I'm using Bitcoin Core.
It's an address from long time ago with quite a few transactions (I used to play and participated in a lot of bitcoin marketplace for fun when I was in college). The total transaction total size came up to 17243 bytes. So, even with 1/vKB, transaction fee came up to 0.00017243 BTC. Left the BTC marketplace since then; therefore wallet has a small amount.

When I make the recent transfer out, I used the total amount minus the fee with $0.00000000 left in the wallet. Therefore, RBF (replace-by-fee) or increasing the fee is not an option because the wallet essentially has 0 satoshi left.

I haven't been using / following BTC besides the brief period in the early days (without aging myself) and totally unfamiliar with most of the terminologies. I apologize. Therefore, I'm not sure how else (besides waiting) for the return and re-issue the transaction. Anywhere anyone can point me to request for the return would be great.

Thank you


Exactly the situation. Don't know how to thumbs up; but, appreciate the understanding.
Hence, the conundrum. And function of BTC besides an invest-able asset class. The early original idea of replacing fiat is not feasible.

I recently submitted a single small transaction (less than USD100 worth of bitcoins at today's price) with lower transaction fee at that time (1 satoshi per vB or about USD10 at today's price). Didn't check mempool at that time to see what was the going rate.

Well, it didn't go through and it had been 12 weeks (3 months) and the transaction is still stuck somewhere. It was never returned to me and it was never committed.

Makes me feel like this is not going to work for a business - to hope some developers will pick up the transaction and remove it from the blockchain and return the BTC; or to go ahead and push it through. Which also makes me wonder how will BTC ever replace a currency?

Thoughts? Ideas? Are my sentiments wrong?

I am using Bitcoin Core version v27.0 zip version. No idea what's replace-by-fee until this morning. Nor what wallet I used. Previously had older version of Bitcoin Core; I read I just need to copy the wallet.dat file from my old laptop (which I did), downloaded the current Bitcoin Core version on my new desktop, drop in the wallet.dat file and ran. It looks like it's all caught up when I send out on July 4th, 2024.



Switch servers? I'm not sure what do you mean? Where do I find the server that I'm connected to?
I'm sorry - I'm not familiar with the inner workings of bitcoin. Haven't really played with it. Just got an address long time ago - played the click and get free bitcoin for a bit. That's why the amount is so tiny.



No idea whether it's pruned or full node. How do I tell? Thanks!
If I have to guess, I'd guess it's pruned. Why? Because in my old laptop, it used up quite a bit of my hard disk space. On my recent desktop, I bought extra hard disk thinking it'll be for bitcoin; but, it's used just 13.6GB - it's much much much less than when it was on my old laptop.

Thank you Mia and all for the guidance. I guess I'll patiently wait for the transaction to age out and amount return back to me.

Apologies - missed your earlier point

What is RBF?

How long before the transaction is dropped? I tried to send it on July 4th 2024. So, it has been more than 2 weeks.


Thanks for the site reference - What do I look for in Mempool site? The transaction fees on No Priority, Low Priority, Medium Priority and High Priority?




Apologies - just recheck and it's 0.00156701, so, trying to send about USD104.52.

I have this 0.00156701 bitcoin from a long time ago - probably doing the clicking to earn bitcoin kind of thing. Recently tried to send it to Binance using Bitcoin Core. Really unsure how much fees I need to put to transfer; but, it looks like the transactions is unconfirmed due to low fees.

1) How do I cancel the transaction, get back those bitcoins back to resend?
2) Also, how do you determine the resend fees? Do I look at how much the rate is from websites that show the average transaction fees at that time?

Thank you