A withdrawal screen
The least visited page in any market and the one that prevents the most damage. A balance left behind is the most frequent way money disappears here, and there is nobody on the other end of it.
- What it is
- A form that sends your remaining balance to an address you own
- Where you meet it
- Inside the account, usually two clicks from the front
- What it settles
- Whether your money is still in somebody else custody
- Cannot tell you
- Anything. It is the one screen here that only does something
The specimen
send to 4A d 9 X q … your own wallet … k L 7 w
amount [ all ]
network fee 0.00002
the fee line is the entire argument against doing this, and there it is.
A withdrawal form. Lime marks what you compare after pasting, which is the ends and not the middle. The fee line is shown at real scale relative to the balance, and that ratio is the whole point.
Why a balance is different from an order
| Money | Protected by |
|---|---|
| Committed to an open order | Escrow. Two of three signatures to move it |
| Sitting as a balance | Nothing. There is no order for a protection to attach to |
Every protection described anywhere on this site hangs off an order. A balance has no order attached, which means nothing is attached to it. It is a number in a database belonging to a party you cannot name and have no recourse against.
What actually takes it
- Losing your own account, which is far more likely than the market ending and turns an annoyance into a permanent loss.
- A long outage, which is not a loss but is a stretch where you cannot reach your own money.
- The market ending, which is unpredictable and has always looked fine right up until it happened.
- Simple inattention, which does nothing on its own and quietly waits for one of the other three.
The three seconds before you press send
- Paste the destination, then look at it again. Not the version you copied, the version that landed in the field.
- Compare the first and last several characters against your own wallet.
- Then send. There is no confirmation step after this that means anything.
That is the only guard against a swap on your own machine, and it is the same three seconds in both directions.
The habit, written as a routine
- Decide the order first, then fund it. Not the other way round, which is where remainders come from.
- Fund the amount, not a round number. Round numbers are tidy and they are the reason people end up holding a balance they never chose.
- Move the remainder out in the same sitting the order closes, before you shut the tab. Later means never.
- Compare the ends of the destination after pasting. Three seconds, every time, including on the small ones.
None of that requires discipline in the moment, which is the point. It is a sequence you run once per order, and the alternative is relying on remembering to come back, which nobody does.