Bitcoin Forum

Hello all,

I'm having a little problem, and I was hoping someone more knowledgeable might be able to give me a hand with it.  See, a while back, I bought some bitcoins (some for myself, some for two friends - we'll call them A and B) and had them sent to my address.

I have a Mac, and keep my wallet on an encrypted portion of my HD as recommended on the bitcoin wiki.  Because writing to the encrypted part is extremely slow, I had to download the blockchain manually and put the file in there and then start with -rescan.  Then I was able to see the bitcoins that had been sent to me, and all was well for a time.

Since then, I have renamed the wallet.dat in order to force my client to generate a new wallet file for me to use.  I needed two wallets because I wanted to keep A's bitcoins in a separate place from mine (he's asked me to hold on to them for a bit), but when I tried to send the bitcoins to the wallet I'd created for him (essentially, sending them to myself) it listed my transaction as 0/unconfirmed.  It's been almost two months, and that hasn't changed.  Looking at block explorer, the transaction never seems to have gotten into the block chain - but the balance on my computer includes the credit for the "sent" bitcoins.
Then, more recently, B asked me for his bitcoins, and I tried to send them to the address he gave me.  It also listed that transaction as 0/unconfirmed, and that transaction also doesn't show up in block explorer... and it's been about two weeks since I sent it.  So, the money isn't with them, or even in the blockchain... but it's also not with me.  I don't know how to persuade my wallet that the transaction it sent should be undone, either.

I have a backup of my wallet file from before I sent B's transaction, but not before I sent A's, and loading that backup shows my transaction history as it was before I ever sent to B.  This is good, but it sounds like I'd also need a backup from before I sent to A in order to recover all the bitcoins.

So I come to you, wise forum, for help.  How do I recover the bitcoins that are neither here nor there?  And if it's not too much to ask, why might the bitcoins I send get stuck?  Thank you!

Leave the wallet running. Make sure you have the up to date block chain. And then leave it for another hour. See if the transaction posts.

If not, one solution is to manually edit the transaction out of the wallet. This is a painful process and not for amateurs. You need a build of the exact same version of the Berkeley DB tools as the library your bitcoin client uses.

We badly need a 'delete transaction' operation.

Well, I'm less of a computer newbie and more of a bitcoin newbie, so if you'd like to explain the process to me, I'd be grateful.

One more thing I forgot to mention earlier: these were both sent without transaction fees.  Hopefully there shouldn't be THAT much of an impact because of that, though?

I'll leave it running and see what happens.  Thanks.

the block chain is the records of all the transactions that have gone on. Your client doesn't know you have any money until it downloads the entire thing and sees that there is money that has been sent to you.

I already have the block chain.  Could the fact that I've used more than one wallet with the same block chain be what's causing my problems?

No transaction should ever take two weeks. Something didn't work, I'm still too much of a newb to figure out what went wrong but I can promise you that two weeks isn't right.

You can search on this site using the address you sent from or to and if it's not there it wasn't broadcast and isn't in the blocks. http://blockexplorer.com/

Those telling you to leave the wallet running longer must not have read your entire post. You have let it run way longer than it should take, something else went wrong. Wish I could help more but I'm a newb to bitcoin too, but have sent a few transactions so I know it doesn't take anywhere near that long. Good luck

He left the receiving wallet running. The issue is that the transaction may never have gotten out on the network, so he needs to leave the sending wallet running. (Until he sees the transaction in blockexplorer.)

Okay, both transactions now show up on blockexplorer!  I guess I just didn't leave the client running long enough.  Now I just have to wait for confirmations, I suppose...

Thanks, everyone!