What does pending mean in my Bitcoin wallet?
Pending usually means the payment is on the network but not yet in a block. Some wallets keep saying pending until it has several confirmations.
Pending usually means not in a block yet
When a wallet sends a payment, it reaches the network within seconds, and both the sender’s and the receiver’s wallets can show it straight away, marked pending. At that point it is waiting in the mempool, the queue of payments that haven’t gone into a block yet. It has zero confirmations and isn’t final. It stops being unconfirmed when a miner puts it in a block, which takes about 10 minutes on average if its fee is high enough. To see where it is, look up its transaction ID on UTXOHub: the page says whether it is still waiting, how soon it is likely to confirm at its fee, and how many confirmations it has.
Find your transaction IDSome wallets say pending until several confirmations
Wallets don’t all stop saying pending at the same point. Some switch as soon as the payment is in one block. Others count up: BitBox, for example, shows Pending (0/6), then Pending (1/6), and calls the payment complete only after six confirmations. So a pending payment may already be in a block and on its way. If it has one confirmation or more, it doesn’t need a higher fee; each new block adds another confirmation.
How many confirmations does a payment need?On an exchange or app, pending can mean it hasn’t been sent
An exchange or payment app uses pending for its own steps too. A withdrawal can say pending while the service checks it, before it has sent anything to the Bitcoin network. If it shows no transaction ID, there is nothing on the network to look up yet, and only that service can send it. If you are waiting for a deposit to an exchange, its pending status usually means it is waiting for the number of confirmations that exchange asks for.
Bitcoin withdrawal pending with no transaction IDCan I spend bitcoin that’s still pending?
Often not until it confirms, and that’s on purpose. Until a payment is in a block, the sender can still replace it with a new version, and it can drop out of the queue. Bitcoin Core’s wallet, for example, keeps payments from other people that haven’t confirmed in a separate untrusted pending balance, apart from its trusted balance of confirmed payments and its own change. If someone has paid you for goods, don’t treat a pending payment as paid: wait for the number of confirmations you have decided to require.
A buyer paid me in bitcoin: when to shipIf it stays pending for hours or days
A payment usually stays pending because its fee rate is lower than what others are paying for the next blocks. If you sent it, your wallet may offer Speed up, Bump fee or Cancel, which replace it with a version paying a higher fee; these options appear only on payments you sent, not on ones you are receiving. The receiver can sometimes spend the waiting bitcoin on with a higher fee, called child pays for parent. Nodes running Bitcoin Core drop a payment by default after two weeks of waiting, but that doesn’t cancel it, because any wallet or node can send it out again. Don’t send a second payment just because the first is still pending: both could confirm.
Why is my Bitcoin transaction unconfirmed?How to speed up a stuck Bitcoin transactionPending Lightning payments
If your wallet sent or received the payment over the Lightning Network, a system built on top of Bitcoin, it doesn’t wait for a block, and a Bitcoin explorer such as UTXOHub can’t show it. Check its status in the wallet, or ask the wallet’s support.
References
- Bitcoin.org, “Frequently Asked Questions”.
- BitBox Support, “Why is my Bitcoin transaction pending?”.
- Gemini Cryptopedia, “Why Is My Crypto Withdrawal Pending?”.
- Coinbase Help, “Pending transactions”.
- Bitcoin Core, “getbalances (30.0.0 RPC)”.
- Bitcoin Core, “Opt-in RBF FAQ”.
- BlueWallet, “Pending transactions”.
- Bitcoin Core, “mempool_options.h (DEFAULT_MEMPOOL_EXPIRY_HOURS)”.
- Lightning Labs, “Payment Channels”.