Outputs on xmrchain.net show that I have a balance but command line says no balance

Question

I created a wallet with monero-wallet-gui, then sent my monero from bittrex to the address provided by the monero wallet. The gui showed a zero balance. So I checked for the outputs on xmrchain.net:

Outputs (2)

output public key amount output match?

00: d509fe3dc481125d2962680d69bb89cd27d09dcf81e1f17cdccaa71602f83184
?
false

01: 0b6cfd6dbc3b3d0afc3854eb49857b401f00691c70c8773260580283f4565772 >2.571535700000 true

So I checked the command line: >

[wallet 42ozcw]: balance Balance: 0.000000000000, unlocked balance: 0.000000000000

What should I do next? What am I doing wrong?

I do have an address and a txId.

Answer 1

Chances are your node isn't synced with the blockchain or your wallet isn't refreshed with blockchain data. You can refresh your wallet against either your own node or some open remote node.

There are several options to refresh your wallet. If you want to run a full node note that it requires 32GB storage at the moment but has the advantage that you can later quickly refresh many wallets.

1. Open the GUI and keep it open until it shows "Connected" in the bottom left corner. If it's still catching up, you will see a progress bar and you need to let it finish by keeping it open.

   

   When it says "Connected" then you should see your balance as well. Note that by default, the GUI also runs a node in the background. You can check its status by clicking on the "Settings" tab, and then on "Show status" button.

2. Start monerod manually and keep it open until you see "SYNCHRONIZED OK" message. You can check the status by commanding status while it's running and you'll see something like:

   Height: 1424168/1424168 (100.0%) on mainnet, not mining, net hash 242.08 MH/s, v6, up to date, 8(out)+0(in) connections, uptime 0d 18h 46m 58s
   

   If it doesn't say 100.0%, means your node has some catching up to do. Then, keep the monerod open and start your monero-wallet-cli in another window and it should start the refresh automatically. If not, just type refresh and it will start. As it finds transactions it will print some lines and at the end show you the final balance.

3. You can skip running a node by telling GUI or CLI to connect to a remote node instead of your own which saves you disk space but wallet refresh is a bit slower compared to a fully synced local node, especially if you have multiple wallets to refresh. You can follow instructions linked below:

   How do I connect monero-wallet-cli to a remote node?

   https://getmonero.org/resources/user-guides/remote_node_gui.html