Glossary / Developer reference
Receipt
- Definition
- A receipt in bitcoin is whatever evidence you keep that a payment happened: in BIP70 it was a signed acknowledgment from the merchant, and in practice it is the transaction ID.
Nothing in bitcoin issues a receipt automatically. The chain records that coins moved between two scripts, not that a debt was settled, so proof of payment is something you assemble: the transaction ID, the block that contains it, and whatever the seller sent you by email. Keep all three from the day you buy, because reconstructing them years later for a tax return is painful.
How it works
Two meanings of the word receipt circulate in bitcoin, and only one of them is still alive.
The BIP70 meaning was specific. A PaymentRequest, the Payment message a wallet posted back, and the merchant's PaymentACK together formed a receipt: the merchant had signed what was owed, the customer had returned the transaction that paid it, and the merchant had acknowledged seeing it. Bitcoin Core deleted that code in version 0.20.0 on June 3, 2020, and no wallet has produced one since.
The living meaning is a bundle you build yourself, and its parts have very different strength.
A transaction ID plus a block height is the strongest piece. Anyone can verify it against any node, and it cannot be forged or withdrawn. It proves a specific quantity of bitcoin moved to a specific script at a specific time and nothing more, so it identifies neither who controlled that script nor what was bought.
A signed message from the address that paid is what links the chain fact to you. Most wallets can sign an arbitrary string with the key behind an address, demonstrating control without spending anything.
The seller's own record, an order email or a trade history, supplies the context the chain lacks. It is also the weakest link, because it depends on a company continuing to exist and to keep letting you in.
Where you see it
Tax season is where missing records hurt, and the fix is boring and effective.
For every purchase, note the date, the quantity of bitcoin, the price in your own currency at that moment, and the fees, because those four figures are what a cost basis is made of. In the United States, custodial brokers began reporting gross proceeds on Form 1099-DA for sales from January 1, 2025, with acquisition cost added for units bought from January 1, 2026, and that paperwork covers platform activity only. Anything you moved into self-custody, spent, or bought peer to peer is documented by you or by nobody.
Export rather than screenshot. Trade histories download as CSV, and a downloaded file outlives an account closure, a change of jurisdiction, or a collapse. Keep withdrawal records apart from trade records, since the two are different events and only one of them changes what you owe.
For payments to merchants, put the invoice identifier and the transaction ID in the same note. A block explorer link on its own establishes that a transaction exists, not that it settled your particular order.
Receipt vs confirmation
A receipt is a claim made by a person or a company; a confirmation is a fact about the blockchain. That distinction cuts both ways for a buyer. An acknowledgment from a merchant, signed or otherwise, shows only that a server said it had seen your payment, which is why BIP70 acknowledgments were never proof of settlement. Six confirmations, the usual threshold, show that reversing the payment would cost an attacker six blocks of work, and say nothing at all about whether the goods will ship.