What Happens If You Send Your Bitcoins To An Invalid Address?

If you are a crypto holder with frequent transactions, you are well accustomed to the final check of the recipient address before you finally send over Bitcoins to another wallet. What happens if you send Bitcoins to an invalid address?

We are sure this question has popped into your head, unbidden, on more than one occasion. In this article, we clear your doubts.

There are multiple scenarios that may unfold.

Absolutely Invalid Address

If you send your Bitcoins to an absolutely invalid address, that does not even exist yet, then you don’t have much to worry about. Ideally, the safety check on the transaction initiates a refund and you get your Bitcoins back. To put it in simpler terms, they don’t go away to begin with.

The nodes will block a transaction to the invalid address that does not even exist and end up rejecting the transaction entirely.

A Different Address Than The One You Aimed For

This scenario can in turn have two variations, each slightly different from the other.

Sending to an address you know:

So, often, the mistake people might make is that they may send over their Bitcoins to a wallet address that they have previously or recently transacted with.

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In this case, the matter may be somewhat simpler than sending it to a completely unknown address. If you have sent your Bitcoins to an address you have sent Bitcoins to before, chances are you would know who that wallet address belongs to.

If it is a vendor or merchant account, then you can possibly take recourse to requesting them via email or other channels of contacting, to return your Bitcoins.

However, as precedence has shown, the process of recovery may not always be easy. In British Columbia for example, a case of mistakenly transferred Ethers between Copytrack and a plaintiff called Brian Wall was dragged to court before a solution could be reached and a verdict announced.

However, if the wallet address belonged to someone you closely know, like your local vendor or perhaps a friend you paid via Bitcoin a while back, it would be easier to get a refund.

Sending to a valid address you don’t know:

This is the point where doomsday strikes, for your precious Bitcoin holdings. If you accidentally end up sending them to an address that turns out to be valid but one that you don’t recognize, you can safely assume that you are not never getting your Bitcoins back.

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Often, a large number of wallet addresses that exist are actually dormant wallets with their owners having perhaps forgotten their private keys as well. In such cases, the Bitcoin simply vanishes out of circulation, because you have no way of getting them back.