Strange thing happened when sending

[Montrealer]

Hi everyone, first post here for me.

I am not a trader or anything like that. I use bitcoin only to sometimes receive payments from a few advertisers on my websites, so as soon as I receive I send to a BTC exchange and I sell for dollars, then it goes right into my bank account.

Yesterday morning I was sent a payment of .7 btc. I already had .05 btc left in my wallet so I send .75 btc to fund my exchange account. No confirmation until last evening so I said to myself everything will be alright tomorrow morning but, still no confirmation this morning.

I go check my blockchain wallet and something catches my eyes when I click on Transactions: besides the SENT transaction it says Pending, which is normal because it is still unconfirmed. But right under it, the RECEIVED transaction for my .7 btc is also marked as Pending, and when I click on it there is not one confirmation, nothing. So I guess this explains why my transaction was not confirmed in the first place...

How can this be possible? When I saw that I had received .7 btc yesterday I transfered them right away and I never thought about verifying if the transaction was confirmed or not, they were there in my wallet that's it that's all. I thought before the BTC are actually deposited in your wallet it takes 6 confirmations?

Now my .05 btc have been returned to my wallet, and since it is not the case of the .7 btc I guess they have returned to the guy who sent them yesterday. I just hope he knows enough about bitcoins to verify everything and that he won't think I am trying to scam him, because the result is that I was not paid and will have to ask for payment again. You know, your bitcoins were in my wallet but they just disappeared. 

As this ever happened to you?

[1715001459]

1715001459

[1715001459]

1715001459

[xhomerx10]

Post the txids to help us understand.

You received notification of a transaction to one of your addresses.  If you had inspected it closer, you would have seen there were 0 confirmations. This is normal.  What wallet?

[Montrealer]

You are absolutely right, I realise now that it is normal at least on blockchain.info, I didn't realise it until now, probably because the confirmations were always very fast I never thought that I had to check if it was actually confirmed. Why? Because with the few BTC exchanges where I have an account they won't show up at all in your account if there is no confirmation.

So for exemple if I send BTCs to fund my Kraken account, I won't be able to trade them until x number of confirmations, the system won't let me as it will show that I have 0 btc. Not on blockchain.info, the wallet let's you send them because they do show in your account, even with zero confirmation. And I don't know if all the wallets, including the bitcoin client, work this way.  

I guess in my mind I was sure that my wallet software was foolproof, that it would not let me send BTC if I don't actually have them in my wallet, just like the BTC exchanges.

My problem is solved but if bitcoin becomes more mainstream in the future I see this becoming a huge problem.

[Velkro]

Post the txids to help us understand.

Always be carefull with sharing ur txids because if u are reusing address, people can check how much bitcoins u have and where u spend them

[xhomerx10]

You're quick to learn.  
You can spend coins before they have been confirmed but the previous transaction will need to be confirmed before the second can procede.  As you can see, you might have to wait a while.  
 One problem with doing this - especially now with all the network traffic - is that a person can send the same coins that were sent to you to another address in a separate transaction  and attach a higher fee.  In this way, they can divert the coins you are waiting to confirm because the miners are likely to pick up the transaction with the higher fee first.  The exchages are wise to this which is why they will wait until your coins are confirmed.

[xhomerx10]

Post the txids to help us understand.

Always be carefull with sharing ur txids because if u are reusing address, people can check how much bitcoins u have and where u spend them

 Good advice.  We usually ask for txids to help resolve issues but this is a public forum and there may be unscrupulous individuals lurking about.