Bitcoin Forum

07/05/2011 16:27 I made a transaction of 80 btc to another wallet on another computer of mine, both with version 0.3.23 . I had by accident changed the fee to 0.00 btc but I sent 20 btc just a minute before and didn't think about it.  Now it's been some time since I did the transaction and it's still
Status: 0/unconfirmed and I'm starting to get really worried since that transaction represents the great majority of all my bitcoins.  I know it's stupid to set the fee to zero but every time I have done it before the transaction went trough in 24 h.
Another reason I'm worried is also becuase I lost 0.07 btc in the same way some time ago ( http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8048.msg118905#msg118905 ).

I looked at blockexplorer and I can't see a trace of my transaction.
Well I'm basically just want to know if there is any chance my transaction will get processed eventually or if I am just fucked?
If I'm fucked I think I'll start losing faith in the bitcoin project, I guess I have done about a sum of 120 transaction and now lost two...

Anyhow I would be grateful for any help.  For example, have anybody experienced a really really slow transaction with fee set to zero?


Status: 0/unconfirmed
Date: 07/05/2011 16:27
To: 1AtwGxS9cZqViumwg2AjrBdNijTmCtz1We
Debit: -80.00
Net amount: -80.00

You mean you can set the transaction fee to $0? Why would you set the fee higher at all?

You are fine. The DDOS on the pools has slowed down confirmation a little. Just give it a few hours.

EDIT, Make sure that the number of "blocks" shown in the bottom of your client is 135223 or more. If it isn't your client just hasn't caught up.

GeniuSxBoY, are you serious?
The higher fee the faster the transaction get processed.

DamienBlack, I sure hope so. It's been a day or two now and I'm starting to get a bit worried so to say.

I've never sent any transaction fee above 0. Don't worry you can't lose it. Check your block number in the client.

Have you kept your sending client running for some time? Your transaction is not in the transaction pool (see http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/), your client should rebroadcast it after some uptime.

news to me. I never pay fees

Amazing, I always try to have it on like 0.01 or 0.02.

I have the whole blockchain downloaded on both computers/wallets though =(

Yeah, It have uptime and the whole blockchain.
Hmm, so I guess I lost the 80 btc then.

maybe divide big payments up into smaller transactions so you dont lose it all at once

Make sure the sending computer is hooked up to the network, aka, there are connection in the bottom right.

If all else fails, copy your wallet to a different computer, then run bitcoin with the -rescan option. It is possible the coins have never been sent, if that were the case, they will still be there.

But seriously, don't worry. You _can't_ lose your bitcoins like this. They are either in one address or the other, we'll get you sorted out.

0.00BTC fee + small transfer = could be days before your payment gets accepted by nodes and confirmed in the worst case

because it gets the lowest possible priority

Never took longer than 3 hours for me.

There is no way to lose it, accept by sending it to an address you don't have control of. And a "typo" won't do it, there is a checksum, so the client knows what a real address is.

Ok, well I'm downloading the blockchain right now with the same wallet and hoping for the best.

I doubt you have lost it.  The transaction just has not broadcast yet. It could take a while to fix.  Once I was stuck on 0/? For two hours.  

If the transaction wasn't broadcasted should it not say 0/offline? I mean, if the transaction was accepted by at least one peer the original wallet has that information in it, right?

Or is there a way of aborting a transaction before it gets accepted by other peers, say when you are offline and press send?

Please -rescan. And whatever you do, don't give up on it. The way bitcoin works is that it either exists at one address, or the other. There is no in between. It isn't at the address you sent it to, so it is still, as far as the network is concerned, at the original address. If you gave me your wallet, I could access those 80 BTC, and so can you.

http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/#e1cfb868247088fb3b80ef446e43828b6ad305b72deabbc8240a6484f44b244e

Is that your transaction?  It's the only unconfirmed transaction for 80 BTC.

Doesn't look like the address he listed at all.

Yea, I know it doesn't look like it.... but it's the only unconfirmed 80 BTC transaction currently out there.

Nah, that's not it.

I forgot to mention that I can't see the transaction on my receiving wallet/address/computer at all, not even as 0/unconfirmed. I hope that's a good sign.
Anyhow I'm rescanning the blockchain right now, will update here on any progress or failure.

If the -rescan fails at first, move the wallet to a new client/computer/fresh install, and rescan there.

About a week ago, I had a no-fee confirmation take approximately 12 hours.

Ok, I I'm done with the first rescan an I got no luck.

Gonna try it on another computer now.

You can't have lost the bitcoins. If the transaction never gets committed, the 80 BTC never left. Your client just thinks they did. If the transaction does get committed, the 80 BTC will arrive at their destination.

Worst case, you can do the following:

1) Note the transaction ID.
2) Stop the client that sent the transaction.
3) Make sure the transaction is not in the block chain.
4) Make sure the transaction is not in the list of pending transactions. (Available here: http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/ )
5) On the client you stopped, make a backup of the 'wallet.dat' file. Put it in one or more safe places.
6) db_dump the wallet.dat file to a text file.
7) Remove the wallet.dat file.
8 ) Search the text file for the *reversed* transaction ID. So if the txid start 1234567890..., search for 9078563412.
9) Remove the line starting with 02 and the following line, such that those two lines contain the transaction.
10) db_load the text file into the wallet.dat file.
11) Restart the client passing it the '-rescan' flag. The transaction should be gone.
12) Double-check the transaction is not in the block chain or list of pending transactions. If it is, stop your client and revert to the saved 'wallet.dat' file.

You're done. You're now in sync.

In the future, leave transaction fees at their defaults.

Alternatively, if you're in no hurry, just wait many hours with the client running. The coins will age and the transaction will gradually gain priority.

(The client really needs a way to delete an unconfirmed transaction.)

Sorry to go off topic - JoelKatz - is that a David Koresh mugshot for your avatar? lol

Had the same thing happen to me. For some reason the sending client did not transmit the transaction to the network.

A developer in IRC told me that it'll try again every few days (yes, days).

What helped me was restarting the sending client every 5 minutes for 2 hours :-)
Then the transaction appeared on the receiving client.

I used to look a lot more like a terrorist or religious fanatic than I do now. I should update my profile picture, I look much more distinguished now.

oh lol my bad dude, definitely update that!

A while ago I had a strange thing happen which might help this situation.  I transferred to another wallet, then shut down the receiving client as soon as it received the transaction.  The transaction was NOT in the blockchain at this point, it had simply been broadcast throughout the network, including to the receiving machine.

Now, before restarting the receiving wallet.dat again, I had in the interim updated the blockchain with another wallet.dat.  So I restored the original receiving wallet.dat (with the 0/unconfirmed coins) and started with -rescan.  No luck.  At this point the transaction *was* in the blockchain, the client *was* rescanning, but those coins stubbornly stayed at 0/unconfirmed and I couldn't spend them.

I gathered eventually that rescanning doesn't work so well for 0/unconfirmed transactions and the only solution I found was to start a new client and either download the whole blockchain from the start, or use a blockchain that hadn't yet downloaded the block I needed.

After all that, though, if your transaction is neither in the blockchain nor the pending transactions, then it would seem the coins were never sent.  Don't know what to do there, sorry!

It should be noted that you can never actually lose funds this way, only have them trapped by the wallet, a little bit of effort on the part of someone who knows what they're doing and the funds would be available again.

Sorry for bumping this but I just wanted to update and say that I got my coins back.
First i tried to rescan and download the blockchain on the same computer and on several other computer by just copying my wallet, but with no luck.

Then I tried to do the same with an older version of the same wallet and it worked like a charm!  :)
Thanks for the help everybody!

I had the same problem once (on OSX client, which is buggy). What I think happened was that my block chain got somehow corrupted - or even my wallet.dat. Do you have an earlier backup of the wallet.dat?

How I fixed the issue:

1) shut down bitcoin client / daemon
2) take a backup of your current wallet.dat (you could backup the block chain DBs as well, for later debug or what not)
3) delete the current wallet.dat and all block chain data (usually in the same folder)
4) replace only the wallet.dat to the folder (I used an older backup, I'd recommend that since I suspected that the stale transaction was already written to it. You could try the current wallet.dat as well if you don't have backups).
5) restart bitcoin and redownload the block chain (on OSX this can be _really_ slow. I mounted a RamFS for this purpose.)
6) Once the block chain is up to date, you should have a balance that includes the 80 BTC you thought you lost.

Let me know how it goes or if you have any questions.

No way in hell do you ever lose any BTC, any "loss" was something you overlooked. It took me 3 days to transfer 100 BTC one time because I chose not to pay any fees.

Could you please update the title to say that it was solved? All these threads of losing bitcoins are not good for the image of bitcoin. Thank you !

Nigga plz.

Read the posts before you answer.
It's not that hard.

You don't have to update your wallet.dat right? because it will automatically update on the network once it downloads all the blocks? correct?

But this is not is not an optimal solution.  This guy now has two wallet.dats with more-or-less the same info.  But now if he tries to send those 80BTC again, they won't necessarily come from the same source addresses from the backup wallet.dat (he might have spent other coins in the interim and received change which the client would prefer to spend first).

So now he must either completely empty all coins from both wallet.dats or continue using both in parallel, and each client will miss transactions generated by the other, not to mention that the cache of 100 addresses will be different.

Or... maybe... does -rescan also capture *outgoing* transactions on the addresses in a wallet?  I seem to remember that it doesn't, but that it would soon.

I think the client needs to have a separate file for private keys and transaction data, if the wallet file does contain transaction data. a consolidate button would be nice too. that way, once or twice a month we could do that and have the coins in 1 neat and tidy address, so overall we would use less space in the blocks. sometimes i look in the explorer and see like 10 addresses give me like 1BC combined,kind of wasteful.