<p>The balance that you see is the confirmed balance. This is the sum of the unspent transaction outputs controlled by your wallet that are in transactions that have been confirmed. The confirmed balance can temporarily decrease more than the amount that you actually want to send due to change outputs. However once the transactions confirm, it should be what you expect it to be.</p>
<p>When you make a Bitcoin transaction, it has to spend transaction outputs that were created previously. Because an output can only be spent in full, the transactions that your wallet makes typically create another output called a change output. This is a transaction output that your wallet can spend; it is sending the change back to itself.</p>
<p>When this happens, because the change output is a new output in an unconfirmed transaction, the value in that change output no longer counts towards the confirmed balance. It counts as part of the unconfirmed balance which is shown in the GUI as the Pending Balance. Once the transaction confirms, it will be counted as the confirmed balance.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-04-30T19:32:49.917Z
Not sure I understood anything of that. Does that mean in other words, that after the 0.33 btc has been confirmed, the balance should shift back to the 2btc - 0.33btc?
John Magistr
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-04-30T20:00:27.063Z
Yes, once that transaction has confirmed, your balance should go to what you expect it to be (it might be a bit lower due to having to pay transaction fees).
Ava Chow
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-04-30T17:05:50.307Z
2021-04-30T17:05:50.307Z
Ava Chow
<p>I had my wallet stored on a storage provider for a while, and recently got a new computer and installed bitcoin-qt and imported my wallet.</p>
<p>It said I had about 2 BTC and showed INGOING transactions from 2013, which I had not touched since.</p>
<p>I recently then transferred 0.33 BTC to another recipient, and then immediately the bitcoin balance dropped to 0.07 BTC.</p>
<p>I have no recollection if I have used my wallet on other computers in the time between 2013 and now, but I thought the blockchain had a perfect copy of all transactions from my wallet.</p>
<p>Any idea what could have happend? Can I have spend bitcoin on my wallet on another computer in say, 2015, that never got relayed to my wallet stored on cloud storage? Are the transactions stored in the wallet.dat and not on the blockchain only?</p>
<p>Sorry, I am confused.</p>

<bitcoin-core><blockchain>
Balance in bitcoin-qt suddenly significantly diminished after a small transaction?
John Magistr
# Balance in bitcoin-qt suddenly significantly diminished after a small transaction?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-04-30)

I had my wallet stored on a storage provider for a while, and recently got a new computer and installed bitcoin-qt and imported my wallet.

It said I had about 2 BTC and showed INGOING transactions from 2013, which I had not touched since.

I recently then transferred 0.33 BTC to another recipient, and then immediately the bitcoin balance dropped to 0.07 BTC.

I have no recollection if I have used my wallet on other computers in the time between 2013 and now, but I thought the blockchain had a perfect copy of all transactions from my wallet.

Any idea what could have happend? Can I have spend bitcoin on my wallet on another computer in say, 2015, that never got relayed to my wallet stored on cloud storage? Are the transactions stored in the wallet.dat and not on the blockchain only?

Sorry, I am confused.

**Tags:** bitcoin-core, blockchain


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2021-04-30. Score: 1 | Accepted answer

The balance that you see is the confirmed balance. This is the sum of the unspent transaction outputs controlled by your wallet that are in transactions that have been confirmed. The confirmed balance can temporarily decrease more than the amount that you actually want to send due to change outputs. However once the transactions confirm, it should be what you expect it to be.

When you make a Bitcoin transaction, it has to spend transaction outputs that were created previously. Because an output can only be spent in full, the transactions that your wallet makes typically create another output called a change output. This is a transaction output that your wallet can spend; it is sending the change back to itself.

When this happens, because the change output is a new output in an unconfirmed transaction, the value in that change output no longer counts towards the confirmed balance. It counts as part of the unconfirmed balance which is shown in the GUI as the Pending Balance. Once the transaction confirms, it will be counted as the confirmed balance.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Not sure I understood anything of that. Does that mean in other words, that after the 0.33 btc has been confirmed, the balance should shift back to the 2btc - 0.33btc?  
> **username_1**: Yes, once that transaction has confirmed, your balance should go to what you expect it to be (it might be a bit lower due to having to pay transaction fees).  

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