Wrong bitcoin address

[Eternity]

Say someone typed incorrect btc address

Whats the scenario in that case ?

If the btc address donot belong to anyone will he get those btc back or are they lost ?

[1714936990]

1714936990

[jackjack]

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address#Addresses_are_case_sensitive_and_exact

Bitcoin addresses are case-sensitive. Bitcoin addresses should be copied and pasted using the computer's clipboard wherever possible. If you hand-key a Bitcoin address, and each character is not transcribed exactly - including capitalization - the incorrect address will most likely be rejected by the Bitcoin software. You will have to check your entry and try again.

The probability that a mistyped address is accepted as being valid is 1 in 2^32, that is, approximately 1 in 4.29 billion.

[Dabs]

If you were so lucky or unlucky, and type a valid but wrong address, then sent the transaction, you just lost your coins.

[Eternity]

I understand for valid address coins are gone

For invalid address coins wont go through right ? Will the transaction fail in that case ?

[jackjack]

I understand for valid address coins are gone

For invalid address coins wont go through right ? Will the transaction fail in that case ?

The client will tell you the address is invalid and will do nothing
Similar to what happens if you try to send an email to

và"(ç@fzà"oé"*'$@"_ézf!e:;/.23!"é''(

[Eternity]

Thats great

[DannyHamilton]

I understand for valid address coins are gone

For invalid address coins wont go through right ? Will the transaction fail in that case ?

The client will tell you the address is invalid and will do nothing
Similar to what happens if you try to send an email to

và"(ç@fzà"oé"*'$@"_ézf!e:;/.23!"é''(

If you are using a poorly written third party wallet, and it doesn't validate addresses, will nodes refuse to relay a transaction that attempts to use an invalid address?

[jackjack]

I understand for valid address coins are gone

For invalid address coins wont go through right ? Will the transaction fail in that case ?

The client will tell you the address is invalid and will do nothing
Similar to what happens if you try to send an email to

và"(ç@fzà"oé"*'$@"_ézf!e:;/.23!"é''(

If you are using a poorly written third party wallet, and it doesn't validate addresses, will nodes refuse to relay a transaction that attempts to use an invalid address?

A Bitcoin address is the base58 of this:

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasssss

Where red is the receiving "account" (it's all you need to send money) and blue the hash of red (blue is totally useless in the protocol, it is only used in clients, it never goes to other nodes)
E.g. red of 171vsZ2rd9xXafKiyCdcjZoad9BkXCE4B is 0123456789012345678901234567890123456789
If a third party client doesn't check that blue is indeed the hash of red, then two cases:

• If the error is in the red part, then the money doesn't go to the right person
• If the error is in the blue part, then the money goes to the right person because the coordinates are only contained in the red part

Let's assume that your client is broken/doesn't check the hash and that you want to send money to 171vsZ2rd9xXafKiyCdcjZoad9BkXCE4B
If you type 172vsZ2rd9xXafKiyCdcjZoad9BkXCE4B, then the money goes to an unknown person
If you type 171vsZ2rd9xXafKiyCdcjZoad9BkXCE4C, then the money goes to the correct recipient


Edit:

Bitcoin address                                      Recipient                                                         Hash
171vsZ2rd9xXafKiyCdcjZoad9BkXCE4B   0123456789012345678901234567890123456789fe995d84
172vsZ2rd9xXafKiyCdcjZoad9BkXCE4B   01241b1a3ba38145d4e3396b31bc154840300ee83e995d84
171vsZ2rd9xXafKiyCdcjZoad9BkXCE4C   0123456789012345678901234567890123456789fe995d85

Edit2:
For the sake of simplicity I ignored the leading \x00

[grau]

I understand for valid address coins are gone

For invalid address coins wont go through right ? Will the transaction fail in that case ?

The client will tell you the address is invalid and will do nothing
Similar to what happens if you try to send an email to

và"(ç@fzà"oé"*'$@"_ézf!e:;/.23!"é''(

If you are using a poorly written third party wallet, and it doesn't validate addresses, will nodes refuse to relay a transaction that attempts to use an invalid address?

Rather unlikely that an implementation would not validate the address, since validation is simple.

There is no way to recognize "wrong" address at the protocol level, at that level it is no longer a string with checksum but just uninterpreted data, therefore the transaction will be relayed and coins lost.

[jackjack]

I understand for valid address coins are gone

For invalid address coins wont go through right ? Will the transaction fail in that case ?

The client will tell you the address is invalid and will do nothing
Similar to what happens if you try to send an email to

và"(ç@fzà"oé"*'$@"_ézf!e:;/.23!"é''(

If you are using a poorly written third party wallet, and it doesn't validate addresses, will nodes refuse to relay a transaction that attempts to use an invalid address?

Rather unlikely that an implementation would not validate the address, since validation is simple.

There is no way to recognize "wrong" address at the protocol level, at that level it is no longer a string with checksum but just uninterpreted data, therefore the transaction will be relayed and coins lost.

As I said just above the coins aren't necessarily lost. ~15% of typing errors don't change the recipient.