Frozen on arrival: the hold, and the two things it stops

Every object that arrives in an account by transfer starts a clock. While it runs the object is visible, is credited, and cannot be moved. This page explains the freeze, separates it from the second restriction it is usually confused with, and shows what a hold does to a cash-out that is already in flight.

Open the partner account Start with the exit arithmetic

Yours to move: an object in your own inventory, a listing you can withdrawFrozen: an object inside its hold, unreachable at any priceTheirs to decide: the valuation, the commission and the cash-out

Direct answerA hold is a fixed freeze imposed on an object when it arrives in an account by transfer, typically running for several days. During the hold the object can be seen, counted and credited, but cannot be sent to another account or listed for sale - at any price, to anybody, including the same person’s other account. It is automatic and applies to every arrival rather than to a suspicious one. A separate and longer restriction, often called a lock, can apply to objects acquired through a marketplace or from a promotional source, and it stacks with the hold rather than replacing it.

Trigger: a completed transferDefault length: days, not hoursApplies to: every arrivalCovers: the whole object

The hold and the lock are not the same thing

the hold Time based, arrival based. A clock starts when the object lands. It is about where the object came from and when, and it ends on a stated date. Nothing a reader does changes it: the fix is to wait.

the lock Source based, and sometimes permanent to the object. An object obtained from a marketplace, from a promotional grant or from a particular product line may be marked as not tradable at all. This restriction does not expire with the clock, and it travels with the object if that object ever moves.

the account restriction Account based. A restriction on the account itself - a verification step, a payment review, an operator decision - stops items leaving for reasons that have nothing to do with the object. Two identical items in two accounts can therefore have different availability on the same afternoon.

What a hold actually stops

It stops transfer, and transfer is the only route to value. That is the whole mechanism, and it has three practical consequences:

It stops the sale. No marketplace will accept a listing for an object under hold, because the listing would promise a delivery that cannot be made. The price at the end of the hold is the price on the day the hold ends, not the price on the day the object arrived.
It stops the escape. During the hold the object is inside the account that received it. If that account is the wagering account, then a reader who wants the object out has to wait through the freeze first - which is why an operator’s deposit is faster than its withdrawal in this rail.
It stops nothing else. The object is still credited, still wagered with, and still valued by the operator. A hold does not protect a balance from being played; it only prevents the object from being moved.

Worked example - a hold against a price that moved (illustrative) Object arrives on day 0 at a reference price of 100 units. Hold: 7 days.
Same object on the open market, day 0: best bid 87, best asking price 100.
Same object at day 7, after a supply increase following a game update: reference price 78, best bid 68.
Value at the moment of arrival: 87 (the bid that could not be taken). Value at the moment the hold ends: 68.
Difference: 19 units, 21.8% of the arrival price, and the reader’s own action was to wait for a rule.
The point is not that prices fall - they also rise. The point is that a hold removes the reader’s timing decision entirely and hands it to the calendar: the only day on which an object can be sold is a day the market chose, not the reader.

What to do about a hold

Read the hold length before sending the object, not after. The rule is published, and it is stated per object source. Arriving object by object into a frozen queue is a choice, not an accident.
Check which of the three restrictions applies. A hold ends on a date. A lock does not. If a support reply says an object "cannot be traded", ask which of the three it is and what rule it comes from: the answers have different consequences.
Do not treat the hold as a theft, and do not treat it as protection. It is neither. It is a settlement period, and the same period exists on payment rails for much the same reason - a transfer that can be reversed is not a transfer.
Plan the exit around the clock rather than against it. The exit page works through the arithmetic of a two-harness sale; the hold is the part of that timeline a reader cannot compress.

Where the held object sits while it waits

In the inventory of whichever company received it, under that company’s terms. If the receiving company is the wagering operator, the object is now inside a commercial relationship the reader agreed to in one click, and the operator’s own rules about valuation, withdrawal conditions and account closure apply to it - which is the subject of the publisher’s rules and, on the operator’s side, of the series’ agreement desk. That is why this desk treats the hold as the first of two gates rather than a delay: it decides whether the object is still an object, and the second gate decides whether it is still yours to sell.