Money / Pair 21 of 41
Still moving, or already refused
A withdrawal request went in. Nothing has turned up at the other end. The withdrawal page is often the least informative place to work out why, and there is a better number one screen away.
Two ways a withdrawal produces nothing
You asked for coin to move and it has not moved. The page that took the request may say pending, may say nothing at all, or may show a state that maps to nothing you recognise. Silence covers both possibilities and covers them equally well.
The useful part is that the account already knows the answer and displays it plainly, just not on the page you are staring at.
Accepted, waiting its turn
The request went through. The amount has left the spendable balance and is reserved or already deducted. It waits on a batch, a manual sign-off, or a window that opens later. Nothing has gone wrong and the only thing still to happen is time passing.
Refused, and the money never left
The request was refused. A reason exists somewhere even where nothing displayed it: an address format the site would not take, an amount under a minimum, a restriction sitting on the account. The balance is whole again and no transaction was ever built.
Who stopped this and on what grounds
A queue is a scheduling decision that applies to everybody in it. A refusal is a decision about this particular request. The first clears on its own and the second will not, however patiently you sit with it, and no amount of rereading the withdrawal page changes which one you are in.
The grounds also differ in kind. A queue exists so that an operator can batch movements, sign them by hand, or hold them back until somebody has looked. None of that is about you. A refusal is about this request and usually about something mechanical in it, most often the destination string or an amount below whatever floor the site sets. Neither of those two is a judgement on the account, and both are fixable once you know which applies.
Read the spendable balance
Check the spendable balance instead of the withdrawal page. Money still missing from it means the request is queued. Money back in it means the request was refused.
That holds whatever words a site puts on its states, since a balance is arithmetic rather than a label. Gone from what you can spend means the request is alive. Back in what you can spend means the request is over. A site showing a pending withdrawal beside a full balance has already told you the request failed, whatever sits next to it on the page.
Two readings need care. Some sites reserve the amount without showing it as gone, so the spendable figure drops while the headline balance does not. Read the number you would actually be allowed to spend rather than the largest number on the page. And a refusal that returns funds can take a moment to write back, so a balance checked in the same second as the request may still look reduced when the request is already over.
A third possibility is worth holding in mind. A partial refusal, where the site accepts a smaller amount than you asked for, leaves the balance somewhere between the two and satisfies neither description above. Compare the missing amount against what you requested rather than only noticing that something is missing.
Which error wastes more
- If you treat a refusal as a queue
- You wait for a transaction nobody is building. Whatever produced the refusal is still in place, so every later attempt fails in exactly the same way, and you will not learn why until you go looking for it deliberately.
- If you treat a queue as a refusal
- You submit again. If both are accepted your balance leaves in two pieces, each paying the network separately, and the second request may trip a limit that puts a stop on the account.
Waiting on a refusal is the larger waste. It can run for days and end with nothing learnt at all. A repeat submission is sharper but it shows itself within the hour. Both are avoided by reading one number before doing anything, which takes less time than reading this paragraph did.
Your next move either way
- If it is queued
- Wait, and watch the balance rather than the page. Once a transaction id appears, the queue has cleared and everything after that is a chain question rather than a market one.
- If it was refused
- Find the reason before trying again. Look at the destination address you gave, the amount against any minimum, and whether anything about the account has changed. Resubmitting an identical request produces an identical result. Where the balance is missing and no transaction exists, read the pair on money being held instead.
Questions readers send about this pair
The page says pending but my balance is full. What does that mean?
Those two statements contradict each other and the balance is the one to believe. Money genuinely on its way out is not spendable. A full balance beside a pending label usually means the label is stale rather than that the money is moving.
How long should a queued withdrawal take?
Nothing here can tell you that and any figure would be invented. What you can establish at any moment is whether it is still queued at all, and the balance answers that as often as you care to check.
My withdrawal was refused with no reason shown. Is that normal?
Refusals often display nothing at all. The reason still exists on the operator side. Checking the mechanical ones first, the address format and any minimum amount, resolves a good number of them without needing to ask anybody.