Electrum Address Expired after 10 minutes,1 day,1 week

[Miles2006]

I created an electrum wallet and I was trying to get the address but it indicate that it will expire after 10 minutes, 1 day and 1 week, so I want to know when I give out this public key to receive bitcoin then after the expiring date, can I still use the address again or I will go and get another one?

[OmegaStarScream]

Yes, you will be able to use it for as long as you want to. This is just meant to organize your transactions. You can just go copy an address and use it as you like without creating an invoice request.

[Charles-Tim]

Bitcoin address does not expire. That do confuse newbie Electrum users but you can use the address as long as you want as OmegaStarScream commented already.

[TryNinja]

Bitcoin addresses never expire and they can be reused as many times as you want.

The "expiration" here is something made off by the wallet so you can control invoices you send to other people.

For example, let's pretend you want to sell your iphone to someone. You create a new "payment" with the message "purchase of iphone", the amount $500 (converted to 0,013 BTC) and expiration in 1 week. If the user sends the coins in the correct time, you will consider the iphone sold. If the invoice expires, he can still send the coins to that same address and you will receive the coins, but you will know he only sent them AFTER the expiration time (good for control purposes).

[Ruttoshi]

It does not expire and you can use it over and over again, as the address belongs to that wallet. It is good that you shouldn't use the same address over and over again, but use different address to receive bitcoin payment for security reason. If you want to get paid by Mr A use a different address and if you want to receive pay from Mr B use a different address

[Zaguru12]

so I want to know when I give out this public key to receive bitcoin then after the expiring date, can I still use the address again or I will go and get another one?

The address doesn’t expire so does your coins on it too do not expire. You can reuse the address as many times as like but just like other HD wallets the electrum gives you the opportunity to always have 20 unused address as receiving addresses.

The expiration is used by electrum wallet to know that the address cannot be used for another invoice or payment request if the first request it is used for hasn’t expired. But it gets expired and no bitcoin is received then the wallet can use it again for another request.

You can also use it to set a reminder that you’re suppose to receive a payment within that period of time.

[hosseinimr93]

As already mentioned by other users, bitcoin addresses do not expire and I just want to add that you don't have to create a request to receive bitcoin.
Just tap on your wallet name at top left corner of the screen and select "Addresses". After that you will see all your addresses and you can use any of them to receive bitcoin.

[BitMaxz]

If you sent BTC to the expired address generated from your Electrum mobile it should still be funded to your wallet so you shouldn't worry if someone sends you BTC to an expired address because it should be still funded in your wallet like others said above you can always view the addresses generated from "receive" on "addresses".

[pooya87]

If you sent BTC to the expired address

That's not an address though. It is just a "watcher".
You basically tell your wallet to "watch" for incoming transaction and alert you in a certain period of time. So the "watcher" expires not the address.

[NotATether]

Remember, it's not the address itself that expires, it's the "payment request" Electrum creates that expires. A payment request does not exist in the blockchain and is only local to your Electrum wallet, and as others have said, you can simply receive the coins from the same address again, or even make a new payment request with the same address.

[tranthidung]

It's BIP0070.
Layer: Applications; Title: Payment Protocol

Public address is created from private key and they both are not expired. You can use, reuse your public address for on-chain transactions anytime, forever.

expired payment request should not be allowed to progress to paid #8061

In the case of onchain, we ofc cannot refuse the payment, but for lightning, we could fail the htlc (and not reveal the preimage).

Also, in the onchain case, note that we reuse addresses of expired requests, in which case an incoming payment can progress both the old expired request and the new pending request to "paid" (if they share the onchain address and the amounts work out).

how to use the Electrum receive tab

Set Expiry to never. This option doesn’t do anything meaningful for on-chain transactions (i.e. not Lightning). People can always send you bitcoin and addresses don’t expire.