Choose the Bitcoin network, send a small test, understand fees and confirmations, and track your transfer with its txid on mempool.space.
Basics
Before you can spend or sell mined bitcoin, it has to travel from your wallet to your exchange account. The transfer is simple, and it is also the step where most losses happen, because it cannot be undone. This guide walks through it slowly once, so that every later transfer is routine.
Choose the right network
The deposit screen of an exchange often lists several networks for BTC. Only one of them is the real Bitcoin network. The others carry tokens that represent bitcoin on a different network.
Bitcoin (BTC): the one you want. This is where your mined bitcoin lives. Addresses start with bc1, 1 or 3.
BEP20, ERC20 and similar: wrapped versions on other networks. Addresses start with 0x. Your wallet's bitcoin cannot be sent there.
Lightning: a fast payment layer on top of Bitcoin that works with invoices, not with a normal address. Do not use it unless your wallet supports it and you know how.
Careful: The network on the exchange's deposit screen and the network your wallet sends on must be the same: Bitcoin. Use another network only if the exchange's own deposit screen tells you to and your wallet holds bitcoin on that network. Bitcoin sent on the wrong network is often lost for good.
Fees and confirmation time
Every transfer pays a network fee. It goes to the miners who add the transaction to a block, not to your wallet app, to the exchange or to Firsthand Bitcoin. The fee depends on how busy the network is, not on how much you send, so sending a large amount costs about the same as sending a small one. Your wallet proposes a fee. A higher fee is picked up sooner, a lower fee waits longer.
A new block is found about every ten minutes on average. Each block that includes or follows your transaction is one confirmation. Exchanges credit a deposit after a set number of confirmations, shown on their deposit screen. In normal conditions that means well under an hour. When the network is busy, or the fee is low, it can take several hours.
Send step by step
On the exchange, open the BTC deposit screen and choose the Bitcoin network.
Copy the deposit address with the copy button.
Open your wallet and choose Send, with Bitcoin (BTC) selected.
Paste the address. Never type it by hand.
Compare the first six and the last six characters of the pasted address with the exchange screen. Some malware swaps a copied address for a thief's.
Enter a small test amount, above the exchange's minimum deposit.
Choose the fee your wallet suggests for normal speed.
Read the summary screen once more: address, amount, fee. Then confirm.
Wait until the exchange shows the test deposit as credited.
Repeat the same steps with the full amount, to the same address, on the same day.
Good to know: Deposit addresses can change. If days or weeks have passed since your test, open the deposit screen again and check that the address shown is still the one you saved before you send.
What a txid is
Every bitcoin transaction gets a transaction ID, or txid: a long string of letters and numbers that identifies it on the network. It is your receipt. Anyone who has the txid can see the transaction's status, but cannot touch the funds, so it is safe to share with an exchange's support team. Your wallet shows it in the details of the sent transaction, sometimes labelled Transaction hash.
Track it on mempool.space
In your wallet, open the transaction you just sent and copy the txid.
Go to mempool.space and paste the txid in the search box.
Read the status at the top. Unconfirmed means the transaction is waiting to be included in a block.
Once it shows 1 confirmation or more, it is in a block. The number rises by one with each new block.
Check that the receiving address shown on the page is your exchange deposit address.
Compare the confirmations with the number the exchange requires. When it is reached, the deposit is credited, usually within minutes.
If the deposit does not show
Still unconfirmed: wait. A low fee can take hours. The bitcoin is not lost.
Confirmed but not credited: check the number of confirmations the exchange requires, then contact the exchange's support from inside its website or app and give them the txid.
Wrong address or wrong network: contact the exchange's support at once with the txid. Recovery is sometimes possible when the address belongs to the exchange, often for a fee, and never guaranteed.
Someone offers to recover it for you in a message: it is a scam. Only talk to support through the exchange's official site.