Thanks very much guys!! Responses have been quick and clear it really is appreciated.

The plan is to shut down QT and return to it in 4/5 days. Thankfully not in a hurry to transact.

Hi all,

Just getting my feet wet in the world of Bitcoin. Having an absolute mare - any help is greatly appreciated...

Situation
I've bought a clip of bitcoins from an exchange and transferred them to my wallet on my Bitcoin QT:
28th Feb   
Transaction ID: f29e8064fa83832d24fef9d5980bda2502d4ee567596156e2f0561d107ffbeaa-000
This appears to be confirmed.

Next day, I sent a test trade to a friend:
29th Feb
Transaction ID: 643bceaa885d44a96e60bf3c0cbb6d658a6776618a7567793370bd6e94a330db-000
Transaction fee: 0.00002078 BTC (small wonder no-one bothered with this, but I used the default on Bitcoin QT's UI so I wasn't to know as a newbie)

Then I sent the balance of this deposit to a Breadwallet
29th Feb
Transaction ID: a89eee2480e75c160a841037e1606b034af1df9cb9699626cc3fa8b137cd8e9a-000
Transaction fee: 0.00001766 BTC (again, tiny fee, but these did appear in my breadwallet and have even sent little test trades that appeared to work)

Neither of these transactions have any confirmations, and while that in hindsight appears to be entirely my fault - I'd appreciate some direction on what to do about it now.. My options are: wait, some process to amend the fees to something more attractive, somehow delete the transactions and retrn the balance to my wallet.

It gets better...

Not content with spamming the network on small amounts, on the same day I bought a larger sum of bitcoin and sent them to my Bitcoin QT client:
29th Feb
Transaction ID: de0ee47a8bf9cabc9623930070206645927d1fcb5685c58e576647ba097c2f4a-000
This looks to have been confirmed.

I sent another friend a test trade:
29th Feb
Transaction ID: 164a2b32ed7ce581a1d1b0e3c40752744852f45e4f1fd9b22d12484de6d29d0f-000
Transaction fee: 0.00001753 BTC (again no surprises whats happened here)
this is still unconfimed

Then I sent a different exchange a deposit in BTC, this is the stuff I'm really concerned about:
29th Feb
Transaction ID: 2ac1e9890b5afba78dd0c909002b687c508f1c4caef95c47cf388e7b17d8181c-000
Transaction fee: 0.00005431 BTC (its getting embarrassing now)

--This is the first time it was pointed out to me that the fees are entirely too low, even using the Bitcoin Qt recommended defaults.

THEN I sent the balance of my second clip/purchase of bitcoin to the same exchange, but this time with a reasonable fee:
1st March
Transaction ID: 710a78c5855e31049ac4ca23e5ec24ea20d23854471f17ba891f57933025f15f-000
Transaction fee: 0.00011340 BTC

But in spite of the higher fee, this is unconfirmed too. My newbie guess is that because these transactions are all tied together, the first transactions have to be cleared before the last one clears.


It's just a case of establishing if i'm in any serious trouble of losing bitcoins (my impression is that the worst that can happen is that they are stuck in limbo for a very long time or default back to my accounts).

Once I know that is all ok - what the hell do I do now?

Once I know that - how the hell to I stop this from happening again.

I know this is dumb, basic stuff, but its a jungle out there in terms of advice and I just need a clear picture of whats happened and what to do.

many many thanks in advance to anyone who can take pity on me