WAITING
The machine can accept an order before your wallet shows spendable bitcoin. Check broadcast status and confirmations first, then contact the operator if the order is missing or delayed.
First establish whether the operator broadcast a transaction; a successful kiosk screen is not the same as an on-chain confirmation.
You pressed confirm, the screen said complete, the receipt printed. You open your wallet and the balance is zero.
The feeling is familiar. The answer first: this can be normal. The sections below show where the wait comes from and how to tell it apart from a real problem.
After the machine broadcasts, the bitcoin network still has to include your transaction in a block before your wallet shows anything. Blocks come roughly every ten minutes on average, so a wait of fifteen minutes to an hour is ordinary, and longer when the network is busy or the fee attached was low.
The machine saying complete and the coins being spendable are separate events. Some operators may still be processing the order before broadcast; use the transaction ID to check whether it has reached the network.
A few seconds, usually. Some operators do internal processing first rather than broadcasting immediately, in which case the receipt may not carry a transaction ID yet.
Transactions wait in a queue — the mempool — and miners select from it, largely by fee rate. Bitcoin produces a block about every ten minutes on average, and being included gives you your first confirmation. Most of the wait sits here.
Wallets differ on what counts as arrived. Some show a balance on the first confirmation; others hold until three or six. Each additional one is roughly another block, so a cautious wallet can mean an hour before funds are spendable. That's the wallet protecting you, not a fault.
Take the transaction ID from the receipt, paste it into any public block explorer, and you can see exactly where it stands.
mempool.space works fine. What you'll see:
No transaction ID on the receipt? Search your own wallet address instead — every incoming transaction to it will be listed.
Worth noting in passing: all of this is public. Anyone with your address can see its history, which is why the anonymity people assume is there is weaker than they think.
CPFP reference: Electrum FAQ (checked October 2026).
More confirmations mean more blocks would have to be replaced to rewrite a transaction. They reduce reorganisation risk rather than making it literally zero; the risk also depends on an attacker’s share of mining power.
Rewriting a transaction would require an alternative chain with sufficient accumulated work. Additional confirmations make that harder, but they do not eliminate risk under every possible distribution of mining power.
Wait for the confirmation count required by your wallet or receiving service before relying on the payment. A requirement for three or six confirmations is a risk policy, not a guarantee that a smaller payment can never be reversed by a chain reorganisation.
A separate case. The wallet has seen an incoming transaction so it displays a balance, but hasn't reached its own confirmation threshold so it won't let you spend it. It unlocks by itself; nothing to do.
Miners pick by fee rate. A generous fee likely means the next block; a thin one waits for a quiet period. You don't control this at a machine — the operator set it. It does explain why the same machine is noticeably slower at busy times, and current congestion is visible on any explorer.
| Time passed | State | Action |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 1 hour | Visible, unconfirmed | Normal, wait |
| Several hours | Still unconfirmed, visible | Probably a low fee, keep waiting |
| Over a day | Still unconfirmed | Contact the operator with the ID |
| Any time | Not found on any explorer | Contact the operator promptly |
The last row is the only one that needs action rather than patience. Not found means it never reached the network, which is a machine-side problem.
Prime time to be targeted
There are services online offering to "accelerate" or "unfreeze" transactions, asking for a payment upfront or for your recovery phrase. Anything asking for a recovery phrase is theft, without exception — hand it over and the wallet is emptied. Waiting or contacting the operator are the usual options. If your wallet supports CPFP, you may also be able to use it yourself.
It can be normal. Complete may mean the machine accepted the order, while broadcast or confirmation is still pending. Search the transaction ID on a block explorer; if there is no transaction yet, ask the operator for its status. A wallet may show a pending payment before it becomes spendable.
Take the transaction ID from your receipt and search it on any public block explorer to see whether it is queued or confirmed and how many confirmations it has. If the receipt has no transaction ID, search your own wallet address instead and every incoming transaction to it will be listed.
It depends on your wallet. Some display a balance after one confirmation while others wait for three or six before releasing funds for spending. Each additional confirmation is roughly another block, about ten minutes, so reaching fully spendable can take about an hour. That is the wallet being cautious rather than a sign of a problem.
You cannot replace the operator’s outgoing transaction yourself using RBF. A wallet that supports CPFP may let you spend the unconfirmed incoming output with a higher fee, at an additional cost. Otherwise wait or contact the operator with the receipt and transaction ID; never share your recovery phrase.
Bitcoin's roughly ten-minute block interval is a protocol design target; actual gaps between blocks vary randomly. Different wallets require different numbers of confirmations before showing or releasing funds.