Bitcoin Forum

 :-\

I first bought BTC on 2013. In 2017 I sent 0.5 divided to Binance and other exchanges and been trading there ever since with another 0.5 resting on my Bitcoin Core v14.1 wallet. Today I tried to send the remaining 0.5 BTC to Binance but the transaction never got confirmed: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/118e0e9d0b04d5e334023701db0bfca963770b245d556465b091bf21acaa748c?show_adv=true
So I tried deleting the mempool and then executing bitcoin-qt with the "-zapwallettxes" parameter. Took almost 4 freaking hours to resync and my 0.5 appeared back in my wallet. So I tried resending the BTC to Binance but this time the TxID never even got registered on the blockchain.
So I executed the "-zapwallettxes" parameter yet again but the light went out in the process and now I restarted my Wallet and all transactions from 2013 to today are gone so my balance says I got 1 whole BTC again. WTF is going on!? Please help. What should I do???

The transaction which you have sent pays 1 sat/byte fee which is not a lot considering the amount of transactions in the mempool (23 thousand). Your transaction will be eventually confirmed but it will take a lot of time. According to this page (https://coinb.in/#fees), 11 sat/byte should be enough if you want your transaction to be confirmed in the next few blocks. If you are not going to use that wallet anymore, you can download Electrum (https://electrum.org/#home) and import your private key there. The latest version should suggest a proper fee. It's a light client so you won't have to download much data.

I had plenty of transactions with less fees than that one and still got confirmed pretty quickly. The thing is why I am not seeying all my activity since 2013. Lots of already confirmed transactions are not showing anymore now.

Your older transactions were confirmed faster because there were hardly any transactions awaiting confirmation. As I wrote above, there are currently 23 thousand transactions which are in the mempool.


Have you done it like it is described above? Using light client would be much faster for you since you are trying to spend all of your coins.

No I have not done it exactly like that. I'm currently rescanning with a simple "-rescan" parameter but this will take 3 or 4 hours at least.

It seems like your client isn't properly synced. A rescan should fix this.

First, did you already create a backup of your wallet.dat ? If not, immediately do one!

Second, if you don't necessarily want to use core, you might simply use a lightweight client (e.g. electrum (https://electrum.org/#home)).
You can export your private keys from core and import them into electrum. Since electrum is a lightweight client you don't need the whole blockchain stored.

For your next transaction pick a slightly higher fee. Or, if you have time, 1 sat/B should be fine (which could take longer to confirm).

I sure hope the resync will fix this. I tried to respend my 0.5 with about 4-5 sats per byte but didn't even got broadcasted to the blockchain so next time I think I will use like 40-50 sats per byte....

It will, your client is missing the up-to-date information. Therefore it is showing you the last state it has.


Regarding the fees, 40 sat/B would be a bit overkill.

You can check the current mempool status at https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,8h (https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,8h).

Currently a fee between 10 and 20 sat/B is enough to get a relatively quick confirmation.

Well finally the resync just finished. All missing transactions are showing except the one which I tried to "double spend" with higher fees. Is there any chance that this transaction https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/118e0e9d0b04d5e334023701db0bfca963770b245d556465b091bf21acaa748c?show_adv=true will eventually return to my wallet if no confirmations arise?

The "-zapwallettxes" parameter didn't work. Do you recommend any service to "accelerate" this transaction? Thanks for all the help. I'm calmer now, at least what one could be after this massive dump by the illuminaty XD

As far as I remember, transactions are usually stuck in the mempool for 2 weeks or so. Unfortunately, transactions made on Bitcoin Core 0.14.0 can't be Replaced-By-Fee by default. You could try abandoning the transaction but it's a bit difficult and might be a bit risky. This article (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Fee_bumping#Bitcoin_Core_GUI) on Bitcoin wiki describes the whole process in an understandable way. It would have been much easier for you if you had upgraded your software.

I wasn't aware that my old wallet was such a piece of crap  ;D Thanks for the article I'll read that and if I can't I will wait 2 weeks. No use in selling now. The idea was to sell this morning. I would have won 30%

The transaction that you linked has been confirmed (currently has 205 confirmations)...

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/118e0e9d0b04d5e334023701db0bfca963770b245d556465b091bf21acaa748c?show_adv=true

Not surprising, given that the mempool has shrunk and the fee levels dropped again now that the panic selling has stopped...

https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,24h

I've also sent bitcoins on the same date (Nov.14) with 1 sat/byte transaction fee, although mine isn't urgent.
It took almost a day to confirm, to be exact: approximately 19hrs.

@OP Please take note (for future transactions): You can safely assume that the transaction was "broadcasted" successfully the moment that you can see the txid on online blockexplorers.