What happen to an incoming transaction while your bitcoin client is offline?

[vermorel]

Sorry for the naive question, but something that is still somewhat unclear in my mind is what happens to a transaction targeting my wallet (aka to one my addresses) if my bitcoin client is offline.

Well, for the duration of the offline status, it's very clear to see that nothing will happen which is just the nature of the bitcoin network; but what about the reconnection time?

I am guessing that the network provides some sort of catch-up mechanism, but I would be interested to understand better how a given wallet after of period of offline activity gets updated to its latest BTC value.

Thanks in advance,

Best regards,
Joannes Vermorel

[1713286137]

1713286137

[1713286137]

1713286137

[Alex Beckenham]

I am guessing that the network provides some sort of catch-up mechanism, but I would be interested to understand better how a given wallet after of period of offline activity gets updated to its latest BTC value.

Yes, once your client is online and has a few connections, the catch-up mechanism that it will automatically start downloading all the latest blocks (it gets the block chain up-to-date). Once you're up-to-date block-wise, you'll see any transactions that occurred while the client was offline.

[vermorel]

Thanks, this was what I was guessing.

[spruce]

@vermorel: Note that the transaction occurs in the same time frame and will show up in the block chain whether or not you *ever* fire up your wallet again.

[BlackLung]

Once I sent bitcoins to a wallet address I had used previously, upon noticing that I changed my wallet address and voila there was my transaction. It happened rather quickly with the 12 THash Network.

[DullJack]

The transaction happens whether your wallet is online or not. Once you do turn it on, it just reads the blockchain and figures out which transactions belong to it.

[echo2]

it it normal to have like 250 connections then it dwindles down to like 50