What should I do if I sent the coins but nothing shows up in my wallet

07 September 2026

Check the transaction on a block explorer first. Most of the time the coins are not lost - they are simply sitting in a state you have not looked for yet.

The first thing to do is stop reopening your wallet and staring at it. That will not change anything. Instead, take the transaction ID (the long hash you were given when you sent the coins) and paste it into a block explorer for the network you used. That shows you exactly what happened to the payment, independent of any wallet or exchange interface.

If the block explorer shows the transaction as unconfirmed, wait. Confirmation time varies by network. Bitcoin can take minutes to hours when congested; Ethereum and other smart-contract chains usually settle faster, but spikes happen. A transaction with zero confirmations is normal, not a fault. Check back after ten minutes, then after an hour.

If the explorer shows the transaction confirmed - meaning it has at least one confirmation and a block number - then the coins arrived at the address you sent them to. Now the question is whether that address was correct. Compare the receiving address you used against the one your wallet displays now. If they match, the coins are in that wallet, and the issue is that the wallet has not refreshed. Force a resync or restart the app. Some wallets hide small balances by default; check your settings for a “show all tokens” option.

If the address you sent to does not match the one your wallet currently shows, you may have copied an address for a different token or a different network. This is the most common first-swap mistake. For example, sending a token that runs on Ethereum to a Bitcoin address, or sending on the wrong chain entirely. In that case, the coins are not in your wallet. They are at the address you actually used. Recovery is possible in some cases, but it depends on the token and the network. Some are recoverable with the right private key; others are not. Do not expect a quick fix.

Another possibility: the swap site gave you a temporary deposit address, and you sent to that, but the swap itself has not completed. This is where the hub page “What happens during a swap step by step” becomes useful - it explains the exact sequence of checks and confirmations the site runs before it forwards the new token to you. If your payment is confirmed on the blockchain but the swap screen still says pending, the site is likely waiting for enough confirmations or for its own internal check. Give it time. Some swaps take a few minutes; others take longer if the network is busy.

What you should not do: send a second payment. That doubles the problem. Also, do not panic and send the same coins again to a different address you found in a support chat. Scammers lurk there. Only use the official support channel listed on the swap site itself.

If the block explorer shows the coins confirmed at the correct address and your wallet still shows nothing after a forced resync, then contact the swap site’s support with the transaction ID and the exact addresses involved. They can see the same data you can, but they may have logs that explain a stuck step. Most legitimate sites will resolve it, but be prepared for it to take a day or two.

The most common outcome, by far, is that the coins are simply unconfirmed or the wallet needs a refresh. Losing coins to a wrong address is rarer, and losing them to a swap site failing is rarer still, though it happens. The block explorer is your ground truth. Start there, and do not guess.

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