How a Crypto Transaction Actually Works

What you’ll learn

• •Sending crypto broadcasts a signed instruction to change ledger balances — it's not a file transfer.
• •Your wallet uses your private key to sign transactions, proving they're authorised without ever revealing the key itself.
• •Nodes validate a transaction before it can be included in a block; valid transactions wait in the mempool until then.
• •A transaction earns its first confirmation when included in a block, and becomes harder to reverse with each confirmation after.
• •Confirmed transactions can't be reversed the way a card payment can — there's no chargeback in crypto.
• •Sending to the wrong address or wrong network can mean permanent loss, which is why double-checking and test transactions matter.