Bitcoin Troubles --> complete newbie

[bitcoinnoob111]

Hey all, I've just started really diving and figuring out the world of bitcoin and just need some help/ask a few questions. I downloaded a bitcoin wallet (Bitcoin Core) after buying just a tiny amount of funds from coinbase. I just wanted to practice transferring from coinbase to a wallet since I've read numerous articles saying having tons of bitcoin on coinbase is not advisable. So the first transaction I made I bought a fraction of a bitcoin from coinbase and proceeded to send it to my bitcoin wallet, but I never received the funds back the next day! As I understand it, the funds are gone forever but since I was just experimenting with the platform it isn't a big deal. I just want to get the process right. I sent a second transaction today which is still pending but hopefully I followed the steps. I requested the amount on Bitcoin Core and then copied the address and on coinbase used that as the receiving address. My question is if I sent the funds to the wrong address(my first transaction) can the person then access my coinbase account for future transactions when I have substantially more bitcoin in the future on there?  Thanks.

[TrumpD]

Hey all, I've just started really diving and figuring out the world of bitcoin and just need some help/ask a few questions. I downloaded a bitcoin wallet (Bitcoin Core) after buying just a tiny amount of funds from coinbase. I just wanted to practice transferring from coinbase to a wallet since I've read numerous articles saying having tons of bitcoin on coinbase is not advisable. So the first transaction I made I bought a fraction of a bitcoin from coinbase and proceeded to send it to my bitcoin wallet, but I never received the funds back the next day! As I understand it, the funds are gone forever but since I was just experimenting with the platform it isn't a big deal. I just want to get the process right. I sent a second transaction today which is still pending but hopefully I followed the steps. I requested the amount on Bitcoin Core and then copied the address and on coinbase used that as the receiving address. My question is if I sent the funds to the wrong address(my first transaction) can the person then access my coinbase account for future transactions when I have substantially more bitcoin in the future on there?  Thanks.




No

[sgk]

...if I sent the funds to the wrong address(my first transaction) can the person then access my coinbase account for future transactions when I have substantially more bitcoin in the future on there?...

No, he can't. It even requires some effort for him to figure out where those BTC came from in the first place. The most he can figure out is that the BTC came from Coinbase, nothing else.

BTW, how did you get the receiving address for the first transaction? Wasn't it from your own Core wallet?

[ArcCsch]

If you sent coins to a wrong address, they are transferred on the blockchain and nobody can reverse them, irreversibility of transactions is one of the key tenants of bitcoin, as it ensures nobody can chargeback your hard-earned coin.
Only the bearer of the private keys to the receiving address can reverse the transaction.
Where did you get the address?
If it was someone else's address, they just got lucky.
If no one has the key to it, that coin is lost forever.
Please tell us how much coin was sent.
Another possibility is that Core did not synch yet, (it usually takes about a day, depending on your internet connection), and you will see the coins when it downloads all the blocks.
Please keep us updated, and I hope the last issue is the case.

[bitcoinnoob111]

...if I sent the funds to the wrong address(my first transaction) can the person then access my coinbase account for future transactions when I have substantially more bitcoin in the future on there?...

No, he can't. It even requires some effort for him to figure out where those BTC came from in the first place. The most he can figure out is that the BTC came from Coinbase, nothing else.

BTW, how did you get the receiving address for the first transaction? Wasn't it from your own Core wallet?

Yeah all I did was select receive funds on Core, typed in the amount that I bought on coinbase; got the address it created and pasted that into the sending information on Coinbase. When I open up Bitcoin Core it still says I have 0.00000000000 BTC pending and available.

[mocacinno]

...if I sent the funds to the wrong address(my first transaction) can the person then access my coinbase account for future transactions when I have substantially more bitcoin in the future on there?...

No, he can't. It even requires some effort for him to figure out where those BTC came from in the first place. The most he can figure out is that the BTC came from Coinbase, nothing else.

BTW, how did you get the receiving address for the first transaction? Wasn't it from your own Core wallet?

Yeah all I did was select receive funds on Core, typed in the amount that I bought on coinbase; got the address it created and pasted that into the sending information on Coinbase. When I open up Bitcoin Core it still says I have 0.00000000000 BTC pending and available.

are you sure your core is fully synced? Could you post the transaction id?

[bitcoinnoob111]

Network says 4 years and 49 weeks behind.... I don't see any transaction ID only number is the address I sent to.

[buwaytress]

If you sent coins to a wrong address, they are transferred on the blockchain and nobody can reverse them, irreversibility of transactions is one of the key tenants of bitcoin, as it ensures nobody can chargeback your hard-earned coin.
Only the bearer of the private keys to the receiving address can reverse the transaction.
Where did you get the address?
If it was someone else's address, they just got lucky.
If no one has the key to it, that coin is lost forever.
Please tell us how much coin was sent.
Another possibility is that Core did not synch yet, (it usually takes about a day, depending on your internet connection), and you will see the coins when it downloads all the blocks.
Please keep us updated, and I hope the last issue is the case.

A bit of a sidetrack here but when you say the bearer of private keys can reverse a transaction, you only really mean that he can send back the amount, right?

On the irreversible nature of bitcoin transaction, is this theoretically impossible?

[mocacinno]

Network says 4 years and 49 weeks behind.... I don't see any transaction ID only number is the address I sent to.

You should wait untill your wallet is sync'ed before panicking Chances are everything is OK, you just didn't download the block containing your transaction yet...

A bit of a sidetrack here but when you say the bearer of private keys can reverse a transaction, you only really mean that he can send back the amount, right?

On the irreversible nature of bitcoin transaction, is this theoretically impossible?

Well, the receiver can basically use his own unspent inputs and generate a transaction of equal amount of BTC as an output... It's not really sending the same coins back, altough he can use the wrongfully received input as an output, there is no real need to do it this way.

A transaction is indeed irreversible, altough you might want to read up on RBF, also, you could potentially double spend the input of the transaction as long as it isn't confirmed. In this case, only one of the two transactions sharing the same input will end up in a block, the other one will be forgotten/cancelled... theoretically, the transaction with the largest fee will have the most chance of getting into a block. This isn't reversing a transaction, but i guess it's the closest you can get without owning a large chunk of the network's hashrate.

[bitcoinnoob111]

Excuse my ignorance, but how do I sync the wallet client to today's date?

[mocacinno]

Excuse my ignorance, but how do I sync the wallet client to today's date?

Basically making sure you're connected to the bitcoin network, and wait untill it's sync'ed... On a slow pc, this might take a long time... Just have patience

[bitcoinnoob111]

Excuse my ignorance, but how do I sync the wallet client to today's date?

Basically making sure you're connected to the bitcoin network, and wait untill it's sync'ed... On a slow pc, this might take a long time... Just have patience

I had no idea the process took this long, thanks for your help. Makes sense since I sent coin less than a week ago and client is still syncing from 4 years and 33 months ago. I guess I got to run client from the background on my laptop, any idea the length of time it will take to fully complete the syncing?

[mocacinno]

Excuse my ignorance, but how do I sync the wallet client to today's date?

Basically making sure you're connected to the bitcoin network, and wait untill it's sync'ed... On a slow pc, this might take a long time... Just have patience

I had no idea the process took this long, thanks for your help. Makes sense since I sent coin less than a week ago and client is still syncing from 4 years and 33 months ago. I guess I got to run client from the background on my laptop, any idea the length of time it will take to fully complete the syncing?

Depends on a lot of factors: the bitcoin core version, your internet speed, your system load, the amount of memory, disk speed, os,...
Basically, find the bottleneck that limits your speed and upgrade if possible, otherwise you'll have to wait... If you're using linux as an os, the top command is really usefull, if you're using windows, you'll need to ask advice from a windows pro on this forum.

IIRC, last time i sync'ed on my server, it took me about 48 hours to sync... But that was on a server (2*4thread XEON, 16 Gb RAM, RAID 1 15krpm disks, fast uplink, latest core version compiled on the server, latest debian version, ...).

There are a couple of sollutions if you really can not wait untill core is sync'ed, but those sollutions are rather technical and carry some limited risk, so if you have time, i'd suggest to wait it out. In the meantime, you can doublecheck within your core version if the deposit address is 100% sure to be correct, you can backup your wallet just in case, and you can use a block explorer like blockchain.info to check if there is a confirmed transaction. If you see a transaction for your address, chances are really good that after syncing, your problem will be solved.

BTW: i see your main focus was learning/experimenting... Might i suggest to switch to the testnet for this? Testnet coins are free, so you can learn without losing real money

http://tpfaucet.appspot.com/

you can also run your core on the testnet, but i'd suggest to wait untill the main net is synced before doing so, since switching to testnet will start to sync the testnet blockchain, so there will be no progress on the main net chain as long as you're running on the testnet.

[deadsilent]

Network says 4 years and 49 weeks behind.... I don't see any transaction ID only number is the address I sent to.

Obviously you need to sync all data from the 4 years to use your wallet normal. Means that you need to download all the data and you need a huge bandwidth and high speed internet. Also, it needed huge disk space. Instead of using core wallet. Why not use SPV wallets like electrum. Its lighter and easy to use.

[sgk]

Excuse my ignorance, but how do I sync the wallet client to today's date?

Basically making sure you're connected to the bitcoin network, and wait untill it's sync'ed... On a slow pc, this might take a long time... Just have patience

I had no idea the process took this long, thanks for your help. Makes sense since I sent coin less than a week ago and client is still syncing from 4 years and 33 months ago. I guess I got to run client from the background on my laptop, any idea the length of time it will take to fully complete the syncing?

The complete blockchain data is around 100 GB, so calculate the time based on your internet speed.
(In order to avoid such big data download, you could have used a 'light' wallet such as Multibit or Electrum. Google them if you wish to use them for future transactions.)

If you wish to check right away, post your receiving address (from 1st transaction) here and we can check it on blockchain.info to see if your BTC balance is safe.

[mocacinno]

The complete blockchain data is around 10 GB, so calculate the time based on your internet speed.
(In order to avoid such big data download, you could have used a 'light' wallet such as Multibit or Electrum. Google them if you wish to use them for future transactions.)

If you wish to check right away, post your receiving address (from 1st transaction) here and we can check it on blockchain.info to see if your BTC balance is safe.

I guess you have made a typo when showing the size...
stats straight from my server:

4.0K    banlist.dat
4.0K    bitcoin.conf
4.0K    bitcoind.pid
113G    blocks
2.0G    chainstate
1.9M    database
0       db.log
134M    debug.log
28K     fee_estimates.dat
3.6M    peers.dat
88K     wallet.dat


Now, i do have txindex=1 in my bitcoin.conf, so i guess the size can be a little smaller, but IIRC, 10 Gb can only be achieved when you prune (prune=10000 in your bitcoin.conf)

[sgk]

The complete blockchain data is around 10 GB, so calculate the time based on your internet speed.
(In order to avoid such big data download, you could have used a 'light' wallet such as Multibit or Electrum. Google them if you wish to use them for future transactions.)

If you wish to check right away, post your receiving address (from 1st transaction) here and we can check it on blockchain.info to see if your BTC balance is safe.

I guess you have made a typo when showing the size...
stats straight from my server:

4.0K    banlist.dat
4.0K    bitcoin.conf
4.0K    bitcoind.pid
113G    blocks
2.0G    chainstate
1.9M    database
0       db.log
134M    debug.log
28K     fee_estimates.dat
3.6M    peers.dat
88K     wallet.dat

Now, i do have txindex=1 in my bitcoin.conf, so i guess the size can be a little smaller, but IIRC, 10 Gb can only be achieved when you prune (prune=10000 in your bitcoin.conf)

Yes, I think I wanted to say 100 GB. Thanks for correction, I've edited my post now.

Reference:
https://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size

[terrate]

Hey all, I've just started really diving and figuring out the world of bitcoin and just need some help/ask a few questions. I downloaded a bitcoin wallet (Bitcoin Core) after buying just a tiny amount of funds from coinbase. I just wanted to practice transferring from coinbase to a wallet since I've read numerous articles saying having tons of bitcoin on coinbase is not advisable. So the first transaction I made I bought a fraction of a bitcoin from coinbase and proceeded to send it to my bitcoin wallet, but I never received the funds back the next day! As I understand it, the funds are gone forever but since I was just experimenting with the platform it isn't a big deal. I just want to get the process right. I sent a second transaction today which is still pending but hopefully I followed the steps. I requested the amount on Bitcoin Core and then copied the address and on coinbase used that as the receiving address. My question is if I sent the funds to the wrong address(my first transaction) can the person then access my coinbase account for future transactions when I have substantially more bitcoin in the future on there?  Thanks.

im also newbie. but have some transaction record ald.
if u sent btc to wrong address then cannot claim back. so u need to copy and manage your bitcoin address. The person cannot access your coinbase a/c but can reached your address transaction.
my wallet also in coinbase, that's no issue on it.
btc transaction need block confirmation, so if sometime network digest, it will spend time. But for me now, is ok.

Just becareful when u use your different btc address ( U can create more address in coinbase ) and don't mixed up. If u afraid confuse, u can use one address first.