Bitcoin Forum

I'm actually trying to use bitcoin now and I've been waiting an hour for zero confirmations.

Whatever solution you think is more viable than raising the block limit, I suggest you implement immediately because bitcoin is becoming unusable.

Pay a higher transaction fee. Works every time.

Can you post the transaction id?

Bitcoin is fine and working as intended, if you want a reliable network with fast confirmations and bigger block size check out litecoin.

That's not entirely the problem of bitcoin system, how much fee did you pay? Make sure that you pay at least 0.0001 BTC as fee every time you make a transaction.

Segwit is supposedly coming soon,  that should make  difference but like others have said,  the correct fee will work wonders for making your payment go through. Just use the recommended fee and no problems.

Block limit? what did you pay as your fee

Well it never happened to me to wait for an hour for a single confirmation. I use Electrum latest version and it uses dynamic fees which means it auto chooses the best fee for the transaction I am sending (actually they are a bit high compared to other wallets, had a 0.0022 btc fee for just a 0.12 btc transaction) and it works every time. I suggest you start using such kind of wallets and this problem will almost never happen to you again.

i have this experience too, while i think the traffic and the transaction of blockchain was big and its should queue for a little time. i only watch the transaction being confirm time to time.  maybe when you make transaction, the fee is small so you've got in queue.

I have heard others mention that they had to pay a higher fee recently to get quick confirmations.
What sources do you guys use to determine your fees?

I'm pretty uneducated when it comes to fees and always leave my Electrum wallet on dynamic,
but I would like to learn more about this subject if it means I can save a little bit of money in transaction costs.

1) calculate the transaction size (in bytes)*
2) visit https://bitcoinfees.21.co/
3) note the recomended fee PER BYTE
4) multiply the size of the transaction with the recomended fee => you're done ;)


* an estimation of the size can be found like this: in*180 + out*34 + 10
For example, if i'm creating a transaction with 4 inputs and 2 outputs, and the recomended fee on https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ is 50 satoshi's per byte:

((4*180)+(2*34) + 10)*50 = an ideal fee of 39900 satoshi's (~0.0004BTC)

Please note: the fee has NOTHING to do with the amount of bitcoins transferred! this is a common mistake... The size of the fee only depends on: the number of inputs, the number of outputs, the recomended fee per byte.
Note 2: even if you add an exeptional high fee, a pool operator might still chose not to include your transaction. On the other hand, a pool operator might include your transaction even if you add a low fee... It's his right to pick the transactions he wishes to include, but usually he'll pick the transactions with the highest number of satoshi's per byte so he can optimalize his income.

A couple of exeptions would be: using very old and large inputs (you might want to read about Priority transactions, altough a lot of pool operators seem to ignore this lately) or paying a pool operator to include your transaction in a block even if it has a very low fee

Electrum's dynamic fees have worked very well for me and the sources that you get the fee estimates from would not vary much from the Electrum's calculation. Dynamic fee is a fairly accurate estimation of the optimal fee with the network load at the time of sending the transaction. I would recommend using Electrum's dynamic fee with a fee multiplier of 50-70%.

i just sent some bitcoin today and they worked fine. you are getting that problem maybe due to huge network traffic ..you can rebroadcast the transaction if it was too unrespinsive

Put aleast 0.00094btc on your transaction for the miners fee to ensure it gets out within your estimated time of it's 1st confirmation or you will be waiting for 2 hours for it to even get that.

This is kind of a "brute-force" method, just send such a high fee it would cover most worst-case scenarios. Most of the time, you'd be paying way to much.
However, in some extreme cases, using a (high) standard fee might not even be sufficient. A theoretical example:

Person A is a faucetter, he claims from dozens of faucets 8 hours a day for months on end. After all this time, he has collected 1001 0.001 BTC inputs. When he opens his online wallet, he sees a saldo of 1.001BTC.

One day, he decides to spend his 1.001BTC buying a nice new cellphone costing exactly 1 BTC, so he sends the 1BTC and uses the 0.001BTC as a fee.

Now let's see what can happen:

His transaction size could be estimated as
1001*180 + 1*34 + 10 = 180244 bytes
You have added a 100000 satoshi fee. 100000/180244 = 0.55. You have added a 0.55 satoshi per byte fee!!!

https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ teaches us that at this very moment, you'll need to add a 80 satoshi per byte fee in order to have a reasonable chance to get into the next block.
Adding a 0.55 satoshi per byte fee might make sure your transaction never confirms, so you'll need to either make sure you stop broadcasting and let the nodes forget the transaction, or create a double spend, or pay a pool operator to include your transaction...

This is why i personally don't really like standard fees, even high ones.

Is there a wallet that pays less than 0.0001 BTC ?
I am using electrum which usually pays 0.00020 BTC  per transaction, probably the reason why i don't get to wait hours for the confirmation.

If the OP is using something like Blockchain.info for a wallet you can set a default fee amount. If he has the amount set to "low" then I believe the default fee will be less than 0.0001 BTC per transaction.

If anyone is interested in the status of SegWit and the like, Peter Todd has a good summary here:

https://petertodd.org/2016/hardforks-after-the-segwit-blocksize-increase


This will in effect allow blocks to hold 2 to 4 times the number of transactions etc.

Bitcoin confirmations always go quicker in the mornings, around 15 mins for me with a standard TX fee... Hopefully, the OP is a morning person  ;D

You can set any fee that you want, it's just generally not recommended to go under the recommended satoshis/byte.

Then increase your fees.

That's the "potential maximum". On average, considering the current usage in the ecosystem, we can expect an increase of about ~180%.

It doesn't matter what time of the day it is if you pay the appropriate fee.

That's handy to know. I didn't have any big problems with transferring since the stress tests were being carried out last year - but I always pay a reasonable fee, and usually setup my transfers in the morning - so maybe that's why LOL.