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His Bitcoin wallet was only 1% synchronized with the network and yet he was able to receive and send bitcoins without any problems?!
What are the implications / ramifications of this?
What does this mean?
My mate received and then sent a Bitcoin transaction before his wallet was synchronised and it worked perfectly
Answers
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You don't have to do anything to receive Bitcoins. That's entirely passive. Your client doesn't have to be running.
To send Bitcoins, you just need enough information to form the transaction. If you have the transaction that sent them to you and you know it was confirmed, that's sufficient.
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You don't need to be synced to receive bitcoins but they will not show up in the client until it has synced the block in which the received bitcoins are included.
If you know that the bitcoins you are sending have not been spent yet at a later point in the blockchain then you can send them and they will be accepted. Otherwise the transaction will be invalid because you double spent them.
So waiting for synchronization isn't necessary as long as the receiving client is up and listening when the sending client broadcasts the transaction? – Colin Dean – 2013-03-31T02:22:34.533
1@ColinDean: It depends on the client implementation. Seeing the transaction is not enough because the client must also know that the transaction was added into a block and that this block is part of the longest valid chain. – David Schwartz – 2013-03-31T02:38:05.703
1Just seeing it is not enough to be confident in it, but is it enough to brashly spend it? – Colin Dean – 2013-03-31T11:43:19.023