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I sent bitcoins to an address, but I think I made a typo when I copied it. Where did these bitcoins go. Can I get them back?

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if this is a common concern consider www.flexcoin.com which resolves some of the difficulty of long and difficult to type addresses – lathomas64 Aug 31 '11 at 15:14
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4 Answers

up vote 16 down vote accepted

BitCoin is very resistant to typos because the addresses contain a built-in check code. So if you had simply mistyped a few of the letters or numbers in the address, it's unlikely the client would have let you send them. If, however, you pasted in a different and valid address, the coins are already transferred to it permanently. In this scenario, BitCoin works pretty much like cash--there is no way to get it back after giving it away.

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up vote 4 down vote

Bitcoin transactions are irreversible. If you were connected to the network when you made the transaction, your coins are lost.

If you weren't connected to the network, you can restore your wallet.dat and start bitcoin with the --rescan option. This will effectively undo the transaction (that hasn't been committed to the blockchain yet).

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What if I was connected to the network, but quickly (ie. before my transaction makes it into a block) restore my wallet.dat and --rescan, then spend the same coins again, but with a bigger transaction fee? Is there a chance the new transaction will get mined in preference to the old one? – Chris Moore Feb 14 at 18:27
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no, highly unlikely. bitcoin given preference to first transaction seen, any conflicting transactions that come later are ignored and not relayed, even if they have higher fees. – nanotube Feb 14 at 20:52
@ChrisMoore: What nanotube said, and of course, if this was possible, it would also be extremely easy to double-spend. – Meni Rosenfeld Feb 15 at 6:28
@ChrisMoore - as I understand it, miners are encouraged to give priority to first transactions, but this is not mandate by the protocol. – ripper234 Feb 15 at 7:38
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If the transaction fee of the 'replacement' transaction was high enough, some miners might be tempted to ignore the first transaction and go for the higher reward I guess. Either way, it's best for recipients of Bitcoin payments to wait for a confirmation if the payment's amount is significant. – Chris Moore Feb 15 at 7:56
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up vote 2 down vote

Bitcoin address include checksums, so it is less likely that you made a casual typo and entered a valid bitcoin address. However if the address is valid and also incorrect, then it is likely that the coins are effectively destroyed. You can check the address on the block chain explorer. It may help you determine if the address was a valid address (say a friend's, in the case of pasting the wrong address), or one you may have access to somewhere else.

But because transactions are irreversible, there is no way to "pull" them back or cancel the transaction.

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up vote 0 down vote

A merchant could offer their own local bitcoin processor to connect a client to, if the transaction is innaccurate, they could "undo" it and simply not transmit the transaction to the Bitcoin Network.

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