1) verify on an independant blockchain explorer (like blockchain.info): enter the deposit address you generated using electrum in their search field, and see if there is a CONFIRMED transaction funding this address

IF this is the case, the problem is on your end... If it's not the case, it's on the sender's end

IF the problem is on your end:
1) check if the button on the right hand side of the electrum screen is green
2) check if the electrum version you have is the latest version
3) try to restart your electrum wallet
4) double-check if the address you gave to the sender was indeed generated by your wallet... (since electrum doesn't see an incoming transaction, the address should still be the address that's being shown in the receive-tab of electrum).
5) by clicking on the green (or red/brown) dot on the bottom right corner, you can manually switch electrum servers... You can try a couple and see if it changes anything (not likely if the button is green tough... A lagging electrum server is indicated by a brown button, a red button means no connection.. IIRC)
6) if everything else fails, you can always try to re-install a fresh copy of the latest version of electrum on a clean pc that is defenately able to connect to the internet, restore your wallet using the seedphrase you initially got and see if it is able to detect an incoming transaction

One other potential thing i can think of: are you 100% positive the person paying you sent BTC, not BCH or some other altcoin?

Technically, since segwit, a block can theoretically be 4Mb (on disk), however 3Mb is reserved for the witness data in order to keep backwards compatibility for the "old" nodes that still have the 1Mb limit. Offcourse, in reality, a block will almost never reach the 4Mb limit, but will probably be very close to the 1Mb limit after you disregard the witness data.


I haven't done the math, but my gut feeling tells me that if you'd only take the average amount of transactions per block for the last year, you'll get a lot more than 500 tx/block on average... Offcourse, if you take the all-time average, it'll probably be a lot lower (possibly around the ~500tx/block range... idk)

Sorry for the fact that i quoted so many posts, but i felt it was necessary to make the following observation:
1) you were banned
2) you opened a thread in meta to discuss your ban
3) you were told that you were banned for copy/pasting
4) you acknowledge this fact, but still keep on posting

Did you read the rules after you were banned? If you continue posting in more than 1 thread or outside meta while being banned, this is  called ban evasion. This is a bannable offence...

It might be a good idear if you start by reading this sticky post:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=497545.0

btw: it seems like theymos and cyrus are waaaaay behind on account recovery... You might have to wait weeks/months/years before your account gets recovered, so don't get your hopes up.

However, if you post the signed message (as explained in the post i mentioned) in this thread, one of the mods can probably lock your account, so the hacker can't abuse it and get it banned/tagged...

Last note, a bit offtopic but still: satoshi dissapeared a long, long, long time ago... So don't ask him to help you...

I'm going to talk about how i personally see things... This might not be the same reasoning the moderators followed when they banned your account.

I've been here for a long while, and it seems a lot of "bounty hunters" don't see this forum for what it really is: a BITCOIN TALK forum. This forum was created to discuss and promote bitcoin. If it's primary purpose was to spam ico bounties it would have been called icospam.org instead of bitcointalk.org.

Now, you say things like: "i only joined an ico bounty and it forced me to post 10 times a week", and you think it's unfair you got banned because of it, but in reality, the ico bounty doesn't really belong on this forum. You've joined a thirth party service that is a big nuicance to this forum... For most longtime members, those bounty thingies are a grey area, they're frowned upon to say the least... So if you join such an ico bounty, and then produce crap posts just to meet your 10 posts/week criterium, you're going to get banned sooner or later.

Last (fair) heads up: IIRC, you only get 2 or 3 temp bans before a permaban... So since you were banned 2 times before, you're heading for a permaban right now... Once you're permabanned, it's you (as a person) and not your account that is banned... If you continue down this path, you'll soon be no longer permitted to use this forum alltogether...

Normaal gezien gebruiken ze de bitcoin: URI

Hier is een voorbeeldje (heb m'n eigen adres ingevuld, dus niet op klikken ):
bitcoin:1MocACiWLM8bYn8pCrYjy6uHq4U3CkxLaa?amount=0.001&label=Mocacinno&message=Fooi%20voor%20mocacinno

meer info: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0021.mediawiki

Als je electrum niet als portable of standalone draait, zal de bitcoin: uri normaal gezien door de installer gekoppeld zijn aan electrum, dus als je op de bovenstaande link zou klikken, zou normaal gezien electrum automatisch moeten opengaan, zou het label "Mocacinno" aan de betaling moeten hangen, zou m'n address automatisch moeten ingevuld zijn, zou de value 0.001 automatisch moeten ingevuld zijn, en zou de message "Fooi voor mocacinno" automatisch ingevuld moeten zijn... Moet je enkel nog op "send" klikken, en alle metadata word netjes in je wallet opgeslagen

most probably, yes...
Unless you used the persistence feature, or saved the wallet on a different medium, the wallet is gone. In other words: if you didn't take explicit action in order to save the wallet file persistently, it is gone... This feature is clearly documented in tail's documentation.

Source: https://tails.boum.org/

It has nothing to do with the hardware, you just chose to use a live OS that is configured not to leave a single trace.
You never explicitly said you didn't write down the seed, but i'm pretty sure that not answering this question is an answer on itself...


I hope you didn't fund the address generated by your wallet with to much... If it's just a couple bucks, you should probably consider it a tuition fee... Next time, make sure you understand the technology you're using, and read the messages that are printed on your screen... When you were generating a wallet, the seed must have been clearly shown to you, and in the next step of the wallet generation, you must have been asked to repeat the seed phrase that was shown to you... IIRC, the messages shown in this step clearly tell you you HAVE to save the seed on a piece of paper.
Electrum even goes as far as clearing the clipboard between the two steps, so you can't just copy the seed in the first step and paste it in the second step... There's a reason for this.

Sorry for your loss...

The recovery phrase should be generated by you... This is usually done when you initialse the hardware wallet. If you receive a hardware wallet that was already initialised, you shouldn't use it (IMHO). Hardware wallets are cheap, you shouldn't buy a used one, but instead buy a new one directly from the company itself, so in case it's initialised you can consider it to be compromised, and you have no idear if the person comprommising the hardware wallet messed with the hardware itself to.

If you don't trust the company itself, you can always use different (offline) tools to generate a seed phrase, and enter this independant seed phrase in your hardware wallet.

BTW: answering to a thread that has been inactive for 6 months is frowned upon. You did the right thing by using the search function and not creating a new thread, but in this case it might have been better if you found a more recent thread or created a new one anyways

I agree with the previous posters, but i did want to give a "formal" answer to your question:

No, if you only have the funded address and a password used to encrypt your wallet, there is no way to recover your wallet.

You need one of these:

• The seed phrase that was shown to you when you created the wallet (it should have been indicated quite clearly that you really NEEDED to save the seedphrase... IIRC, you even have to prove you wrote down the seed before you can continue the wallet creation wizard)
• The wallet file AND the encryption password (if you don't remember the password, but you chose a weak one, or you have a decent idear what the password might have looked like, there are ways to brute-force it IF you have the wallet file)
• A list of all the private keys whose public key hashes (addresses) were funded (but i guess it's a longshot, since you didn't seem to have saved your seed phrase, i doubt you have used the function to export private keys.... BTW: it's not a good idear to export private keys to begin with, just save the seed phrase next time)

Like LoyceV already said: stop using the disk, unplug it, put it in a different machine as secondary disk (don't boot from it), then use a tool like dd to clone the disk containing your wallet file... Then copy the disk image, and only after you have 2 copies of the image from the disk that was in the "crashed" pc, you can proceed with tools like recuva and try to restore the wallet file.

@LoyceV: great to see you take action against such a character ... Slightly offtopic, but still relevant: i can still read this guy's email address, even after you tried to blur it... If you were serious protecting his email, you might want to swith to a different blurring tool
I personally use greenshot on my work pc (windows), it's image editor has tools to completely remove any part of a screencap and/or securely blur any part of the text...

Instead of re-hashing the same things the first 2 posters already said, i'll offer an alternative:

Why don't you run your own wallet on your server and use it to create new deposit addresses and manage payments?

There are 2 good alternatives:
1) Run bitcoind, lock your wallet, use json-rpc queries to make new addresses, use the callback function (walletnotify=path_to_script %s) to detect incoming transactions

2) OR, run electrum as a daemon http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/merchant.html

Personally, i'd prefer the first option (bitcoind), but electrum gives you the possibility to create a watch-only wallet by importing an xpub instead of generating a "real" wallet with an xprv. Since the online machine never touched the seed or the xprv, the worst a hacker can do is steal your xpub and find out which deposit addresses were generated by your store.

Ok,

Firstly, from experience, most longtime members don't believe you if you say you're appealing a ban in the name of a thirth party (your friend). In most (if not all) of these cases, it's the person who writes the appeal that is perma-banned, but this person doesn't want to admit he/she is the one that is banned because he/she wants to play the sympathy card, or he/she wants to continue posting without risking a ban for ban evasion.

As for the reason you're banned: i'm not a mod, i'm not an admin, i'm not the person that reported you, but from experience, i can say that in most of the cases, it's because you (or your friend) copy/pasted content. In some parts of the world, plagiarism isn't taken seriously... However, in the US (where the admin is located), plagiarism is a serious offence (you can actually go to jail for plagiarism).

Here is a full list of the rules:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0
Read the post and see if any of these infractions apply to you...

I don't know if there is a premade list of perma-bannable offences, but i guess it would contain following infractions:
- copy/pasting content
- ban evasion
- spamming (i think a spammer gets 3 temp-bans before he/she receives a perma-ban)
- doxxing the admin

I don't really get your question either, like others have asked before:

• Are you worried about running out of diskspace
• Are you worried about the amount of data that is being transferred (does your ISP have a data limit?)
• Are you worried about the amount of memory that's being used while running bitcoin core?

Anyways, i'd say that pointing you towards an SPV wallet would be the best course of action...

I'd like to recommand either a hardware wallet (in case you have a lot of funds invested in crypto) or electrum (https://electrum.org/#home)

An SPV wallet only downloads the block headers, the wallet only keeps the xprv and the metadata you added... I haven't run electrum in a while, but i guess the total diskpace used by the binary, the wallet and the headers is <100Mb (confirmation needed).

Also, the amount of data transfered is small, and the memory footprint is a lot smaller than bitcoin core.

The downside is that you won't be verifying the blocks yourself, and you need to be connected to a thirth party electrum server...

Thanks for the info 
The only remark i have is that bitcoin gold isn't equal to bitcoin. It's not because bitcoin transactions only require 1-6 confirmations to be considered irreversible that this amount is transferable to bitcoin gold just because it's codebase is allmost equal to bitcoin (i know it has a different POW). So, the exchange should have done it's homework and asked for more confirms because of the low difficulty (but it's all hindsight, it's easy to give comments on an event that already happened).

However, 21 blocks re-mined is a huge attack, i don't think i'd ever require 21 confirmations if i was selling something (nor do i think an exchange should require 20+ confirmations with an average time between blocks of ~10 min), so in the case of the bitcoin gold attack, i would have been scammed aswell (even with my hardware wallet).

But in this specific case, i don't see it as a exchange-related problem. Sure, an exchange was used to monetize a 51% attack, but a hardware wallet wouldn't have protected you either.

For example:

• you were selling irreversible digital goods and accepted "Bitcoin Gold" as a payment method
• you generated a "Bitcoin Gold" address using your hardware wallet
• the "bad guy" funded your address
• You transfered the digital goods without waiting for sufficient confirmations
• the "bad guy" executed the 51% attack, excluding the tx funding your address and including a tx that spends the unspent output used to fund your address

In this case, you would have been robbed, even when you were using a HW wallet...

It's not smart to use an exchange as a wallet, but in case of a 51% attack, a hardware wallet isn't 100% protection either... The only difference is that an exchange *might* require to few confirmations for a low diff coin, whilst a private person using a hardware wallet can chose the amount of confirmations arbitrarily

The article was TL;DR;... But comparing the use of an exchange as a primary wallet vs the use of a hardware wallet is like comparing apples to oranges.

When you spend unspent outputs that were funding a certain address, you need the private key in order to sign the transaction spending those funds.
In the case of a hardware wallet, the signature is generated on the hardware device. A well made hardware wallet doesn't allow your seed, xprv or any derived key to leave your hardware device ever. A good hardware wallet is completely open sourced to... A good hardware wallet also displays important info about the tx on the hardware device before you physically press a button that triggers the signing of the tx.
Even if you use the hardware wallet on an infected pc, you should be fine as long as you pay attention, and don't "sign off" on a transaction funding the wrong address...

Compare this to an exchange... Do you know how your exchange works? Do you know who can access those funds? They must run a hot wallet to function, so inherently they're less secure than a hardware wallet... It's possible they use a secure setup, but it's not guaranteed. What will happen if they get hacked?

Well... If you got a message saying the node rejected your transaction, it probably IS a fee problem (there could be other problems to, but a fee related problem is the most common one).  Without actually seeing the transaction, there is no way to pinpoint the exact problem with the transaction.

Good news, sure there's some good news :
In a non-technical way, it means that the coins never actually left your wallet.

In a technical way, it means that the unspent outputs funding the addresses managed by your wallet were used as input for a new transaction, but since that transaction wasn't succesfully broadcasted, the transaction spending the unspent outputs is not in the mempool of any of the nodes, so as far as the network's concerned: nothing really happened, the transaction sending the funds simply doesn't "exist" (at least from the network's point of view).
This statement only remains true as long as you don't succeed in broadcasting the transaction... If you broadcast it even once, the above statement becomes untrue!

The only "problem" is that electrum actually keeps the unbroadcasted transaction stored in a local file on your computer. As long as electrum has this transaction in this local file, you'll probably not be able to re-spend the funds...

I haven't used electrum in a while, so i don't know if there is a way to make electrum "forget" the transaction that's currently stuck... You can always restore your wallet from seed, but that might be a drastic measure since you'll lose all metadata you added (for example, the comments you added to a transaction or the names you attached to addresses).

I agree with AccountTrade,

Your bitpay invoice is marked as "Payment Confirming" and if you click on "View payment status", you are redirected to bitpay's insight node...

https://insight.bitpay.com/tx/c517192371bb92ace71f9df4c4b78975338119d13068811f23dba8c906285762

At the time of writing, their insight node seems broken or down to me...

So, my best bet would be: namecheap don't have a clue as to how bitcoin works exactly, they just saw that bitcoin was getting bigger and bigger nowadays... So, they contacted a reputable payment provider (bitpay) to handle bitcoin payments for them.

They're probably just using bitpay's api and the only thing they want is a postback from bitpay to their own api telling them the payment has been received and they'll receive the FIAT equivalent of the payment on their bank account shortly.
However, when bitpay's node hangs, and they fail to detect incoming payments from their customers, they don't post back to namecheap, and namecheap simply doesn't know you payed your bill. Since they're incompetent, they have no clue that it's actually their payment provider's fault, and not yours...

I guess you'll have to contact bitpay's support... They're the ones that generated a new address you had to fund, they're the ones that created the invoice, and they're the ones that don't postback to namecheap when you funded the address they generated.
Namecheap probably doesn't know what a transaction actually is, so when you ask them about bitcoin related problems, they're flabbergasted and they had the WRONG reaction to blame you (their customer) instead of admitting they know nothing about the technology they accept as valid payment.

Sure, if you have a contract, you might aswell use the power you've already payed for... Altough i'd probably try to switch my mining operation to a more profitable algo within the bounds of my current contract if i was the miner.

I addressed the issue of heating in the remainder of my previous post (i was still editing it while you quoted me )

You raise a good point, but i don't think i fully agree...
6) Even if you invested a lot, it wouldn't make sense to keep on mining if the amount of ETH you mined (converted to FIAT) is less than the power bill...
What WOULD make sense for these people is to keep on mining even if they knew they'd never ROI (get their investment back) as long as the net income of the mining operation was higher than the power bill..

7) I actually tought exactly the same way a long while ago... However, i have since changed my mind... Sure, you recuperate part of the electricity cost incurred by mining by saving some gas, petrol, wood, electricity,... you would have used to heat your house... HOWEVER, in my own country, the electricity price is currently over €0.25/Kwh. I currently heat my house with oil, and eventough the oil is much more expensive than it used to be 15 years ago, it's still a lot more efficient than heating my house with electricity.
If the mining "profit" is only marginally lower than the power bill, it might be a good idear to use a miner to heat your house, but if the "profit" is much lower than the cost, i doubt the amount of oil i saved by heating my house with an ASIC will be proportional to the loss i make by mining.
I haven't done the full calculations tough, i guess the cutoff point would be different for allmost everybody...

Next to this, most ASIC's are loud, sometimes they're a fire hazard, they might emit toxic fumes, they emit some light (trough their control leds) and ideally they have to run 24/7 (while my heating is only on when my wife and kid are home)