Why I must wait sometimes for my Transactions to clear ,Day 10

Day 10

Chapter 2

Lecture 11& 12

If you want to buy this book

Visit http://www.blockcurrency.in

Why must I sometimes wait for my

transaction to clear?

Because your transaction must be

verified by miners, you are sometimes

forced to wait until they have finished

mining. The bitcoin protocol is set so that

each block takes roughly 10 minutes to

mine.

Some merchants may make you wait

until this block has been confirmed,

meaning that you may have to make a

cup of coffee and come back again in a

short while before you can download the

digital goods or take advantage of the

paid service.

On the other hand, some merchants

won’t make you wait until the

transaction has been confirmed. They

effectively take a chance on you,

assuming that you won’t try and spend

the same bitcoins somewhere else before

the transaction confirms. This often

happens for low value transactions,

where the risk of fraud isn’t as great.

What if the input and output amounts

don’t match?

Because bitcoins exist only as records

of transactions, you can end up with

many different transactions tied to a

particular bitcoin address. Perhaps “X”

sent “Y” two bitcoins,

“Z”sent her three

bitcoins and “A” sent her a single bitcoin,

all as separate transactions at separate

times.

These are not automatically combined

in “Y”

,s wallet to make one file

containing six bitcoins. They simply sit

there as different transaction records.

When “Y” wants to send bitcoins to

john,her wallet will try to use transaction

records with different amounts that add

up to the number of bitcoins that she

wants to send john.

The chances are that when “Y” wants to

send bitcoins to john, she won’t have

exactly the right number of bitcoins from

other transactions. Perhaps she only

wants to send 1.5 BTC to john.

None of the transactions that she has

in her bitcoin address are for that

amount, and none of them add up to that

amount when combined. “Y” can’t just

split a transaction into smaller amounts.

You can only spend the whole output of a

transaction, rather than breaking it up

into smaller amounts.

Instead, she will have to send one of

the incoming transactions, and then the

rest of the bitcoins will be returned to

her as change.

“Y” sends the two bitcoins that she got

from “X” to john. “X” is the input, and

john is the output. But the amount is only

1.5 BTC, because that is all she wants to

send. So, her wallet automatically creates

two outputs for her transaction: 1.5 BTC

to john, and 0.5 BTC to a new address,

which it created for “Y”to hold her

change from john.

Next Topic

Are There Any Transaction Fees.