Bitcoin Forum

I am experiencing very long delays with my bitcoin transaction, I sent some bitcoins to an address using my bitcoin wallet (electrum) some days ago but after 4 days, it is still awaiting confirmation on blockchain, I sent the right amount also, so I am not sure what could possibly be the cause of the delay / zero confirmation. Is there anyway I could resolve this? I did a different transaction today, unrelated to the first one, sent some bitcoins and in about 2 - 3hrs the transaction was complete, so I am not sure what could possibly be the problem with the first transaction.

I had same kind of problem couple of times already. You need to write to the site support to find out the truth and their reasons for that.

Write blockchain?

The first thing to do is put the transaction tx id (if you would like to ) so that we can see what's going on.

Maybe the fees are not right (maybe..) and it needs to be rebroadcasted or something.

Here you can find the reason why it took so long: https://blockchain.info/de/unconfirmed-transactions
Many many unconfirmed transactions...
If you use electrum wallet be sure to use the latest build 2.8.2 with "dynamic fees"

Here https://blockchain.info/tx/affddef032988102037ead43e3d6456fc10ef5ebb4a7454a8783ff3a5f492410

Your fee is totally inadequate to the size of your TX. It should be at least 240 sat/byte and your TX has 50.195 sat/byte
It will be long wait before your TX will be confirmed. Your best option is to replace the fee.
With tx fee so low I am not sure if you can even use via BTC transaction accelerator, test it here:
https://www.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator/ (https://www.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator/)

Confirmed : low fees.
https://tradeblock.com/bitcoin/tx/affddef032988102037ead43e3d6456fc10ef5ebb4a7454a8783ff3a5f492410

Well it is almost certain that you haven't paid the corrrect amount of fees to compensate for the miners. I'm sure you've heard that the mempool is full as hell right now and the fees have skyrocketed.

If you still have trouble with confirmations, then try the viabtc.com transaction accelerator. It is free to use and it should work for you if you paid at least 10 sats/byte on your transaction. If not, try the BTC.com transaction accelerator although it does charge some money.

Thanks everyone, would give this viabtc thing a try, how exactly does it work? also just so I avoid a situation like this next time, how do I know the EXACT amount of fees to pay? because I sent the amount that was generated? I don't know if electrum tampered with the fee or not, so please how do I know the exact amount to send in case of next time?

ViaBTC is a mining pool. They can choose to include transactions into a block. Submitting your transaction using that feature gives your transaction priority. When they mine a block, you have a higher chance of getting your transaction included in the block.
I cannot recommend you to have a set fee all the time. Electrum does have a dynamic fee feature which suggests a fee per size based on the current network condition. Even though it is nowhere near perfect, it is the most accurate fee system that you can have. If you want more security, go to Tools>Preferences and select 'Use dynamic fee'. When you send your transaction, you should see a slider. Slide to the right and you can increase your fee.

Don't waste your time with this because your fee is also to small for the Tx Accelerator too  ;)
Should be at least 0,0001

Make it at least 50k satoshi and you'd swiftly move in less than an hour. An hour is the fastest you can achieve it so far.
I as much as possible I don't want to move to my desktop wallet and then to a 3rd party remittance but I do it just for byteball which delays me the more.

I tried using viabtc transaction accelerator, I put in the txtid "affddef032988102037ead43e3d6456fc10ef5ebb4a7454a8783ff3a5f492410" and hit submit but the message "Submissions are beyond limit. Please try later." came up, would it help if I sent a little more bitcoin to the address where I sent the bitcoins to earlier on 1MNyaMBJ6F8WqpgEbDxGDavJK9Locv3Gkj  ? Would that speed up the transaction?

update viabtc worked for me, confirmation finally came through, payment completed after 4days. wow btc wtf! why do we have to go through all this stress just to make a payment. @everyone else thanks for your advise. in case of next time how do I set my electrum wallet to make sure the fees are enough for quick confirmation?

if you are using latest version a little dynamic fee slider will appear when you click send , when you hover over it, it tells you
how many blocks your tx will confirm in. the higher you slide it (and thus pay higher fee) the less blocks
it takes to confirm. very nice feature.

Upgrade to latest Electrum 2.8.2. Make sure under tools > preferences dynamic fees and replace by fee are enabled with a checkmark. When you send move the fee slider to high and also put a check mark in box labeled 'replaceable'. It would be unusual for a transaction with a high fee to take longer than a few hours to confirm, but if you send replaceable you can always click on the transaction and bump the fee up.

Last questions:

1. I installed the new electrum 2.8.2 and I can see a new feature that can be used for dynamic fees or something, right now it is in the middle of the bar and when I mouse over it shows "within 5 blocks, "0.00198728 BTC/Kb" is this enough for transactions or do I increase it? if increasing, what limit do I use?


2. I have an unconfirmed payment and the alert sign besides it, when I mouse over it says child pays for parents, I clicked child pays for parent , I get this 0.00089228 and I clicked next, then a message saying sign came up, am I supposed to click sign here?


Sorry for asking too many questions, these are all new features to me.

The within 5 blocks means that Electrum estimates it to be confirmed within 5 blocks. Do you need it urgently?
The more you slide it to the right, the sooner it would get confirmed, assuming that the blocks are getting mined at a normal frequency.

Personally, I find within 2 blocks better for me.

Child pay for parent basically means that the transaction that you are going to create is going to have a high fee to incentivise miners to mine your transaction. If you're okay with it, clicking sign and broadcast is going to create another transaction which sends it back to your wallet and the transaction is going to have a high fee. However, that fee will be used to "add on" to your fee you had in the unconfirmed parent.