably asleep as it's 4:40am in Japan at the moment

That is the message that I've seen on other sites when the bitcoin daemon had not been responding.  I just tested BTC withdrawal and was successful.  Does your problem persist?

Though it appears Mt. Gox site does a good job of sanitizing input to ignore spaces or other extraneous characters, I've seen a similar problem when copying a bitcoin address from a browser page that when pasted included characters that were not visitble nor were they part of the bitcoin address but as a result the "invalid address message" was shown.  To resolve that situation, I pasted the address in notepad and then did copy once again of the bitcoin address from notepad which was then "clean".

Post your receiving address here and we'll tell you if we think it's an invalid address. It might be a stupid error like a truncated address.

For example, if you copy-and-paste from Gmail it inserts a non-breaking space character. Use Gmail's "Show Original" option to circumvent this problem.

1AtGauB6WQsiiNHCFTgm36Kcma7mYq8D9E

at mtgox in withdrawal window for Currency i check "Bitcoins", for Amount to Withdraw i enter "641" so that last price amounts to $1000.  i paste btc address above and click Send.  then i get the "invalid btc address" error.  anything i'm doing wrong?

I just sent you 0.01 BTC, so you can see that your address is good.

Try withdrawing just 1 bitcoin to see what happens, to rule out the possibility that you are tripping some limit.

Also, how are you getting the receiving address into MtGox? The safest way is to use "Copy to clipboard" in the Bitcoin client, then immediately control-V or command-V into MtGox.

If you are copying the address from any other software (e.g. a word processing document) there's a chance that formatting characters are getting copied.

ribuck, thank you sir.  you're a gentleman.  yes i got it.  i am clicking the Copy to Clipboard in the client and pasting directly into mtgox.  also tried the Notepad recommendation above but it didn't work.  let me try a small amt.

sgornick was right.  copying from clipboard and pasting directly to mtgox appends 4 invisible characters to end of address invalidating it.  i got it to work finally but shook my confidence in the system.

I'll add a trim() at the input time to see if it helps. Please let me know if this solves the use of clipboard-copied addresses.

Thanks

ribuck.  send me an address and i'll return your btc.

you're so right. i've been pounding those guys for the last 24 hrs trying to get help but only found it here thru the forum.  sheesh....

I'd say for the last 9 hours, which matches exactly night here in Japan.

http://www.magicaltux.net/date.php

You can send it here:
1AtGauB6WQsiiNHCFTgm36Kcma7mYq8D9E

I was going to say "no need to return the bit-cent", but I suppose it might be worth a million dollars one day :)

I would like to avoid "guessing" the user input, especially when it's about sending funds there.

In the meantime I'll just drop any non-alphanumeric char, but I would expect users who want to withdraw funds to double check their input (well, here the bitcoin client is adding invisible chars, not much you can do about it I guess...)

thats the thing.  the input after the paste into the address box doesn't show the extra invisible characters.  only after the reject in the red invalid address error where it repeats the address do u see them.

What operating system?  This sounds like a wxWidgets or bitcoin client bug that needs fixing.

MacOSx  Snow Leopard

if i remember correctly the 4 encrypted characters were \0\0

ribuck, thats my receiving address.

Sorry, I must have not pressed control-C hard enough. Try this address:
13...rG

I'm getting the same "Invalid bitcoin address" error message today from mtgox for a small withdrawl (<10 BTC). Is there any known issues with MtGox withdrawls? I've also tried typing out the address.
I'm using Win7 64bit with Firefox + Chrome.

I had the same problem 5 minutes ago and now it works! The moons at some distant planet must have aligned properly.

Same issue at Mt. Gox for me today.
Edit: Maybe it has to do with confirmations. I sent successfully the next day.