Check bitcoin confirmations

Doing so allows you to isolate each of your transactions in such a way that it is not possible to associate them all together. People who send you money cannot see what other Bitcoin addresses you own and what you do with them. This is probably the most important advice you should keep in mind.

Unless your intention is to receive public donations or payments with full transparency, publishing a Bitcoin address on any public space such as a website or social network is not a good idea when it comes to privacy. If you choose to do so, always remember that if you move any funds with this address to one of your other addresses, they will be publicly tainted by the history of your public address.

Additionally, you might also want to be careful not to publish information about your transactions and purchases that could allow someone to identify your Bitcoin addresses. Because the Bitcoin network is a peer-to-peer network, it is possible to listen for transactions' relays and log their IP addresses. Full node clients relay all users' transactions just like their own. This means that finding the source of any particular transaction can be difficult and any Bitcoin node can be mistaken as the source of a transaction when they are not.

You might want to consider hiding your computer's IP address with a tool like Tor so that it cannot be logged. Some online services called mixing services offer to mix traceability between users by receiving and sending back the same amount using independent Bitcoin addresses. It is important to note that the legality of using such services might vary and be subjected to different rules in each jurisdiction. Such services also require you to trust the individuals running them not to lose or steal your funds and not to keep a log of your requests.

Even though mixing services can break traceability for small amounts, it becomes increasingly difficult to do the same for larger transactions. Many improvements can be expected in the future to improve privacy. For instance, some efforts are ongoing with the payment messages API to avoid tainting multiple addresses together during a payment. Bitcoin Core change addresses might be implemented in other wallets over time. Graphical user interfaces might be improved to provide user friendly payment request features and discourage addresses reuse.

Various work and research is also being done to develop other potential extended privacy features like being able to join random users' transactions together. Protect your privacy Bitcoin is often perceived as an anonymous payment network. If your bitcoin transaction to a BitPay merchant has not confirmed yet, you will need to wait for it to be confirmed by bitcoin miners. Since BitPay does not control confirmation times, there is unfortunately nothing we can do to speed up the process once your transaction has already been broadcast to the network.

You can check your transaction's confirmation status and other payment details on any blockchain explorer like BitPay's block explorer Insight. Look up your transaction using your transaction ID or the sending or receiving bitcoin addresses, which can all be found in your bitcoin wallet that sent the payment. For your transaction to be considered fully confirmed by most BitPay merchants, your transaction will need to have six confirmations. Note that until your payment has six confirmations on the bitcoin blockchain, the recipient will not have access to the funds and will not be able to refund your transaction.

While some BitPay merchants may choose to fulfill orders on payments with fewer block confirmations, you will need at least one block confirmation before your order can be considered complete.

If your transaction confirms and the merchant does not fulfill your order, you don't need to reach out to BitPay. Because block sizes are limited, it's important for bitcoin miners to know which transactions they should include in blocks first.

Miners use prices to figure this out. When you broadcast a transaction, your total amount sent usually includes a "miner fee" which goes to pay miners. If you want your transaction to leave the bitcoin mempool and be added to a block quickly, it's important that you include a sufficient miner fee. This is why we strongly suggest using the BitPay wallet or another true bitcoin wallet that can dynamically calculate the miner fee needed for timely block confirmations.

For reference, the website bitcoinfees. Transactions are being added to the bitcoin mempool's full queue constantly. Some may have been sent with higher miner fees than the one sent with your payment. This means that with current network traffic, miners may deprioritize your unconfirmed transaction even if it was sent with an appropriate fee at the time. Your transaction will likely confirm, but if the Bitcoin network does not confirm it, it be spendable again in your wallet.

Funds are spendable again in the BitPay wallet after transactions fail to confirm for up to 72 hours, but other wallets may behave differently. If you are not using the BitPay wallet, you should contact your wallet provider for help if your unconfirmed funds do not show up as spendable again after a few days.