New to this. Paid tx fee, zero confirmations after several hours. Help?

[confuzzled]

Is anyone able to tell me what I've done wrong here? I've been waiting hours for confirmations but apparently it's not happening anytime soon. Isn't filing me with faith that I should persevere with bitcoin. 

9b1bced645d138443cbc18dbd7002612cc54976ccb612d2d94a6aec4c826397a

[ebliever]

Welcome aboard! Don't get too frazzled. I see it at blockchain.info with a standard TX fee, so I don't think you have an issue.. Keep in mind you'd be waiting days for many forms of financial transfer.

[achow101]

The transaction is trying to spend another unconfirmed transaction, this one: https://blockchain.info/tx/a84fbe6372584f39363e01902e96e4e67858c6c9e8a6cfe511c0a7df8f198420 Once that transaction confirms, so will yours.

[confuzzled]

Thanks for the reassuring responses 
I don't pretend to quite understand what has happened here, but it's good to know that it's apparently a recognized issue.
Could someone offer a brief, noob-friendly outline as to why a84fbe6372584f39363e01902e96e4e67858c6c9e8a6cfe511c0a7df8f198420 (not my wallet) is unconfirmed and how I can avoid this happening again? Not terribly comfortable with the notion that I can spend bitcoins and have them confirmed in minutes not hours, but only conditionally, depending on the way in which they were sent to me.

[favdesu]

Thanks for the reassuring responses 
I don't pretend to quite understand what has happened here, but it's good to know that it's apparently a recognized issue.
Could someone offer a brief, noob-friendly outline as to why a84fbe6372584f39363e01902e96e4e67858c6c9e8a6cfe511c0a7df8f198420 (not my wallet) is unconfirmed and how I can avoid this happening again? Not terribly comfortable with the notion that I can spend bitcoins and have them confirmed in minutes not hours, but only conditionally, depending on the way in which they were sent to me.

https://blockchain.info/tx/a84fbe6372584f39363e01902e96e4e67858c6c9e8a6cfe511c0a7df8f198420

check the "fees" - it's quite low. I'm waiting since 2 hours too for a low fee TX. just takes some time, but it will go through eventually

[achow101]

There is quite a large number of unconfirmed transactions, 11800 and counting. This is creating a large backlog and is possibly why these transactions have not been confirmed yet.

[ebliever]

Thanks for the reassuring responses 
I don't pretend to quite understand what has happened here, but it's good to know that it's apparently a recognized issue.
Could someone offer a brief, noob-friendly outline as to why a84fbe6372584f39363e01902e96e4e67858c6c9e8a6cfe511c0a7df8f198420 (not my wallet) is unconfirmed and how I can avoid this happening again? Not terribly comfortable with the notion that I can spend bitcoins and have them confirmed in minutes not hours, but only conditionally, depending on the way in which they were sent to me.

I'm not really an expert, but when someone generates a chain of transactions in rapid sequence it looks like something like this can happen. The simple lesson is try to avoid such sequences by not sending bitcoins through multiple TX's if you have anything to say about it.

I've never run into such a situation myself, at least not that I've noticed. Normally a person is going to be spending bitcoin that they've had for days/weeks/months, not a few minutes or hours, so the funds they send will already be confirmed. And most 3rd party services and software wallets require a certain level of confirmations before they would let you send funds anyway. In fact, it makes me curious as to how the sender of your bitcoin managed to (apparently) circumvent that and spend unconfirmed bitcoin! Did you buy the bitcoin on an online exchange like Coinbase, or from some guy on a street with Localbitcoins, or what? (Just curious, don't answer if you don't want to.)

[RodeoX]

Could this be related to the orphan block incident this weekend?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1108304.0

[ebliever]

There is quite a large number of unconfirmed transactions, 11800 and counting. This is creating a large backlog and is possibly why these transactions have not been confirmed yet.

Someone was speculating about another bitcoin stress test going on. Or maybe a frenzy has started in the PIGS?

EDIT: Apparently the answer is yes - 150 TX/second is way more than the Bitcoin network can handle. Someone is clogging up the system. Stupid of them considering the timing, we don't need to be driving new folks away with a test that gives results we all already know!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1111811.msg11807542#msg11807542

[Amph]

There is quite a large number of unconfirmed transactions, 11800 and counting. This is creating a large backlog and is possibly why these transactions have not been confirmed yet.

Someone was speculating about another bitcoin stress test going on. Or maybe a frenzy has started in the PIGS?

EDIT: Apparently the answer is yes - 150 TX/second is way more than the Bitcoin network can handle. Someone is clogging up the system. Stupid of them considering the timing, we don't need to be driving new folks away with a test that gives results we all already know!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1111811.msg11807542#msg11807542

those test are actaully useful to determinate from when we should start with the TX increase in the XT client or future core upgrade, because maybe 4mb would be sufficient instead of the 8MB planned

[favdesu]

There is quite a large number of unconfirmed transactions, 11800 and counting. This is creating a large backlog and is possibly why these transactions have not been confirmed yet.

Someone was speculating about another bitcoin stress test going on. Or maybe a frenzy has started in the PIGS?

EDIT: Apparently the answer is yes - 150 TX/second is way more than the Bitcoin network can handle. Someone is clogging up the system. Stupid of them considering the timing, we don't need to be driving new folks away with a test that gives results we all already know!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1111811.msg11807542#msg11807542

those test are actaully useful to determinate from when we should start with the TX increase in the XT client or future core upgrade, because maybe 4mb would be sufficient instead of the 8MB planned

hmm... what if some entity is trying to force bigger blocks with this spam? who would gain the most of bigger blocks?