Chapter 4 of 6 / the money has not appeared
My deposit has not been credited
The money left your wallet, the market shows nothing, and the obvious conclusion is that it went somewhere else. Usually it is sitting exactly where it should be, waiting for a number to go up.
The two states people run together
| State | What it means | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
| Seen | The network has your transaction | Nothing to do |
| Confirmed | Blocks have been built on top of it | Nothing to do |
| Credited | The market has decided to treat it as real | This is the one you are waiting for |
The gap between the first and the last is the entire wait. Markets do not credit on sight because a transaction can still be replaced before it is buried, and handing you a spendable balance that might evaporate would be their problem rather than yours.
What it usually turns out to be
| Cause | How often | What settles it |
|---|---|---|
| Waiting for confirmations | Very common | Wait. The counter is doing its job |
| A fee too low for current conditions | Common | It is queued rather than lost. Some wallets can raise the fee |
| The network being busy | Common | Wait |
| Sent below the minimum | Occasional | Check the deposit page. Small amounts may not credit |
| Sent to an expired or reused address | Uncommon and often final | Its own page |
How long is normal
There is no universal number and anybody quoting one is inventing it. The count of confirmations a market waits for is a policy, set against how much it is willing to lose if a payment gets reversed, and it changes when conditions change. A market that waits longer is being careful with its own exposure, which is a mild point in its favour even though it costs you time.
The unsatisfying answer
Three of the five rows above say wait, and that is not a joke at your expense. Once a payment is broadcast there is genuinely nothing left on your side to do, and every action still available creates a new problem: sending again, hunting for support that does not exist, or hammering the page until you are rate limited.
What not to do while waiting
- Do not send it again. The first one is queued, not lost.
- Do not go looking for support. This is the exact state a fake support message is fishing in.
- Do not reload the account page in a loop. It changes nothing and can trip a limit.
- Do not conclude the market has ended because a counter is slow. Those two facts are unrelated.
What you can see and what you cannot
| Question | Can you see it |
|---|---|
| Whether the network has your transaction | Yes, from your own wallet |
| How many confirmations it has | Yes |
| How many the market wants | Sometimes, if the deposit page says |
| Whether the market has noticed it | No, until the balance changes |
| Whether anything is wrong | No. That is the difficult part |
The last two rows are why this feels worse than it is. You can watch the part that is working perfectly and not the part you are waiting on, so the evidence in front of you says everything is fine while the screen you care about says nothing at all.