How to Send and Recieve Bitcoin

Bitcoin is easy to send and receive.

However, it is important to pay attention when transacting because if you are not careful, you can lose your bitcoins, and there is no Satoshi customer support to help you get them back.

To receive Bitcoin, you must first have a public address on an exchange or wallet.

A Bitcoin address will usually begin with a "1", "3", or "bc1"

The address format has to do with how the transaction is processed.

• Addresses starting with "1" use Legacy or Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash (P2PKH).
• Addresses starting with "3" use Segregated Witness (SegWit) or Pay-to-Script-Hash (P2SH).
• Addresses starting with "bc1" use Bech32 or Native SegWit; this address typically has the lowest transaction fees.

If all that was confusing, not to worry, the important thing is to pay attention.

You don't want someone to send Bitcoin to your address only to find out it was on Legacy, not SegWit.

Most exchanges and wallet applications will make this process extremely simple.

It is as simple as clicking on the receive icon and having someone scan a QR code or simply copying your public address and texting it to the potential sender.

The most important thing when receiving Bitcoin is that the address is correct.

Any missing or incorrect character will result in a loss of funds.

It is always a good practice to send test amounts before sending a large amount to verify that the address is indeed correct.

To send Bitcoin, you, of course, first need to have Bitcoin.

To send using an exchange like River, follow these steps:

Create the transaction by inputting the address you would like to send to:

Select the amount you want to send:

Confirm details and broadcast/send:

Boom, if you followed along, you just sent a Bitcoin transaction.

This process varies on different wallets and applications, but the backend is the same across the board:

A sender selects inputs (UTXOs) for the transaction, specifies the destination address, pays a transaction fee, and broadcasts the transaction to the network

In summary:

• Get an address on an exchange or wallet
• Make sure the public address is EXACTLY correct
• Send test amounts for large transactions