Bitcoin Forum

I sent some funds from address A to address B .

The transaction is unconfirmed. Can I send from address B to address C some funds?

a few months ago I have done this using a blockchain wallet, so because I was worried about waiting a long time so I decided to make a transfer from B to C, even though the transaction from A to B has not been confirmed, so I think there is no problem

Technically you can but first transaction needs to be confirmed before the second and you need to pay attention to paying enough fees if you are making a long chain of these, otherwise it will take time or whole chain doesn't get confirmed at all.

You can. I did that several times. But if you're a merchant, better wait for confirmation since your funds might never arrive.

It depends on the wallet you are using, if I am not mistaken not every wallet allows you to spend outputs of unconfirmed transaction. In any case, if your parent transaction is never mined, your child transaction will not be mined either, but in general it is normal to send funds from unconfirmed transaction. If someone sends you a transaction, be careful and don't spend it until several confirmations, because they can double spend the sent funds and make your transaction invalid.

So the miner can't mine the child's transaction unless the first one is confirmed?

That's correct. (You can't spend money you don't actually have, right?)
However, you can use CPFP and pay a bigger fee for the child tx to increase the priority of the parent tx.

Miners can mine the child transaction only if the parent transaction was already confirmed or is included in the same block (unconfirmed). The child transaction is basing on outputs of previous transaction, if previous transaction is unknown to the bitcoin network, the child transaction will not be propagated to the miners, it will be kept in temporary pool and wait for parent appearance. It is not possible to mine these transactions without parent ones because they are not  being propagated by the nodes and also contain unknown utxos (parent is unknown).

No, they will not mine. If I can recall correctly I have seen an option on electrum to spend unconfirmed transaction. So it's pretty sure based on clients or wallet you can spend unconfirmed transaction. But those are using web wallets or custodial wallet, probably they wouldn't spend unconfirmed transaction what I have seen on the coinbase exchange/wallet.

What if there is a problem in the transaction and your transaction is not confirmed and money is added back in A ?

What if you have the wrong address or some personal errors of some sort and funds never reached B?

See , it might be possible as the person above stated but frankly I have never been interested in doing something like that because it's better to wait rather than make a mistake that would turn problematic for you .

There is no back switch , even though there are people who are developing technology further towards that , there have been a lot of news , but at the same time right now what we have a simple wallet transferring funds from A to B . Wait for the funds to reach B , then only make a transfer to C.

It will vary depending on what wallet you are using but most of them need to be confirmed first before you can use the unconfirmed funds but I think if you have an extra coin on your wallet you can sure make a transaction on wallet B to wallet C even though wallet A transaction is not confirmed yet and vice versa wallet C can transaction again to another wallet if it has additional coin stored.

That's impossible, for any wallet. Can you post the TXID? There must be at least one confirmation of transaction A to B, which you didn't notice.


The risk of people double-spending in the network, you think is no problem? Calling Core developers.


Which wallet allows sending without a confirmation?

Yes you can,

Just like what I have experienced recently, I have transferred funds to my electrum wallet, which is actually notified me a few seconds after I send it, it shows unconfirmed transaction. After it shows the updated balance even if it is still unconfirmed, I send all my balance to my local wallet to withdraw. However, even after I have sent it to my local wallet, it only appear on my wallet right after the first transaction was confirmed.

Lots of them. I do this in Electrum frequently.

It is entirely possible to spend unconfirmed transactions. Spending unconfirmed funds is exactly what a child-pays-for-parent (CPFP) transaction is. Either the first transaction will be confirmed first and the second transaction confirmed in a later block, or both transactions will be confirmed at the same time in the same block.

If you are not in a hurry, you can chain up any number of unconfirmed transactions with any fees you like and simply wait for them all to confirm. If you are in a hurry, then you can effectively "bump" the fee of the initial unconfirmed transaction by paying an excessive fee on a second transaction. If the average fee rate of the two transactions together is high enough, then miners will include the initial low fee transaction so they can also include the second high fee transaction in the same block.

There are uncommon but potential issues with chains of unconfirmed transactions, such as transaction malleability, but that's outside the scope of what OP was asking.

Just like the others who said it is possible. I did too before, years ago but, I don't do it anymore.

There is no problem but just to be sure, I avoid doing it. It was explained well about transaction A has to be confirmed first and then B and C and so on will comes next.

As long as the funds is already reflecting in your wallet it is good to go. Usually most wallets won't even reflect the Bitcoin you have not until it has around 3 confirmations in the blockchain making it sure that the transaction itself will be irreversible for small type of transactions. But I wonder why you will be sending to another person the funds you have received. Are you some kind of middleman for a transaction or something?

Yes, but there's the limit before nodes reject transaction with unconfirmed input.

IIRC the limit is 32 transaction depth, so you don't need to worry about the limit unless you make 32 chaining transaction (e.g. address 1 -> address 2 -> .... -> address 33) :P

Which wallet does that? It has to be a pretty bad one.
Usually wallets show the transaction once they receive it (before the first confirmation). I am not aware of a wallet which doesn't show a transaction until it has 3+ confirmations..

The only thing i could imagine would be an exchange or custodial wallet. But both of them don't count as a good or proper wallet.

What? UNCONFIRMED? Am I the only person who doesn't know this because I never tried it? Haha.

I always assumed that Electrum required at least one confirmation before you can spend your coins, but I'm a pleb.

Today I learned.

Yes, spending bitcoins that are unconfirmed is very possible. I can tell that it is true because I have done it a lot of times. I have been making use of the Blockchain wallet for years now and I have been able to send unconfirmed bitcoins to another address of a receiver. But, I think it’s not every wallet that has this particular feature of sending funds that are not yet confirmed, other wallets I have used don’t have that feature, apart from BitPay, so it’s just Blockchain and BitPay that I have seen so far.

As for BitPay you will have to go to their settings and you will see where you will be activate the feature to be able to spend funds that are not yet confirmed. Funds that are not yet confirmed is due to low fees being entered when doing the transaction, so if you make use of this feature you can re–spend the funds to another address and then add more fees which will cover up for the other one and get it confirmed in the next block.

I am not stating that there is no confirmation needed, But yeah I think I forgot to put that you will surely need at least one confirmation on your transaction while on other cases on most wallets you will need more confirmation and commonly they required six confirmation which may take an hour and to make the transaction irreversible,

Sorry, I think I need to check my post first before proceeding in posting it but thanks for the correction.

I have done that using the Mycelium wallet once. I did send an unconfirmed transaction that I had received from my wallet to another wallet. I got an error message at first but the transaction was still done. It took time to reach the other wallet but it worked.

It's actually 25 (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/cb1ee1551cf39905ccb67e3d07b0e3aaaca18ce3/test/functional/mempool_package_onemore.py#L15). If you try to chain any more, you get the error "too-long-mempool-chain, too many unconfirmed ancestors [limit: 25]" (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/cb1ee1551cf39905ccb67e3d07b0e3aaaca18ce3/test/functional/mempool_package_onemore.py#L69)

Nope. There is an check box under Tools -> Preferences -> Transactions titled "Spend only confirmed coins", but it should be disabled by default.

There is risk involved, as if the initial transaction is replaced with RBF or double spent, or is changed via malleability, for example, then any subsequent transaction will become invalid and therefore be rejected from the mempool.

I never tried to spend any of my unconfirmed funds in my wallets but its possible on exchanges and gambling sites I guess, because once I send bitcoin to my exchange wallet which has less confirmations only but still it is showing on the exchange's wallet balance and I can be able to trade with it.

Yeah me too haha, I haven't tried it yet or even just thought of it at first coz it is so simple, how do we use funds that isn't in us yet, it turns out that there are wallets that has this feature as the other says CPFP. I use a wallet where it does not let me use unconfirmed transaction, it needs to be confirmed many times before it arrives.

I have not use electrum yet, I just use a local wallet, and yes as what the others said you can do it in electrum.

If you are talking of sending some or whole part of the money you intend receiving from B then It it impossible. The transaction need to be confirmed and show in your wallet before sending back. Sometime unconfirmed transaction might be stall when the gas fee is not enough so it is very important for a transaction to be confirmed before you send money

No.
You obviously didn't read the thread and are just here to spam for your sig campaign.

As mentioned by multiple people already, you can indeed create transactions with outputs which aren't confirmed yet.
That's how CPFP basically works: Creating a transaction with unconfirmed inputs using a fee high enough to pay for both transactions.




Gas fee?
You do realize that everyone is talking about bitcoin here, and not about any shitcoin altcoin ?

this is the answer that is most simple and easy to understand
so we can only make delivery transactions when the final or incoming balance has been confirmed or speed up the confirmation by using a larger fee to prioritize the incoming balance confirmation
Am I right?

This might depend on the kinda Bitcoin wallet you are using. Most of the bitcoin wallets require that at least there should be one confirmation in order to use the sent funds.
 But with the third party Bitcoin wallets, once the transaction is broadcast on the blockchain network, you can use the funds when there is zero confirmation.

Yes. Any transaction you make with unconfirmed inputs will (ever) get confirmed only after the input(s) get confirmed, so when "the network" "knows" you actually own those coins (with the note that this may happen even in the same block).

I have the same problem with my money. After depositing the ethereum network, my transaction is waiting to be confirmed. In the meantime, I sent another transaction with a higher but unconfirmed gas limit. This means that both transactions are pending. I don't know what other blockchain networks will look like? Right now Ethereum is in severe congestion.

You're right, the Ethereum network is really congested that it takes days to wait before it confirmed. The situation is also being hyped as a lot of people using it due to Defi projects. It might be worsened if the surge continues and fees relatively high as well.

And in your case now, all you have to do is to wait. Even you are sending again with high fees still, it takes hours/days and I don't think it is necessary since the result is still the same and pending.

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@OP, it is better to wait for the tx to confirmed...though making another transaction is allowed but still nothing to happen if the first tx not done yet.

You can and this is what Child-Pays-For-Parent method is. You have to pay enough fee to get your previous transaction to get confirmed. But if the previous tx is sent by someone else, you may face problem if they intend to double spend. For example, sending tx with low fee to you and later using the same input with higher fee to another of their address.
Therefore, if the original sender is you-> no problem; if someone else-> wait for confirmation.

You have to turn the option to spend unconfirmed tx.

Actually it doesn't have to be only after the first transaction got confirmed, but can be at the same time (i.e. same block) too.
That's how CPFP works, the second transaction pays a fee high enough for both transactions to be included in a timely manner in the same block.




That's a double spend using RBF (Replace-by-Fee), not CPFP.

Another transaction cannot be submitted because my money is stuck in the contract and it continues to be processed. Last night I had to cancel my transaction on Metamask wallet. It took a little fee but I got a refund. It looks like scam DEFI projects are bringing costs down on the ethereum network. This morning Gas is in the range of 250-450 GWEI.
If I buy crypto for $ 5 but the contract is pending confirmation and their value could go up or down. So who will be responsible for the slippage in the meantime? I am wondering about this?

it may be too difficult to move the funds again because the previous transaction has been recorded and you better try to wait for it first,so that no funds are reduced when you insist on canceling.

I think you can already used your funds or bitcoin, even your bitcoin transaction is uncomfirmed. As long it already passed step 1 because when I deposit my funds in a gambling site using my blockchain wallet, and my transaction is still unconfirmed or pending. I still have been able to spend my bitcoins or able to play slot games.

Absolutely correct, but the other way round is when you're ready to pay additional fee for your transaction to be accelerated. Sometimes I do this when am in haste to make some transaction. Hope you're not a merchant? Kindly don't accept unconfirmed transaction because they can be there for eternity. Its when the parent transaction has been confirmed before the child transaction will be.

I'm not sure about that, and I think you've already got the answer to that question. But I think this will be quite possible in the future, since the speed and number of transactions will be completely different.

Yes you definitely can use that according to Blockchain wallet but I wouldn't take that risk, better wait for 1 confirmation then cry later sir

You're fund of creating threads with yes-no question. I guess there's no sense to make this thread open, you may now close this thread since you already get your answers, replies are repetitive already since page 1.

No you can not make transaction, Untill it get confirmed.
Bitcoin transactions are same like bank transfer, In bank transfer if you made a transaction let say your a bank acc. to b bank acc. If it is in pending you wont see the money in b bank acc. But your amount will be deducted from a bank acc.  If you want to transact b bank acc. you wont see that money which is pending.  Same goes wit crypto transaction.