Once your Bitcoin transaction is fully signed, it's ready to be broadcasted, meaning sent out to the peer-to-peer (P2P) network. Other nodes receive it and temporarily store it in their mempool, essentially a waiting room for transactions. From there, miners select transactions from the mempool to include in the next block.
Most Bitcoin wallets make it incredibly simple to create a transaction: just enter the amount you want to send and the recipient’s address. Behind the scenes, though, there’s a lot more going on.
Bitcoin might seem complicated at first, but once you understand a few key ideas, the process becomes much clearer. Here's what actually happens when you send Bitcoin.
When you send Bitcoin, the transaction goes through a series of steps before it's fully confirmed and secure. Here's what happens behind the scenes.
Before a Bitcoin transaction can be broadcast to the network, it must first be signed using a private key. This signature acts as proof that you control the coins you’re trying to spend.
There are three main stages of a Bitcoin transaction: