Chapter 4 of 6 / the money has not appeared
The money has not appeared
The chapter with the most panic and the fewest genuine emergencies. Almost everything here is queued rather than lost, and the one action that is genuinely final is the one people take while panicking.
What are you seeing
- My deposit has not been creditedSeen by the network is not the same as credited by the market.
- I sent it to an old deposit addressThe one page in this chapter that is usually final.
- My withdrawal has been pending for hoursUsually batching or a manual review. Rarely anything worse.
- The balance is not what I expectedUsually fees, rates or an order you forgot was open.
The two questions that split this chapter
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Has the network seen it, and has the market credited it | Two different states. Nearly all confusion lives in the gap between them |
| Did it go to the right destination at all | If not, it is final. If yes, it is a waiting problem |
Almost every page in this chapter is a waiting problem wearing the clothes of a lost payment. The exception is a payment sent somewhere it should not have gone, and that one has no process behind it at all.
The thing not to do
Do not send a second payment because the first has not appeared. That is the single most common way a waiting problem becomes a real loss, and it happens most often about forty minutes in, which is well inside normal.
The habit that removes most of this chapter
Fund what you are about to spend, and move the remainder out when the order closes. Not a round number, not a buffer, not an amount that felt tidy. A balance on a market is not in escrow, because escrow works around an order, and it is not covered by anything else either.
The usual argument against is the withdrawal fee. A withdrawal costs a network fee measured in fractions of a cent, so leaving money in place to avoid it buys a little convenience with a risk that has no ceiling. That is not a close comparison and it is worth doing the arithmetic once rather than carrying the habit for years.
The order to check things in
- Confirm where the money actually went. The destination first, before anything about timing.
- If the destination was right, it is a waiting problem. Nothing else on the page applies.
- If the destination was wrong, stop waiting. There is no queue that fixes that and no process behind it.
- Either way, do not send a second payment. That is the move that turns one problem into two.
Almost every question in this chapter is answered by the first step, and almost nobody starts there, because when money has not appeared the natural question is how long rather than where.