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Today I sent bitcoin to my bitcoin core wallet. I used an address under recieve bitcoins. The transaction has been cleared on the blockchain for several hours but is not showing up in my wallet. The wallet itself is still downloading the block and is 3 years and 29 months behind.

Does this mean I must wait until this finishes before it shows up?

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  • 3 years and 29 months behind??? Why not 5 years and 5 months? As a non-bitcoin person arriving here via HNQ this post further validates my abstinence from cryptocurrencies. I don't know what it means to be 5 years behind but if that's how long you wait to receive your funds then woof.
    – MonkeyZeus
    Commented Dec 24, 2019 at 16:54
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    @MonkeyZeus it only takes a few hours for a brand new node to sync the 10 year Blockchain history. Up to a few days on a slower machine. The progress indicator may report "5 years behind" but that's not how much time you need to wait until your node is synced :-)
    – pinhead
    Commented Dec 24, 2019 at 17:56

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The wallet itself is still downloading the block and is 3 years and 29 months behind. Does this mean I must wait until this finishes before it shows up?

Yes, in order to understand the current state of the network (which includes the transaction that you received funds in), your node will need to work through the blockchain history. Otherwise, your node will be unable to determine whether or not a transaction you receive is in fact valid.

Once synced with the network, your balance should display correctly.

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  • can i rescan to pick up the transaction. if so how do i do it?
    – burchbit
    Commented Dec 24, 2019 at 9:51
  • No, in order for your wallet to understand that the transaction is valid, it needs to first sync to the network.
    – chytrik
    Commented Dec 24, 2019 at 10:10
  • @wizzwizz4 ‘rescanblockchain’ is a specific rpc call that can be used after the sync is complete
    – chytrik
    Commented Dec 24, 2019 at 18:18
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The transaction has been cleared on the blockchain

How did you know that? Did you query the corresponding transaction on an online blockchain explorer?

If you are happy to trust third party services (like the online blockchain explorer you had used), then generally speaking, (you believed that) you have already received these bitcoins.

You just have not validated the transaction with your own full node yet.

can i rescan to pick up the transaction. if so how do i do it?

Rescanning requires full blockchain data, the thing which you have not finished downloading and validating yet.

(In future versions of Bitcoin Core, this might be improved. With BIP158 blockfilterindex, even pruned full nodes can do rescanning as well)

Rescanning would be required only if you had just imported something, or you were not quite sure whether the available balances/transaction history showed by the wallet were correct.

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  • can i import this wallet into another wallet? i need this money asap.
    – burchbit
    Commented Dec 24, 2019 at 13:41
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    @burchbit Of course you can. You can execute the "dumpprivkey YOUR_RECEIVING_ADDRESS" in the debug console of Bitcoin Core to get the WIF private key, then you may import it into lightweight wallets like Electrum. However, manual operations on private keys are generally not adviced, since human errors may lead to tragic outcomes, eg. the classical "screw-up-by-change-address", or leaking the private key to trojan horses/malicious QR code generators, ... etc.
    – Chris Chen
    Commented Dec 24, 2019 at 14:01
  • thank you.... i got this error........Please enter the wallet passphrase with walletpassphrase first. (code -13)
    – burchbit
    Commented Dec 24, 2019 at 14:36
  • @burchbit You need to unlock the wallet first, use the "walletpassphrase" command. It will unlock the wallet for a while. If the wallet is successfully unlocked, this command shows nothing as output.
    – Chris Chen
    Commented Dec 24, 2019 at 14:39
  • @burchbit If you want to import the WIF private key into Electrum, you will need to create a new wallet with it firstly, then you should choose "Import bitcoin addresses or private keys", after pasting the WIF private key, you need to add a "p2wpkh-p2sh:" prefix to the private key in order to generate 3-starting compatible segwit address, or "p2wpkh:" prefix to generate bc1-starting bech32 native segwit address.
    – Chris Chen
    Commented Dec 24, 2019 at 14:47

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