Is it Possible to Send Bitcoin to your own (The same) Wallet Address ?

[Youngrebel]

I am asking this question because if it where to a bank account I can't send money back to my own bank account number. E.g I have $3,000 and I want to sent $1,000 to a friend and I mistakenly copied my account number and past it in the receivers column and click send, the bank will reply me that you can't send money to your own account and you can only send to other Banks.

You can see the above image which illustrated it clearly from my bank. Can Bitcoin transaction to your own wallet be denied or it will be successfully transferred?  I am not talking about using another wallet address but the same wallet address as it is said in the image.

[Mia Chloe]

Yes it's possible to send funds from your wallet back to the same wallet and the concept can be used for consolidation of funds.when you create a transaction to be signed and broadcasted, your wallet looks for a child address that can pay single handedly for the transaction and if there is none it consolidates funds from other addresses ass different input to a single output.

If you say it's impossible for funds to be sent back to your wallet then you are indirectly saying that cancelling a transaction is impossible which is wrong. As long as the receiving address isn't a change address it will work.

[Charles-Tim]

Yes, you can send bitcoin from your wallet address to the same wallet address that you send it from. The transaction will be broadcasted and be included into a block and be confirmed.

Yes it's possible to send funds from your wallet back to the same wallet and the concept is called consolidation of funds.

It is not called consolidation.

What if the UTXO is just 1. What if you send just part of a UTXO.

Consolidation is when you send many UTXOs to just one address to make it 1 UTXO. The address you send/consolidate to may even be on another wallet if you want.

[Zaguru12]

The bank account illustration is actually not the same as the bitcoin wallet most especially the HD wallet, the wallet has multiple address which is why RBF back to the wallet is different as they can use any of the change addresses. So sending to same wallet is possible,

As for sending to same address I think it is possible too because bitcoin network uses UTXO method or protocol for bitcoin transactions and there is always a new UTXO when bitcoin is received. Reason why I also think it is possible is because when you actually want to send the change back to the same address and not the change address it is possible by simply adding exclamation (!) to the same address as change recipient address and the coins definitely comes back. So it is possible to send bitcoin back to the same address. Although I think most wallet will be scripted not to allow such transaction to go through.

If you say it's impossible for funds to be sent back to your wallet then you are indirectly saying that cancelling a transaction is impossible which is wrong. As long as the receiving address isn't a change address it will work.

I think OP was confusing and actually mean’t address and not the entire wallet which is different. Most cancellations of transactions are usually transactions RBFed back to the change address in the wallet and mostly not the same address

[Charles-Tim]

If you say it's impossible for funds to be sent back to your wallet then you are indirectly saying that cancelling a transaction is impossible which is wrong. As long as the receiving address isn't a change address it will work.

The only difference between change addresses and receiving addresses is just that change of a transaction can be sent to change addresses. But you can use both change and receiving addresses to receive bitcoin. Also in regard to this thread, both change addresses and receiving addresses are just addresses and no difference. I mean both will work. Be it change address on receiving address.

I think OP was confusing and actually mean’t address and not the entire wallet which is different.

OP posted wallet address which is the same as address.

[Stalker22]

Since you are using an example from banking, I think its good for you to know the main difference. Banks rely on accounts to identify users, so sending money to your own account number triggers a flag because the system recognizes it as the same account. Bitcoin wallets, on the other hand, use transaction outputs and addresses to track funds. Sending bitcoin to an address you control, even if its from the same wallet, is perfectly valid and will be broadcasted to the network.  The software is designed so that no one can stop you from sending Bitcoin to yourself, even if its to the same wallet address. And there is no intermediary involved.

Some wallets use different colors for addresses that belong to your wallet to help you keep track of them.

[PX-Z]

It's possible, but any decent wallet will give you a warning or even won't let you send because that the receiving wallet address is yours.
It's uncommon to send to your own address for whatever purpose it may as it cost a transaction fee.

Here's an example on mycelium mobile wallet

[Husna QA]

-snip- Can Bitcoin transaction to your own wallet be denied or it will be successfully transferred?  I am not talking about using another wallet address but the same wallet address as it is said in the image.

In Bitcoin transactions, when you make a transaction, and the number of coins you use is more than the total coins you send to other people, including transaction fees, then for the remaining coins that are not used, you can use a change address or use the same address used for the transaction.

For example, in transactions on Electrum, you simply add an exclamation mark to the destination address so that the remaining coins will be returned to the same address you used to send them.

[joniboini]

Can Bitcoin transaction to your own wallet be denied or it will be successfully transferred?  I am not talking about using another wallet address but the same wallet address as it is said in the image.

Were you hoping Bitcoin have the same limitation or are you hoping the opposite to be true? Since you mentioned you made a mistake, I assume it's the former. I'm pretty sure most wallet addresses allow you to preview the transaction before you make a confirmation. As long as you're cautious and double-check everything you can easily avoid it. I usually use Electrum, which gives me a preview of the address. You just need to get used to the UI/UX and you'll be fine with it IMO.

[Findingnemo]

Can Bitcoin transaction to your own wallet be denied or it will be successfully transferred?  I am not talking about using another wallet address but the same wallet address as it is said in the image.

Were you hoping Bitcoin have the same limitation or are you hoping the opposite to be true? Since you mentioned you made a mistake, I assume it's the former. I'm pretty sure most wallet addresses allow you to preview the transaction before you make a confirmation. As long as you're cautious and double-check everything you can easily avoid it. I usually use Electrum, which gives me a preview of the address. You just need to get used to the UI/UX and you'll be fine with it IMO.

Preview is just one more step to commit the mistake, if someone didn't check the right address on the send tab then they likely to ignore the preview or any confirmation before broadcasting the TX.

A tip to avoid mistaing your own address instead of desired address is stop copy- pasting any try QR code for BTC address or invoice that eliminates the chances of making such mistake.

[Youngrebel]

It's possible, but any decent wallet will give you a warning or even won't let you send because that the receiving wallet address is yours.
It's uncommon to send to your own address for whatever purpose it may as it cost a transaction fee.

Here's an example on mycelium mobile wallet

If the the warning will show this way then it is good. This will show how the transaction  will go so it will give me a preview. I'll decide whether or not to continue the transaction.
What if I mistakenly copied a wrong address that doesn't exist, will the transaction be cancelled just as a bank would do or the transaction will be successful.

Since you are using an example from banking, I think its good for you to know the main difference. Banks rely on accounts to identify users, so sending money to your own account number triggers a flag because the system recognizes it as the same account. Bitcoin wallets, on the other hand, use transaction outputs and addresses to track funds. Sending bitcoin to an address you control, even if its from the same wallet, is perfectly valid and will be broadcasted to the network.  The software is designed so that no one can stop you from sending Bitcoin to yourself, even if its to the same wallet address. And there is no intermediary involved.

Some wallets use different colors for addresses that belong to your wallet to help you keep track of them.

Wow. The structure's existing in the system are really nice then. Since it is back to your personal wallet address. You won't have to cancel the transaction and start over again because you copied your own wallet address by mistake just as banks will make you cancel the transaction until you get the account right.

[PX-Z]

What if I mistakenly copied a wrong address that doesn't exist, will the transaction be cancelled just as a bank would do or the transaction will be successful.

Then the transaction will not go through usually you will get an error address message when doing that before you can send any transaction, just like i said these warnings and messages will only show for decent wallet you are using which are mostly user-friendly.

[satscraper]

~

Bitcoin protocol doesn't  impose any restriction on the reuse of your own addresses, thus it is possible, but not recommended and many wallets throw the warning when you try to do this.

Known issues relevant to address reuse lay in the planes of privacy and security. Malicious actors have  even developed  a few attacks  focused on address reuse.

Thus, it is up to you whether to reuse you own BTC addresses but before committing  yourself to such action read about problems associated with it.

[khaled0111]

What if I mistakenly copied a wrong address that doesn't exist, will the transaction be cancelled just as a bank would do or the transaction will be successful.

It depends on what you mean by "doesn’t exist".
What really matters is if the address is valid or not. If it’s a valid address you have mistakenly copied from somewhere, the transaction will go through and will get confirmed (if it pays enough fee) even if it’s not the one you intended to send the coins to.

If you just type some random charachters in the "pay to" field then you will most likely end up with an invalid address (thanks tothe checsum) and your wallet will warn you about that. Besides, other nodes will reject a transaction sending to an invalid address.

[Stalker22]

~

Wow. The structure's existing in the system are really nice then. Since it is back to your personal wallet address. You won't have to cancel the transaction and start over again because you copied your own wallet address by mistake just as banks will make you cancel the transaction until you get the account right.

Thats right. In fact, many people use this feature to consolidate their many small inputs into one new transaction when fees are low.  This allows them to pay a lower fee in the future.

[examplens]

If the the warning will show this way then it is good. This will show how the transaction  will go so it will give me a preview. I'll decide whether or not to continue the transaction.
What if I mistakenly copied a wrong address that doesn't exist, will the transaction be cancelled just as a bank would do or the transaction will be successful.

I hope you learn a good lesson (this time a free one) from this experience. Before sending, always check all addresses to which you send funds. Mistakes happen, this time you entered your address, next time you may enter some random from the Internet (or something worse), but then it will have more serious consequences.

[Chikito]

Wow. The structure's existing in the system are really nice then. Since it is back to your personal wallet address. You won't have to cancel the transaction and start over again because you copied your own wallet address by mistake just as banks will make you cancel the transaction until you get the account right.

In Bitcoin you have to handle your problem self because no Customer Service will serve you like a bank. but in Bitcoin, you can manage on your own without involving any person like Bank as advantage.

[nc50lc]

What if I mistakenly copied a wrong address that doesn't exist, will the transaction be cancelled just as a bank would do or the transaction will be successful.

The pre-requisite to understand this is learn the fundamentals of "UTXO model" which is what bitcoin uses.
If you're not interested, you can skip to the TL;DR part below.
Here's a beginners guide for it: https://learnmeabitcoin.com/beginners/how-does-bitcoin-work/#how-do-transactions-work

In reality, your address isn't saved on any transaction in the Bitcoin Blockchain or in any Bitcoin node's mempool.
That just represents the "scriptPubKey" in the output of a transaction.
And in the basic bitcoin transaction, that scriptPubKey is just a big 160-Bit number so any number from 0 to 2^160
can be an "existing" address whether someone has the private key of it or not, already "seen" by a wallet or not.
(that's just for p2pkh)

TL;DR:
In the client side (wallet), that's where the address is shown to the user by encoding those information into human-friendly format.
That encoding includes a "checksum" which can indicate whether the address is properly encoded or not.
If it has the wrong checksum, like when there's a typo, the wallet will not accept and prevent the user from sending.
If the checksum is correct, the wallet will let the user send whether its the not the intended recipient, same address or not.

[Pmalek]

Never hurry when you make bitcoin transactions because once the transaction is confirmed, there is no going back and cancelling it. All you can do is hope that the other party, who received the coins by mistake, realizes what happened and sends them back. If not, they are not your bitcoins anymore.

If you wanted to, you could create a transaction and spend the same UTXO to the same address. The thing is, it doesn't make sense. If you only have 1 UTXO and you send it to the same address, you only wasted some sats in transaction fees and now have less bitcoin. If you have multiple UTXOs, you could consolidate them all into the same address. Since there is no shortage of bitcoin addresses in a wallet, it's better to use a new address instead of reusing old ones.