Bitcoin Forum

Hi everyone,

I am wondering if anyone can please assist me what is wrong with two pending transactions, the following ones:

https://blockchain.info/tx/0e2dc49899a94d4e57f994c302c7c78fb19c262e4fcf9cff3e4b2475375bd41f
https://blockchain.info/tx/b30644ecf003e794b43b4829460a9eb1d4c5d8bc959cded395874b1e033729e2

Both are pending for few days and I urgently need to be able to continue sending payments. Actually the service I paid for, for those two transactions, is not needed anymore so I would even prefer to get this back. However I did the third transaction for minimum possible amount (why minimum? obviously to test only so any larger lose can be avoided) and again, says pending.

What could i do? Thank you.

You used a REALLY low fee. With such a fee your transactions will probably never be confirmed.
You used a fee of 19 satoshis per byte, the recommended fee for a fast transaction is 270 satoshis per byte.
Try using ViaBTC's accelerator: https://www.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator/

Thank you for reply. How much BTC is 19.38 satoshis per byte? Or I will ask in better way: how much BTC is 270 satoshis per byte? I ask this so i know how much BTC will be paid from my balance for fee. Please clearly define in your answer if you are referring to 19.38 or 270.

Also i haven't been changing those fees and it worked well in the past. How/where can I change quantity of those satoshis per byte? I am using Electrum.

I asked two different questions. If you don't mind, may I also ask third and fourth and fifth one please:

3. Can satoshis per byte be changed for already executed transactions?
4. Can I manually cancel transactions that are pending for too long? I need to pay urgently and those ''pending'' statuses are very annoying.
5. When or approximately when will be (IF) those pending transactions gone and money refunded?

I would also like to add the following information in case if needed for any answer i am asking for: In Tools\Preferences, I have ''Transaction fee per kb: 0 btc/kb'' (warning: unit in btc/kb and not satoshis per byte) but i don't know if this is ''miners fee''.

I tried the following too: menu Tools\Preferences\Transaction tab\tick option Dynamic Fees

I woke up at like 4am today to start my work with solving above described error in my first post and 5 questions in my previous post. It is very very very important that this is solved immediately. Currently transactions are still pending. If someone could please provide me solution what to do. I really need it very urgently.

nerioseole

I tried the following too: menu Tools\Preferences\Transaction tab\tick option Dynamic Fees

What other amount of fees should be used? Probably in Tools\Preferences\Transaction tab\Transactions fee per kb in unit btc / kb

I know my Electrum is outdated but this shouldn't be the reason for problem.

Electrum being outdated is the reason. The latest version fixes a bug that could cause Dynamic Fees to not work properly. You should update to the latest version which will help correct fees in the future.

do you have a reference for this bug.
because i can not find anything on the release notes about any bug related to Dynamic fees, there have been a lot of improvements though.

Upgrade to the latest electrum version and then follow this guide:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5zchm8/sent_transaction_with_low_fees_in_electrum_can_i/dex2alq/

I made a post about a dynamic fees bug here.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1814785.msg18079627#msg18079627

Later on in the same thread kolloh made this post with a link to a github commit that fixed the bug.

Your first 2 questions I don't know the answer to but you seem to already be on the right track, for the last 3 questions you have I will give it a go:


3. Can satoshis per byte be changed for already executed transactions?

No they cannot, there are technical ways to push it through, the simplest way being viabtcs accelerator as already posted here.

4. Can I manually cancel transactions that are pending for too long? I need to pay urgently and those ''pending'' statuses are very annoying.

No you cannot cancel a transaction.

5. When or approximately when will be (IF) those pending transactions gone and money refunded?

I believes its 3 days but I'm not 100% sure.

I updated Electrum and have one good news and one bad news.

Bad news: All problematic transactions are still there but the title is different. Now it says for one ''Unconfirmed parent'' (i don't know whats that) and for another ''Low fee'' so those transactions still don't work and still no money bitcoins returned. Been waiting for over 3 days. So here nothing is solved from the problematic recent transactions that are stucked.

Good news: I did another test transaction, even if I cannot afford it but had to do it to test 0.0001 amount. It seems like new version (2.8.2) has valid feature of ''Use Dynamic Fees'' located in Preferences. I still had to wait a lot but this time the waiting period was acceptable and I agree with it. So after waiting for particular time period (around 90 min), the transaction was successfully processed. Here I owe my ''thank you'' to kolloh, so thank you very much for your reply kolloh. But what does ''Unconfirmed parent'' actually mean? Found the explanation on the link below. I sent secondary transaction AFTER updating Electrum and it wasn't started to be processed but was titled as Unconfirmed Parent immediately. Now I am starting to get worried that it will turn to problematic transaction again. Will keep on waiting few more minutes.

https://forum.bitcoin.com/technical-support/unconfirmed-parent-t18275.html

However the content on the link is not helpful. New transaction (second) AFTER upgrade shouldn't have such problem. First went through fine.

Hopefully someone could still help with first problem (''bad news''). Cannot watch those transactions forever  :(

I accelerated your transaction that has an unconfirmed parent, and the unconfirmed parent transaction using the viabtc accelerator.

https://blockchain.info/tx/0e2dc49899a94d4e57f994c302c7c78fb19c262e4fcf9cff3e4b2475375bd41f

This is the parent transaction that sent unconfirmed coins.

https://blockchain.info/tx/b30644ecf003e794b43b4829460a9eb1d4c5d8bc959cded395874b1e033729e2



An unconfirmed parent means whatever coins that were sent to you were sent before they were confirmed. It's possible to send coins that haven't got any confirmations. If you click the link that says "Show scripts & coinbase" on a blockchain.info transaction page it should look like this screenshot.

A red letter U after the address means the coins were sent from that address before they were confirmed. This address in the screenshot has sent unconfirmed coins 1J4Rx47bhbGvJ4aHiGKnSm4nSmk1yGqA7U (U).

https://i.imgur.com/7l3LWaZ.png

Nothing is solved. Even one (out of two) outgoing transactions i did AFTER the upgrade is still not completed. I am being seriously worried now because on my bitcoin activity depends my entire income. I also have some bills to pay. Here is the screenshot from disaster that is happening (in case if any particular info needed, let me know what and where to get it and i will definitely provide it):

https://s1.postimg.org/es57nmlxr/btc.jpg

You will have to wait until the viabtc pool mines a block before your unconfirmed parent transaction gets confirmed. You can see the times of the latest blocks it mined here.

https://blockchain.info/blocks/ViaBTC

To make sure you get fast confirmations for future transactions click tools, then open preferences and copy all checkbox settings in the screenshot, and set the maximum static fee to 0.004.

https://i.imgur.com/lA30Q0G.png

When you send any coins move the fee slider all the way to the right, like in the screenshot. You will pay a very high fee, but get a confirmation in the next block. When the network isn't so overloaded you can reduce the fees you pay.

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

There are an extremely high number of unconfirmed transactions today, so it takes a high fee to get fast confirmations.

https://i.imgur.com/XizT2AY.png

I understand you are saying the only solution to get those transactions completed/refunded (please kindly tell me whether they will be completed OR refunded - if i had a choice, but i most likely don't, i would prefer refund) is to wait. Only wait. But approximately how long do I still have to wait? On the screenshot I provided, the oldest Unconfirmed Parent is from 2017-05-08 22:15:51 and the ''Low Fee'' transaction is from 2017-05-08 21:53:04. Both times are most likely from gmt+1

You can choose to do nothing and the coins you sent will either get confirmed, or the network will forget about the transaction and your coins will get refunded to you. However, it's difficult to predict what the network will do, or how long it will take.

The OP of this thread deliberately sent a zero fee transaction to see what would happen. Surprisingly it confirmed after 11 days.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1818747.0

I remember another user who accidentally sent a zero fee transaction about the same time. The network eventually forgot about his transaction, and his coins were refunded.

If you chose to wait you might have a long wait.


Another option you could consider is offering either of the users in this quote a small fee to get your transactions confirmed.

I don't have time anymore to wait. Also when trying to find a solution on that problem on my own I saw some post someone saying that NO new transactions should be done until everything is confirmed/refunded (no pendings). It is simply too urgent for me and it is my only available source of bitcoins, very few ones (i only have like 0.045). I don't have any other source such as localbitcoins or wherever online balance is containing bitcoins. This (problem shown by me on screenshot in one of my previous messages) should be solved now.

The viabtc accelerator I used won't confirm the transaction with an unconfirmed parent until the viabtc mining pool mines another block. It mines blocks at random times as shown below.

If you are in a desperate hurry then try contacting quickseller or macbook-air and explaining the situation you are in. I think I remember one of them let someone pay the fee after they had confirmed his transaction because he couldn't afford to pay until his transaction was confirmed.

https://blockchain.info/blocks/ViaBTC

https://i.imgur.com/9YV8fua.png

Viabtc has now confirmed both these transactions. They both have two confirmations and will soon have the six required for full confirmation. This is your transaction with an unconfirmed parent.

https://blockchain.info/tx/0e2dc49899a94d4e57f994c302c7c78fb19c262e4fcf9cff3e4b2475375bd41f

This is the parent transaction that sent unconfirmed coins.

https://blockchain.info/tx/b30644ecf003e794b43b4829460a9eb1d4c5d8bc959cded395874b1e033729e2

Upgrading your wallet isn't going to magically make all your transactions confirm... and making more transactions that are spending unconfirmed transaction outputs is just making things worse. You see how you had all the "unconfirmed parent" transactions? That is basically the chain of unconfirmed transactions you have made... it is like digging yourself into a hole... and then digging further and further...

If you didn't have time anymore to wait, you shouldn't have sent transactions with such low fees. Additionally, by continuing to send coins, using outputs from unconfirmed transactions, you are just making the situation worse.

And now I suspect you have transactions like these two:

https://blockchain.info/tx/367e10a58f3595e86c716c6338efc6a2ba3e707dc956ef50de1b87ff354a5ef4
https://blockchain.info/tx/87a2f637497b927b2e33e774b47671c3f66fdc40274c50d3c6c16c0498690507

which both use fees of around 20 sats/byte... which are now the unconfirmed txes that are blocking :

https://blockchain.info/tx/6896a440fed57e8897f19c94d17f38006c6c7a8e6ceea7589e11f7e061a85afa

which is blocking:

https://blockchain.info/tx/f3ce6ae839a3fede597175e16a828a5cc90e178f72e9baf58b8c2c43cbf54bbf

If your "bitcoin activity depends my entire income", you had better learn how the bitcoin network actually works and how to use appropriate fees... I would also recommend that you stop sending long chains of unconfirmed transactions...

In the future, make sure you use "Dynamic Fees" and ensure you have enabled "Replace-By-Fee"...  that way you might be able to bump the fees of stuck transactions to try and get them confirmed faster.

why did you not use the cpfp option? right click on the unconfirmed transaction and use child pays for parent to bump the fee:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5zchm8/sent_transaction_with_low_fees_in_electrum_can_i/dex2alq/

I did that and it only wasted my bitcoins. This feature doesn't work.

Anyway,

After waiting for TOO LONG long, all (yes all) transactions that were problematic are now solved. No pending transactions anymore.

BUT

The problem is even worse: None of transactions got refunded! The destination (receiver - to whom i wanted to pay) bitcoin addresses were changed in the meantime and all my bitcoins are lost. I didn't get any refund. Only balance disappeared.

You have to set a fee that is high enough for 2 transactions. So maybe you didn't set a high enough fee.


If the transactions confirmed then it is not the fault of electrum or the bitcoin network. The fault now lies with the recipient. Just because they gave you a different address for your NEXT transaction doesn't mean that they no longer control the address from the previous transaction. So take this up with them. Send them a link to the relevant page on a block explorer to show them that you have paid.