The address is the whole operation
One-off, or permanentChoosing «bitcoin» in the cashier gives you an address and usually a QR code beside it. In most cashiers that address belongs to the account and not to the single payment — but some cashiers generate a new one for every deposit. The difference matters: reusing an old address out of your history when it was meant for one payment sends money to a place nobody is watching any more.
The second trap is the network. The same coin runs over different networks depending on the cashier, and an address is only ever valid for one of them. Sending bitcoin to an address issued for a different network loses the amount as a rule — no support desk can pull back a transfer the network has already settled.
To check before sending
- Does the network in the wallet match the network in the cashier?
- Is the address from the current cashier window and not from the history?
- Do the first and last four characters still match after pasting?
- Is the amount above the minimum the cashier names?
No longer changeable after sending
- The destination address — a settled transfer is final
- The chosen network and with it the fee
- The amount, even if a zero too many was typed
- The order in which the network picks the payment up
Why the credit is not there at once
Confirmations countBetween «sent» and «credited» lie confirmations. Each confirmation is a block that anchors the payment deeper in the network, and a block appears every ten minutes on average. How many confirmations a cashier demands is decided by the cashier and not by the network — that is the point at which two operators with identical technology come to feel different.
The ten-minute average is an average over many blocks. Individual gaps fall below it or well above it; from which it follows that «there in twenty minutes» is an expectation and not a promise.
The minimum, and why it exists
Small sums are dearAlmost every cashier names a minimum for deposits. The reason is not greed but arithmetic: the network fee follows the space a transfer takes up and not its size. The same fee that barely registers on a thousand francs eats a double-digit percentage out of twenty.
From which follows an uncomfortable rule for beginners: in bitcoin, small and frequent deposits pay off worse than one larger and rarer one. That is the exact opposite of what makes sense when playing, where small amounts keep control. The fees page works out from which amount the difference really counts, and the Lightning page shows the route on which small amounts do work.
What this page says about deposits holds for the procedure and not for a particular operator. Which cashier carries which route stands in the cashier overview, and only where the cashier was actually opened.
Questions people actually type
Answered from the same records as the pageHow long does a bitcoin deposit take?
To the first confirmation usually around ten minutes, to the sixth around an hour. How many confirmations are demanded stands in the terms of the cashier concerned.
What happens if I choose the wrong network?
The amount is lost as a rule. A transfer settled in the network cannot be pulled back, no matter who triggered it.
Is there a minimum amount?
Almost always, and it hangs on the network. The fee follows the space a transfer takes up, not its size — which is why very small deposits are dear in proportion.