Funds from coinbase never showed in my Multibit wallet

Question

I know this question has been asked and answered a bunch of times so I am sorry for doing the same. I am basically a moron when it comes to this stuff and very new to digital currency. So here's the deal opened an account with coinbase got my funds in there. I tried to use bit coin-qt but that has been syncing for literally 10 days now so I used multi bit instead. Did a small $5 transfer from CB to my MB wallet no problems I even figured out how to send it to someone else after that. Here is where the problem starts I went to deposit more funds from CB to my MB wallet using the same wallet. CB went through the pending process which took about an hour on the CB site it says transaction went through but the funds never arrived in my MB wallet. I tried resetting my blockchain and nothing. So now I see all of the kind folks on here talking about going to the GO function ( I run Mac OS ) or searching hidden files or searching something like ~librara/username/.wallet or something of the sort. So like I said in the beginning I am a moron and know nothing about what that means. Please help me figure out where on my computer that wallet and money went. Oh and bye the way the bitcoin wallet address still shows in my wallets list and its the same address that CB sent the funds to. Thanks in advance for any and all help

Answer 1

Hopefully you understand already that the coins themselves are in no way on your computer -- your wallet is just a key that lets you spend coins that are yours.

Everything you need to verify that you own those funds in question is available in the blockchain (and on your Coinbase account).

Simply look at your Coinbase transaction where it says it sent BTC to your wallet address. Click advanced details if you want the actual bitcoin transaction information. Here you can verify that your wallet address was the recipient of the BTC you sent to it. You should be able to click on the link for that address to see the value being held on it.

If you're feeling paranoid and want to cross-check Coinbase's blockchain data, just head over to http://blockchain.info/ and do a search on either the transaction hash or your wallet's receiving address. You should see the exact same information that you found on Coinbase.

I can't help you figure out how to use Multibit, but needless to say, if you lose the private key stored in your wallet, then you will be permanently unable to access the funds at that wallet's address. I can offer only the following tips based on your question:

• Make backups (duh).
• Mac OS X is closely related to UNIX (and Linux-style operating systems), where files and directories can be hidden by prefixing them with a dot. Similarly, the ~ character is short for your home directory.
• You can view hidden files and folders easily by learning how to use Terminal (really, the ls -a, pwd, and cd commands would be all you need at this point, and are safe to mess around with... but MAKE BACKUPS).
• You can view inside hidden directories using the finder by using the Go to Folder command (from the Go menu, or shortcut command-shift-g) and then typing the UNIX-style path of where you want to access. Note that you still won't be able to see any hidden files within this directory.
• The ~/Library directory is not prefixed with a dot, but it is hidden by default on new Mac OS X systems. You can still get to it easily by using one of the methods listed above, or by opening the Go menu and then holding option, or if you want it to be visible permanently, navigate to your Home folder and hit command-J (or View menu -> show view options), and then check the box for "Show Library Folder".