How to Transfer Bitcoin

To send bitcoin, open the “Send” screen in your wallet or the “Withdraw” screen on your exchange, paste the recipient’s Bitcoin address, enter the amount, choose a network fee and confirm. Once broadcast, the transaction usually gets its first confirmation within ten minutes to an hour and can be tracked on a block explorer using its TXID (transaction ID).

This guide covers BTC on the Bitcoin mainnet. Wrapped tokens labeled “BTC” on other chains and Lightning Network payments work differently, so confirm which network the recipient expects before you send.

How to send bitcoin, step by step

1. Get an address from the recipient’s wallet “Receive” screen or the exchange’s BTC deposit page.
2. Open “Send” in your wallet or “Withdraw” on the exchange, and select the Bitcoin network.
3. Paste the address and compare the whole string, not just the first and last few characters.
4. Enter the amount and pick a fee level.
5. In the preview, check the amount the recipient will get, the fee and the total spent, then confirm.
6. Search the TXID on a block explorer to follow the confirmations.

How do you know a Bitcoin address is right?

Bitcoin addresses come in several formats: those starting with 1 are legacy addresses, 3 are P2SH, bc1q are native SegWit, and bc1p are Taproot. All are valid on the Bitcoin network. If your wallet or exchange doesn’t support a format, ask the recipient for a compatible address rather than trying to convert it yourself.

Clipboard malware that swaps addresses and “address poisoning” attacks using lookalike addresses are both common. Always copy the address from the recipient’s current screen, never from your transaction history. On a hardware wallet, verify the address on the device’s own display, and for large amounts, confirm it through a second channel.

How are Bitcoin fees calculated?

Bitcoin fees aren’t a percentage of the amount you send. They’re the transaction’s data size in virtual bytes (vB) multiplied by the fee rate you choose in satoshis per vB. One BTC is 100 million satoshis.

A standard SegWit transaction with one input and two outputs is about 140 vB. At 10 sat/vB, the fee is 1,400 sats, or 0.000014 BTC, whether you’re sending 0.001 BTC or 1 BTC. If your wallet holds many small pieces (UTXOs) and the transaction spends several of them, the size and the fee go up.

A wallet’s “fast,” “normal” and “slow” options are estimates based on current mempool congestion. A low fee can mean a long wait; a high one still doesn’t guarantee a specific time. On exchange withdrawals, the platform usually sets the network fee and may add its own withdrawal fee.

Is the fee taken from the sender or the recipient?

Most wallets add the fee on top of the amount. With a balance of 0.01 BTC, sending 0.009 BTC with a 0.00002 BTC fee costs you 0.00902 BTC in total and leaves 0.00098 BTC. With “send max,” the fee comes out of what the recipient gets. When depositing to an exchange, make sure the amount that arrives clears the platform’s minimum deposit.

How long does a Bitcoin transfer take?

A newly broadcast transaction shows “0 confirmations.” It gets one confirmation when it’s included in a block, and each new block adds another. Blocks average ten minutes, but how quickly you get into the first one depends on your fee and network congestion. Exchanges typically wait for several confirmations before crediting a deposit, so your balance may lag behind what the explorer shows.

An exchange’s withdrawal reference number isn’t a TXID. If the platform hasn’t broadcast the transaction yet, an explorer won’t find it, so check your withdrawal history first. Sending the same amount again won’t speed up the first transaction.

How do you speed up a stuck Bitcoin transaction?

If a transaction you sent from your own wallet is stuck because of a low fee, there are two tools:

• RBF (Replace-by-Fee): replaces the pending transaction with a new version that spends the same inputs and pays a higher fee. Wallets often label this “bump fee.”
• CPFP (Child Pays for Parent): a new, high-fee transaction spends an output of the stuck one, so miners find the pair worth including together. The recipient can use this too.

Not every wallet or transaction supports these, and on exchange withdrawals you don’t control the keys. Any “transaction recovery” service that asks for your private key or recovery phrase is a scam; viewing a transaction on an explorer never requires secret information.

Can a Bitcoin transfer be cancelled?

A confirmed Bitcoin transaction can’t be reversed. BTC sent to the wrong address can only come back if the recipient cooperates, and most address owners can’t be identified. The “cancel” option some wallets offer for pending transactions is really an RBF transaction sending the same coins back to you at a higher fee, and it fails if the original confirms first. That’s why the checks need to happen before you sign.

Why does the explorer show two outputs?

Bitcoin wallets spend previously received pieces (UTXOs) whole. If you send 0.03 BTC from a 0.1 BTC piece, the remainder minus the fee goes back to a “change” address in your own wallet, so seeing two outputs is normal. On a hardware wallet, still verify the real recipient address and amount on the device. For more on following your transfers, see our guide on tracking a blockchain transaction.

Lightning Network for small, fast payments

The Lightning Network is a second-layer payment network built on Bitcoin. Payments move through channels in seconds for tiny fees without each one being written to the main chain. To pay over Lightning you need a Lightning-enabled wallet and a Lightning invoice from the recipient, usually a string starting with “lnbc” or a QR code; you can’t send a Lightning payment to a regular Bitcoin address.

Sources

• Bitcoin: Transaction structure
• Bitcoin.org: Confirmation and irreversibility
• BIP-125: Transaction replacement approach