Missing transaction [Solved]

[kilgore]

Hi guys and gals,

Hadn't used my BTC in quite a while but wanted to make a purchase at a local store that accepts BTC.

My bitcoin-qt was 50 weeks out of date, so I decided to switch to Electrum rather than wait for the blockchain to download.

I made a small transfer from Bitcoin-qt to my new Electrum wallet to test, it worked out fine and the BTC showed up almost immediately. About 30 minutes later I transferred the rest to the same address and they never arrived!

I checked the transactions at Blockchain.info and saw the first transaction, but the second is not there. The transaction ID of the missing transaction also did not show up.

Both transactions were from August 5th.

I'm not quite sure how to proceed. Are my hard earned BTC lost forever? Do I need to update my blockchain on bitcoin-qt to find out if they bounced back? I haven't experienced this issue in the past, would appreciate any advice.

kilgore

[cr1776]

Bitcoins are either spent or unspent, so there is no "bounce back".  So I wouldn't stress about losing coins yet  :-)

If you know the transaction id of the first transaction, that would be a start to see what is going on. You might also try looking at a different block explorer to be sure. 

But one thing to do (as you had wondered) is to let Bitcoin Core fully sync since when you did that first transfer you may have sent a small part to the new wallet and the rest when to a change address.  Since Core is not fully sync'd, that might be an issue.  Hard to say for sure without looking at more info.

:-)

[kilgore]

Thanks, cr1776!

I just read your post as I was going to edit the orginal, but I suppose a reply will do as well.

After poking around in the forum I see many people are missing transactions because of fees that are too small. I've been out of the loop for a while and didn't realize that this fee thing had become so serious!

The fee of my "missing" transaction was a shameful 0.00000763 BTC   

I know its bad protocoll to change queries mid-thread, but if it is in fact due to a small transaction fee, how long will I have to wait for a miner to pick it up? It has now been almost a week since the orginal transaction, assuming it went through properly despite my out-of-sync bitcoin-qt.

Thanks!

Kilgore

[shorena]

After a week most of the network will have forgotten your TX ever existed, unless its confirmed. According to you, its not, so the best advice I can think of is: let it sync. It will for one make sure that the client is up to date and also make sure its rebroadcasting the unconfirmed transaction to remind the network that it needs to get into a block. Whether or not the fee is too low depends on the size of the TX in bytes and the priority. Assuming only a few old inputs and a single output it should be high enough.

[kilgore]

Thanks shorena!

I will do as you both suggest and allow my bitcoin core to catch up to the chain. My hope is that the Tx will be picked up before I'm completely synched, as that will probably take weeks at this point...

Thanks for the advice!

[twister]

If it is due to low transaction fee then as Shorena pointed it out it will get forgotten in a week and the BTC will show back in your wallet but until then you can either sync it or export it's private keys out and import them into Electrum and it will sync instantly and either it will show the balance in the wallet or it will show the transaction with the low fee. If it shows the balance just send it again with proper fee to your new electrum generated address as after exporting the keys they are considered not safe.

[DannyHamilton]

If you post the raw transaction here, someone can rebroadcast it for you so that you don't have to wait for your wallet to finish synchronizing before it shows back up on the network.

Also, if you post the raw transaction here and tell us what transaction fee you would prefer to pay, then it may be possible for someone to restructure the transaction for you.  They would then have to send the restructured transaction back to you so that you could use the wallet to sign the new transaction.  Then it could be broadcast for you so that it would confirm quickly.

Be very careful about signing a transaction that is sent back to you.  It is possible for someone to restructure the transaction to steal all of your bitcoins, and if you sign and broadcast that there will be no way to get your bitcoins back.  If you don't know how to analyze a transaction and understand exactly what it is doing, then it would be best to post any UNSIGNED raw transaction here in the forum and wait for several highly trusted members to all confirm that the transaction does what you intend it to do before you sign and broadcast it.

[kilgore]

Thanks for the extra replies. Though I've been "using" BTC for years I remain a well-seasoned noob. I don't know what the "raw transaction" is, nor do I understand how to restructure it, nor do I know the difference between signed and unsigned transactions...don't think I ever "signed" anything for BTC. I never could figure out how to properly export my Bitcoin Wallet to a format that Electrum can use, which is why I'm just using a new wallet and transferring everything over. Never thought a simple bitcoin transaction would be so complicated!

Nevertheless, DannyHamilton, I would be happy to take you up on your offer to post the raw transaction and hope that the extra broadcasts speed up the process. That is, if someone is willing to tell me how to find that information. My searching on the matter only reveals more of my ignornance :/

[DannyHamilton]

- snip -
Nevertheless, DannyHamilton, I would be happy to take you up on your offer to post the raw transaction and hope that the extra broadcasts speed up the process. That is, if someone is willing to tell me how to find that information. My searching on the matter only reveals more of my ignornance :/

In Bitcoin Core click on the "Help" Menu.

In there you will find an option for "Debug Window", click on it.

In the Debug Window that pops up, you'll see a tab for "Console".  Choose that.

In the Console, type (Replacing the yourTransactionIDHere with your actual transaction ID):

Code:

getrawtransaction yourTransactionIDHere

The console will dump out a mess of numbers and letters (A through F) in what will appear to be a random fashion. This is the hexadecimal representation of the transaction that your wallet created and tried to broadcast to the network.  This is safe to share with anyone as long as you still want that original transaction to be rebroadcast to the network.  It will look something like this:

Code:

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

If you want to change the original transaction (such as to increase the transaction fee that it paid), then you don't want the original transaction to be broadcast.  Once peer nodes hear about the original transaction, they will add it to their memory pool and will reject any replacement transaction that you create until the original transaction is old enough for them to drop it from their memory pool (which could be a few days).  Therefore, if you want to replace the original transaction with a new one, then you may want to just send the raw transaction directly to one (or more) people that you trust to manipulate it for you without broadcasting it.

If someone does manipulate the original transaction for you, then you (or they) should post the new modified and unsigned transaction publicly here.  That way other trusted users can confirm for you that the transaction does what you intend before you sign it.

Whomever modifies the transaction for you will be able to give you instructions on how to sign it, but again you (or they) should post those instructions here so that other trusted members can review what you're being told to do and can confirm that it is correct and won't result in anything malicious.

I'm headed out right now, and will return in a couple of hours.  I'll check my PM and check back in this thread at that time.

[kilgore]

Thanks again, DannyHamilton


I would prefer not to change the transaction, that sounds kind of messy, and just hope that the original will be broadcast and accepted into a block.

Here is the raw transaction:

Code:

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

If any of you would like to help by rebroadcasting I would really appreciate it!

[CIYAM]

If any of you would like to help by rebroadcasting I would really appreciate it!

If it lacks a sufficient fee then it won't really help to have others rebroadcast it at all.

Although I have been "tarred" by BadBear over a drunken mistake (that didn't lead to anyone losing any BTC but has resulted in my account now looking like that of a "scammer") if you like I will review any raw tx changes that Danny makes (as I do have the skills to create raw txs myself) and post the results in this topic (and hopefully there will be some others knowledgeable enough that will do the same).

Looking at your raw tx with a decoder the output is as follows:

Code:

"version":1,
   "vin_sz":4,
   "hash":"7b4b275b6fe8184397d9ce3e853552e5a28b1b746245d46a239efce2da7f7154",
   "vout_sz":1,
   "out":[
      {
         "script_string":"OP_DUP OP_HASH160 3fb0ff03114b9342620b8fc5a28de4708d5ebba5 OP_EQUALVERIFY OP_CHECKSIG",
         "address":"16ombzaeDzr229vA2AHiQEoKqDGHDR9PTR",
         "value":99999237,
         "script":"76a9143fb0ff03114b9342620b8fc5a28de4708d5ebba588ac"
      }
   ]

So the change that would be required would be to change the "value" amount from 99999237 to say 999 (although perhaps you could get away with a lesser fee).

Most importantly you need to make sure that *only* the "value" looks different (when you are given the changed script).

[kilgore]

Thanks for the offer, CIYAM!

I did some searching about rebroadcasting a transaction and managed to do it myself (!) at blockchain.info. Et voila! The transaction showed up nearly instantly in my electrum wallet.

As an aside regarding the fee - Bitcoin-qt generated the fee in what seemed to be an automatic manner, I did not choose that amount myself, only approved it. It seems there is a lot of talk about the fees but its hard to find a consensus on what an appropriate transaction fee should be for any given transaction.

I will updated this thread once my Tx has been confirmed.

Thanks!

kilgore

[CIYAM]

Hopefully the tx will get confirmed (but just because blockchain.info accepted it being pushed doesn't necessarily mean it will be confirmed - but it is a good sign that the tx was picked up by your client as that means the tx is "standard" in regards to the fee amount).

Keep following the tx on blockchain.info and your wallet to make sure it does confirm (after a single confirm you should be okay).

Sometimes I have found that due to poor internet connectivity pushing the tx via blockchain.info does do the trick (also my bitcoin-qt is well behind now so that might be another reason I have seen the same problem and solved it the same way).

[CIYAM]

It would appear you are now fine: https://blockchain.info/tx/7b4b275b6fe8184397d9ce3e853552e5a28b1b746245d46a239efce2da7f7154

[kilgore]

yes! one confirmation! Glad to know these BTC are still active after all these years, thanks for the help!!

[DannyHamilton]

yes! one confirmation! Glad to know these BTC are still active after all these years, thanks for the help!!

No problem.

Glad we were table to help you get access to your bitcoins a bit faster.