Bitcoin Forum

It has been over 24 hrs since I sent BTC  Transaction still unconfirmed. It was sent using QT wallet and 0 fees. Howl ong does it take? Can I resend it using fees. They are going to cancel my order  Please help

Sometimes transactions sent with no fee get stuck for a while. How much was it? It will get confirmed eventually, next time try to include the fee, it's such a small ammount that you'd probably think twice before picking it up from the pavement.

It was .36 bitcoins. Is there any way to re-do the transaction??

A tip from Taras: Include a 1 satoshi fee. I think it speeds things up monumentally compared to zero fee ;)

You can't do anything, but wait. If it doesn't get confirmed after 72h it should be sent back to you.

Is there anyway to rebroadcast it ?

Are you sure you did not make any mistakes on the BTC address?

Most miners treat a 1 satoshi fee the same as zero fees.  There isn't much sense in including a fee unless you are going to include at least 0.0001 BTC per kilobyte.

In general, rebroadcasting isn't useful unless/until the transaction is dropped from the memory pool of most peers.

If miners were to take into consideration "child pays for parent", you could create a new transaction using the change from that previous transaction and include a fee large enough to encourage miners to confirm both transactions together.  Unfortunately, as far as I know there aren't any major mining pools that have implemented "child pays for parent".

It can take 2-4 days for an unfunded transaction to arrive.

0-fee transactions usually take a long time (from a few hours to a few days) to get confirmed, but it will eventually be included in a block.

So, you need to be patient now :P

yup exactly this, if something gonna be wrong, the transaction just gonna be recalled to u.

If it doesn't get confirmed, some Bitcoin clients usually delete the transaction after some time

I have seen this repeated a lot, please don't tell people this.  The QT client for example NEVER gives up.  It will keep trying to broadcast a tx for 72 years.

There are so many people trying to send zero fee transactions without understanding the priority score of the transaction. I recommend users to calculate their score BEFORE they click send. Cos if it is well below the threshold, it is better to pay the small fee or mature the coins than worrying about them in limbo.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees

These two people both lying to you.  I don't think they are doing it intentionally.  They are probably just misinformed and don't realize that they are spreading false information.  The only wallet I know of at the moment that returns the bitcoins to you is blockchain.info.  Since you have already stated that you are using Bitcoin-Qt, it is important to be aware that it will continue to re-broadcast the transaction until it receives a confirmation no matter how long it takes.  The transaction will not automatically be returned to you.


This is probably true, but not necessarily.  Although it is quite likely that the transaction will get confirmed eventually, there is no way to know if it will happen in the next few minutes, next few days, next few months, or next few years.  You are essentially waiting for some miner (or mining pool) to confirm your free transaction for you out of the charity in their heart.

Sorry for the misinformation. Edited and fixed my post. Correct me if I'm wrong again.

Longest conf I ever had took 2 days. That was an anomaly though, but still.

Two days ? :) man :)
Using fees helps a lot :P and it is cheap so I do not get it why people are sending BTC without fees...

Sometimes people are very greedy, you know...

Seems like it is one of the reasons why they do not put a fee.
But is it the only reason or is there any other reason to do not put any fee while sending btc?

Because I see many users from this forum (Hero, Sr Members) are paying none BTC as a fee.
And I am wondering - is it only greed? Maybe there is something else that we should to know about it?
:)

Not really. I think some just are used to the early days of BTC where zero fee transactions were an every day thing,

If you don't mind waiting a day or so to get your transaction confirmed, you can just put 0 fee.

Come on, it wasn't a lie, I said he can't do anything but wait, which is true. Personally I never had a stuck transaction, but my friend had and he got the money back, maybe because he used blockchain.info. I thought all wallets return the coins eventually.

Yes, you said he can't do anything but wait, which is not necessarily true.  Then you said that "after 72h it should be sent back to you" which is a lie.

All wallets do not return the coins.  blockchain.info stops broadcasting the transaction and then increases the displayed balance on their website.  Other wallets jsut keep on broadcasting the transaction until it confirms.

Regarding the lie, I pointed out that:

So my bitcoins are gone forever???

Not really, certain clients allow the deletion of long unconfirmed transactions.

It's really important to read that wiki article as it spells out how blocks are filled out in the classic mining model.  Not every pool follows that policy, but it is safe to assume that many do something close to it.

Short version:
1) There is a fixed chunk of space reserved for high priority transactions (sorted by priority, fee is ignored)
2) the rest is reserved for fee paying transactions, in order of fee size.

No-fee transactions can only be processed by #1, and cannot be considered for #2.  You are competing with transactions of high priority old coins.

At this very moment there are a large number of high priority transactions in the memory pool.  Many will take up the entire space in a single block that's reserved for high priority transactions.  It could take days to catch up as more are being generated.  The only way "free" transactions get confirmed is when there is room in this high priority pool.

It'll get confirmed but it could be minutes, hours, days or even weeks.  There is no practical upper limit.  It's not worth the risk of going below the minimum fee.

If you include the proper fee, you'll be able to be included in the fee paying section of the block as well.  It'll take minutes that way.

1 satoshi is dust, not a fee. Use the proper forumula.

Nope, there are 3 ways to go now.
1. Keep rebroadcasting the transaction, and hoping it will be get confirmed.
2. Delete that unconfirmed transaction from your wallet, and the network will drop that transaction in a few days.
3. Double spend the transaction with a new one with at least min fee.