Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Technical Support
Re: BTC transfer issue in Electrum - Help me understand what happened?
by
Hanna
on 27/02/2020, 08:47:22 UTC
Check the address on the block explorer to see if the coins are there.
Thank you! I checked Block Explorer but I'm not sure what I'm looking at. I can't immediately see the BTC being there.
Is it safe if I post the details here? If I mention the sum and the Receiving address, would somebody be able to help me check and interpret?

in bitcoin you can reuse an address as many times as you want but it is not recommended. instead you should only use each address once (receive one payment in it, and receive others in another address). to do that wallets such as Electrum change the receiving address as soon as the previous one received payment. that is why the address you see in your Receive tab is different now.
however your wallet still has that address and its key and it can be reused and if you had received any coins in that address they are spendable.
you can click on View from the menu and select Show addresses to see a new tab that contains all your addresses.
also your payment (if you have actually received it) should show up in your History tab with the date and amount and if you double click it you can see more details including the Transaction ID which you should have received from the sender in your chat.
Thanks for an excellent explanation! Got it! Smiley

You simply ask him for the TX id generated by Electrum or send you a screengrab of his wallet with the outgoing transaction.

Three reasons could happend;

1) he sent to wrong address
2) he didnt send it, scammed you
3) he used a low value of satoshi/kb and is in mempool, but it still should show in electrum wallet as unconfirmed
Thank you! So I understand the responses so far, to say that:
1. It doesn't matter whether Electrum was open or not - the payment should reach me when I open Electrum the next time.
2. The old address can still be used.

The only thing that remains then is (a) Check the Blockchain, which I asked for help with, if it is safe and (2) Ask him to verify that he sent the BTC by a screengrab of his Outgoing transaction.