Received two payments, one is confirming, one is not.

[irishfight]

So i received two payments from two different people. One is epay.com (faucet site) for a grand total of 0.00006908 BTC:
https://blockchain.info/tx/d7bd0ce0afb5747980bd3de24d15d468e8b66e78299388e7484c2ea381e1afe8

As of writing this, its still not confirmed.

Then i also received another payment a few hours later:
https://blockchain.info/tx/b7e3cbe22c84f194a293010d3070cea8286632815ae0c9ec13ab802ea10c68a2

That one is confirming fine, but since they were both in my wallet, when i went to send the money from the second, it also sent the money from the first, so now the payment is sitting there unconfirmed. Is there anything i can do? That $0.02 worth of bitcoin is really screwing up the other money.

Thanks.

[DeathAndTaxes]

There is nothing you can do to make it confirm faster.  The sender sent 0.1 mBTC in fees but the minimum fee is 0.1mBTC per KB and the txn is 5KB.  To be compliant the txn should have paid 0.5mBTC not 0.1mBTC in fees.  Unless a miner is running custom software they treat a txn with a fee below the minimum as a txn with no fee.   You just need to wait.  It could be confirmed in an hour, or not confirmed in a day.  It all depends on if/when a miner will willing to pickup that big spammy transaction without a fee.  If the sender is using custom software that doesn't consider the transaction size this will continue to happen so if you expect payments from them in the future you may want to ask them to fix their code.

As far as spending most wallets will use confirmed txns over unconfirmed ones so if you spend an amount less than or equal to the value of the confirmed txn only (including the fee) then it should spend only that output.  If you need to spend an amount greater than that you will just need to wait.  If your wallet is picking unconfirmed outputs over confirmed ones that is also bad code.


D&T PSA:  Bitcoin fees are always expressed PER KILOBYTE.  If everyone writing code remembered that then there would be less unexpected results.  Paying a fee less than the minimum recommended amount is pointless either pay the full minimum or pay nothing. 

[irishfight]

There is nothing you can do to make it confirm faster.  The sender sent 0.1 mBTC in fees but the minimum fee is 0.1mBTC per KB and the txn is 5KB.  To be compliant the txn should have paid 0.5mBTC not 0.1mBTC in fees.  Unless a miner is running custom software they treat a txn with a fee below the minimum as a txn with no fee.   You just need to wait.  It could be confirmed in an hour, or not confirmed in a day.  It all depends on if/when a miner will willing to pickup that big spammy transaction without a fee.  If the sender is using custom software that doesn't consider the transaction size this will continue to happen so if you expect payments from them in the future you may want to ask them to fix their code.

As far as spending most wallets will use confirmed txns over unconfirmed ones so if you spend an amount less than or equal to the value of the confirmed txn only (including the fee) then it should spend only that output.  If you need to spend an amount greater than that you will just need to wait.  If your wallet is picking unconfirmed outputs over confirmed ones that is also bad code.


D&T PSA:  Bitcoin fees are always expressed PER KILOBYTE.  If everyone writing code remembered that then there would be less unexpected results.  Paying a fee less than the minimum recommended amount is pointless either pay the full minimum or pay nothing. 

Okay, my wallet is Blockchain.info - which i thought was a good wallet service. And is there a chance that a miner will NEVER pick it up? And where are the bitcoins right now?

Thanks for the help.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Okay, my wallet is Blockchain.info - which i thought was a good wallet service.

They are. Personally I prefer to use a full node but that is just me.  Maybe someone who knows more about bc.i can chime in but I believe that you can pick the exact outputs you want to spend.  Just create a new transaction which only includes your confirmed outputs and it should confirm just fine.  If you the amount you need to send is more than the value of the output(s) which are already confirmed then you will need to wait.

And is there a chance that a miner will NEVER pick it up?

In theory yes but I think that is unlikely.  The txn isn't that big and the fee isn't that low.  I believe eligus picks up low fee txns so it could be sent directly to them but I am not sure their requirements.  Honestly you probably just have to wait.

And where are the bitcoins right now?

That is somewhat of a meta question.  There are actually no "bitcoins" just transactions.  So until this transaction confirms, the outputs the sender spent are still unspent so you could say the sender still has them.  It is important to realize that Bitcoins can't be "lost" in this manner, either the sender has them or the receiver has them.  There is never a period of time when neither party has 'them'.  The issue is that the network tries to make it difficult to double spend and thus while this txn is out there unconfirmed the network will actively try to prevent a double spend of it.  Even double spends with a corrected fee. Since you can't directly control any other node these type of problems are best avoided by paying the correct fee.

[irishfight]

Okay, my wallet is Blockchain.info - which i thought was a good wallet service.

They are. Personally I prefer to use a full node but that is just me.  Maybe someone who knows more about bc.i can chime in but I believe that you can pick the exact outputs you want to spend.  Just create a new transaction which only includes your confirmed outputs and it should confirm just fine.  If you the amount you need to send is more than the value of the output(s) which are already confirmed then you will need to wait.

And is there a chance that a miner will NEVER pick it up?

In theory yes but I think that is unlikely.  The txn isn't that big and the fee isn't that low.  I believe eligus picks up low fee txns so it could be sent directly to them but I am not sure their requirements.  Honestly you probably just have to wait.

And where are the bitcoins right now?

That is somewhat of a meta question.  There are actually no "bitcoins" just transactions.  So until this transaction confirms the sender the outputs the sender spent are still unspent so you could say the sender still has them.  It is important to realize that Bitcoins can't be "lost".  Either the sender has them or the receiver has them.  The issue is that the network tries to make it difficult to double spend and thus while this txn is out there the network will actively try to prevent a double spend of it (even one with the correct fee) from propogating.  Since you can't directly control any other node these type of problems are best avoided by paying the correct fee.

I see, yeah ive never had this issue before and ive received bitcoins from epay - so i didnt think it would be an issue now. I just tried to respend them, but a no go - i guess its down to waiting.

Thanks for the explanations and ill try to update this if i ever get them.

EDIT: Update, got the coins. Took about 8 hours. Looks like Antpool picked it up.

[DannyHamilton]

So i received two payments from two different people. One is epay.com (faucet site) for a grand total of 0.00006908 BTC:
https://blockchain.info/tx/d7bd0ce0afb5747980bd3de24d15d468e8b66e78299388e7484c2ea381e1afe8

If possible you should contact epay and let them know that they have a bug in their code and that they are not including a reasonable sized fee in some of their transactions.

Then you should let them know that you will refuse to use their service until they've fixed the problem.

Then you should let others know that epay is unreliable and that their service can cause issues receiving bitcoins due to insufficient transaction fees.

That's how market forces get things done.  The service provider is under pressure from their service clients to meet the needs of the clients as long as the clients are willing to take their business elsewhere and are willing to spread the word about the problem through word of mouth advertising.  If people continue to use the service and don't tell others about the problem, then the service provider has no incentive to fix the issue and it is likely to continue to be a problem for a long time.