Is it Possible for Bitcoins to be Lost in Between Transactions?

[Robvcompton]

Let's say you have a ridiculous amount of Bitcoins (Like 30-40,000) that you've been keeping on an exchange and you finally made the decision to send them to your local wallet to secure them. Let's assume a couple things first...

1. You made no errors.
2. You sent all your coins to the correct address.
3. You sent all of them at the same time instead of splitting them up into smaller increments.

Assuming the above, is it at all possible for any of your Bitcoins to be lost in between the sending address and the receiving address? The Bitcoins wouldn't show up at the receiving address and you wouldn't have the ability to send them again. They've just vanished never to be seen again, like the client made an error that can't be undone. Is this possible? I guess what I'm asking is if the system is designed to make something like this impossible from happening with any size transaction.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Simple version: No.

More complex version: Coins don't move.  So there is no scenario where coins "leave" one wallet and vanish, get deleted, or end up corrupted before "arriving" at another wallet.  We use words like "send coins" which make it seem like "coins" are moving but they aren't.  A tx simply transfers "ownership" of the asset.  Simplified a transaction is essentially saying "I the owner of these particular coins (provable by looking at prior txs and verifying my digital signature is correct) transfer ownership of them to the receivers listed below".  The transaction exists publicly in the blockchain and that combined with the recevier's private key is all that is needed to "spend/send" them (by the same process).  So either the tx is included in the blockchain and the receiver "owns" them permanently or it never does and the sender still owns them.

The only possibility of coins being lost would be an error where it was sent to a wrong address, even then someone will get the coins although it might be the wrong "someone".  It is possible to send coins to an address which exists but for which nobody has the private key by a typo.  However Bitcoin includes a checksum so most typos will simply be invalid tx and never sent.  The odds of making a typo which by bad luck produces another address which also happens to be valid is about ~1 in 4 billion.

[lovelydoll]

Simple version: No.

More complex version: Coins don't move.  A tx simply transfers "ownership".  So either the tx is included in the blockchain and the receiver "owns" them or it never does and the sender still owns them.

The only possibility of coins being lost would be an error where it was sent to a wrong address.  Even then someone will get the coins.  It is possible to send coins to an address which exists but for which nobody has the private key.  The odds of making a typo that does that are ~1 in 4 billion.

Precisely said. Coins might not be lost if you don't make any error. Don't panic. Immediately start to send your wallet.