Bitcoin Forum

Hey, I've sent several dozen transactions with the Electrum wallet and never had this happen before. It's been approximately 15 hours and still is unconfirmed. How do I get my coins out of limbo, or do I just have to wait/how long do I have to wait? Apparently the auto-fees I had on weren't high enough I suppose. Anyway I can change it retroactively?

https://blockchain.info/tx/98048d83cf5f674bba3d17265190c609ac5874abeed3c7453a5507513425cf47

Indeed, you added 50 sat/byte. That's way to low.
You can try to prioritise the transaction using the viabtc txaccelerator: https://pool.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator/ .

A different problem with this tx is that it seems to contain dust:
https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/tx/98048d83cf5f674bba3d17265190c609ac5874abeed3c7453a5507513425cf47

In the future, always enable opt-in RBF, it's an easy way to bump your fee (in essence, create a "clean" double spend of your unspent outputs in a new transaction that leaves ahigher fee).

Other options might be to do a CPFP or actually double spending the unspent outputs manually (altough such transactions usually don't propagate very well)

Will this post eventually or get returned to me on it's own? I don't mind paying the higher fee, I thought I had it autoset.

Wait what does dust mean?

It could get accepted one day, but don't hold your breath, it could take a few days.
There are other options like CPFP, but if you are not in a hurry you could wait few days and maybe get away with a lower fee.


An amount so ridiculously small that no one even wants to accept it into the network as a real amount that someone can have, as a spaming protection. Otherwise the chainstate files might be to big for no good reason.

I'm not in a hurry, just wanna make sure it's not in permanent limbo status. Haven't had this happen before.

Just to ease your mind: there is no permanent limbo ;)
The way unconfirmed transactions work is pretty easy... You generate a transaction and broadcast it to the nodes you are connected to. The nodes look at the transaction, and if it's new and OK, they store it in their mempool.
A mempool is basically what the word says: an in-memory pool of unconfirmed transactions.
Because so many transactions get broadcasted, the default setting on most nodes is to remove unconfirmed transactions from their mempool after 3 days. Secondly: the nodes allocate a maximum amount of memory to their mempool: as soon as its full, transactions will be removed. Also, when a node reboots, its mempool is usually emptied (at least, this used to be the case, don't know if nowadays the mempool gets saved before a shutdown).

So, as long as nobody rebroadcasts your transaction, a big part of the nodes will have forgotten about your transaction after ~3 days.

Offcourse other nodes (like mine), keep your transaction for 10 days.... But most of the network won't.

This is not a 100% foolproof plan tough... It's possible one miner chose to dedicate 0.1 Tb of memory to their mempool and decided to keep transactions in their mempool for 2 years. So when the average fee drops, this miner might find your 1 year old, unconfirmed transaction suddenly very interesting and decides to add it to the block he's currently working on... But this is just a theoretical example to illustrate my point...

(Sorry for the dumb questions, still learning all this)

So, long explanation is wait 3 days for the transaction to "cancel" and resend it?

https://i.imgur.com/U1UQ1mN.png

I already accelerate it, hope it will get confirmed asap.


I think nope, because in the past, i send with very low small fees and wait until 1 week and transaction still active.

No problem, everybody needs to learn... I've been on bitcointalk for several years, but i still learn stuff on a daily basis (usually by saying something dumb, and then getting corrected by Danny Hamilton, Timelord, achow101 or many other longtime members).

In your case:

short answer:  yes, if you do nothing, there's a reasonable chance you'll be able to re-create your transaction in +3 days.

long answer: make sure nobody is re-broadcasting your transaction, and usually electrum will "forget" about your unconfirmed transaction as soon as the electrum server/node you're connected to drops the unconfirmed transaction from its mempool (so if the electrum server you're connected to chanced their default behaviour and keeps the tx in their mempool for 14 days, you'll either need to change servers or wait 14 days)... However, you might need to re-start electrum, or even restore it from seed (worst case scenario).

Was confirmed, thanks Cissrawk

your welcome ;)

Well shit, now it's not crediting me the bitcoins on my bitstamp account. Is this just a time thing? The coins are confirmed leaving my wallet.

When it went unconfirmed originally I changed my receiving address with Bitstamp. I hope that hasnt caused problems?

Dunno, never try bitstamp. Maybe you can contact their support

Awesome, hope I'm not out 15k...:/ this is stupid.

But, why you change your receiving address on bitstamp?

The one and only what you can do is contact their support and hope they can help you with it.

I thought I messed up the address and was gonna resend it :/

I think nope, you just need to be patient. Did you contact their support already? Give your txid too so they can check and maybe move your money to new receiving address on your account

Yeah, I opened a ticket and sent the blockchain report. Hopefully it went to a wallet of theirs and they can credit me. Guess I'm just playing the waiting game now.

I've done a dozen different transactions over the past 2 years and never had a problem like this -.- ugh.

I hope you can get your money, let me know if you need any help. Will try to help you if i can do it.

Yep got the money, cheers to Bitstamp.

Grats bruh! Glad to hear it :)