So Confused

[Asid Flats]

I've never been savvy with these kinds of things, but for whatever reason I've been trying to figure out how this whole bitcoin thing works with all the finesse of an blind man trying to find his way out of a maze.

What I'm trying to do is get my bitcoins into the little bitcoin wallet program thingy I downloaded from the bitcoin website, so I can send them to different places because I honestly don't know if there's any other way to send bitcoins anywhere because like I said before, I'm blind and in a maze. So I guess what I'm really asking what I should do next, but first I have to explain what I've done already.

So I started at Dwolla. I got an account, verified my bank account and all that noise, the works. My first stop after that was Mt. Gox. Yeah, in retrospect that probably wasn't a very good choice, but I'm new to this. So I click the add funds button, I go and I add about 50 bucks (again, I probably should not have put this much money on Mt. Gox to begin with). After about 4 days, the money is transferred from my bank account to Mt. Gox. I traded it for about 5 bitcoins. Now, this is where I do something pretty dumb. I want the bitcoins in the little wallet thingy, so I go to the withdraw funds page. I put in the amount I want to withdraw, and put down my bitcoin address that I want the money to be withdrawn to. The dumb thing was that I sent ALL my bitcoins at once, without a second thought that maybe I didn't know what I was doing and I could actually lose my bitcoins because I've never really done this before.

So it says that the funds are on their way, but I check my wallet and it says nothing is there. It's been about 2 days now and I still have no idea where the money went or if it's still headed to my account. This seems to give me some assurance that my bitcoins didn't disappear into thin air, but I really don't know what it means nor do I know what I should do now.

Any advice, anybody? It would be much much much appreciated.

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[indicasteve]

You won't see your coins until your bitcoin client has downloaded the entire blockchain.

Right now, the block count is at 143618.

If your bitcoin client shows less blocks than that, then you have to wait... leave your client running untill all the blocks are downloaded.

[Stephen Gornick]

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#I_sent_some_bitcoins_and_they_haven.27t_arrived_yet.21_Where_are_they.3F

[plogank]

Considering the above advice, let us know how it turns out...

[Asid Flats]

Well, the bitcoins arrived to my wallet after a few days, as indicasteve said. I sent it to its final destination about 4 days ago and it still hasn't reached there, and I get the sneaking suspicion it never will.

At the end of the day, I find bitcoins to be quite cumbersome and frustrating to use. Not to mention how every transfer or transaction takes half a week to process. I don't know if there's a way to speed it up, but even if there is the process is still quite annoying. I guess I'll keep trying different stuff and hope it turns out better, I lost about 50 bucks from this whole thing...

[nmat]

At the end of the day, I find bitcoins to be quite cumbersome and frustrating to use. Not to mention how every transfer or transaction takes half a week to process. I don't know if there's a way to speed it up, but even if there is the process is still quite annoying. I guess I'll keep trying different stuff and hope it turns out better, I lost about 50 bucks from this whole thing...

It never takes half a week to process. Where exactly are the bitcoins right now? Where did you send them to/from?

[Stephen Gornick]

I sent it to its final destination about 4 days ago and it still hasn't reached there, and I get the sneaking suspicion it never will.

Bitcoin's protocol doesn't lose transactions.  Either the network received the message with the transaction or it didn't.

You can check using BlockExplorer ( http://www.blockexplorer.com ) to see that the transaction indeed reached the network.  If it did not not, then the problem is on your end as the transaction wasn't announced to the network.  If the payment does appear in BlockExplorer then the problem is on the recipient's end.

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#I_sent_some_bitcoins_and_they_haven.27t_arrived_yet.21_Where_are_they.3F

At the end of the day, I find bitcoins to be quite cumbersome and frustrating to use.

I'm patiently waiting for the consumer-grade version of Bitcoin to arrive.  The BitcoinJS project (Webcoin) will likely delivery exactly that.  It is getting closer but today is not yet ready for general consumption.
 

[bitcoinhead]

I had similar problems with the Mac OSX bitcoin client.  Running at home and at work, I could never get more than 8 peers, and downloading the block chain took two weeks.  I can understand the frustration.  Perhaps the recipient was also a new bitcoin user and had trouble downloading the block chain?

It's certainly one argument for server-based wallets.  It would help get new consumer users up to speed much more quickly, and avoid problems like having to ensure that port 8333 is open on your router, for example.

Sorry you had problems.  Give it time, the transaction will eventually show up.

[FreeMonies]

I feel bad for the poor chaps who decide to join BC months or years from now if they have to download the entire blockchain. That thing is growing so much soon itll be huuuuuuuuuuuuge.

[Revalin]

Well, the bitcoins arrived to my wallet after a few days, as indicasteve said. I sent it to its final destination about 4 days ago and it still hasn't reached there, and I get the sneaking suspicion it never will.

Transactions are nearly instant, but most places wait 6 blocks (about an hour) before they'll ship the goods you purchased.

What was the final destination?

every transfer or transaction takes half a week to process.

The transaction actually occurred as soon as you clicked OK, and it was "confirmed" in about an hour.  The delay was while your bitcoin client (the wallet software) was downloading all the transaction history.  It only has to do that once and everything should be quite fast thereafter.  I do agree that it's cumbersome and it doesn't communicate why it doesn't see your transaction yet while that's happening.

I don't know if there's a way to speed it up, but even if there is the process is still quite annoying.

A planned improvement for the software is to make it work without downloading the entire blockchain.  This will prevent the first-time startup delays you experienced.