Sending and receiving

To receive bitcoin you share an address. To send, you paste someone's address, choose an amount and a fee, and confirm. It takes a minute. The care goes into one thing: a payment to the wrong address can't be called back.

Live from the chain

Sending right nowLoading live figures…

Fee for the next block

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A simple payment would pay

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Payments waiting

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Average time between blocks

…this two-week period

Your wallet suggests a fee from a queue like this one. A lower fee is fine if you don't mind waiting.

See it on satoshis.watch →

Receiving

In your wallet, choose Receive. It shows an address and a QR code; send either to the person paying you. Most wallets show a fresh address each time, which keeps your payments a little more private. Older addresses keep working, so a payment to one you gave out last year still arrives.

Sending, step by step

1. Get the address from the person or business you're paying, ideally by scanning their QR code or copying it from their own screen.
2. Paste it and check it. Compare the whole address with the original, character by character. If that is hard, check the start, the end and a good stretch of the middle. Look-alike addresses are made to match the first and last few characters, malware can swap a copied address, and scammers plant look-alikes in your history. So copy it from the person's own screen, message or QR code, not from your past payments.
3. Choose the network. Exchanges and some multi-coin wallets offer other networks, or tokens labeled "BTC". Choose Bitcoin unless the receiver has asked for something else.
4. Choose the fee. Faster costs more. See fees and confirmations.
5. Send a test first when the amount matters. A small payment that arrives proves the address and network before the large one goes.

What can't be undone

Once a payment is in a block it is confirmed, and nobody can call it back: not your wallet, not an exchange, not a bank. Each block added on top makes it harder still to undo, which is why many services wait for several confirmations, often around six, for larger amounts. While a payment is still waiting, many wallets can replace it with a new version that pays a higher fee, and some can use the same trick to send the coins back to yourself instead. Either only works before a miner includes the original. If you sent to a wrong address, see did my payment arrive for what can still be tried.

Typos are caught, wrong addresses aren't

Bitcoin addresses include a built-in check, so a mistyped character almost always makes the address invalid and the wallet refuses it. A valid address that simply belongs to someone else passes every check. That is why comparing the whole address in step 2 matters more than anything else.