Blockchain transaction taking forever

[ChasingCarsEU]

Hello!

I've been using Blockchain ever since I started messing around with bitcoins. Transactions sometimes do take a while longer but not knowing a lot about bitcoin transactions let me ask you this:

Is it normal for a transaction that has been since the start on 'High Priority' to take this long to even reach 1 confirmation?

https://blockchain.info/tx/c355ee3fa2ad38e7791397b0ae1f0ebe63fe4b901a9ada70e2be2018ba54ea4b

It has almost been 3 hours now!

Cheers

[DannyHamilton]

Your transaction fee of 512 nanobitcoins (51.2 Satoshis) per byte isn't too bad, but given the current backlog of transactions waiting to be confirmed, I think I'd have increased that to something more like 800 nanobitcoins (80 Satoshis) per byte for quick confirmation.

For your 372 byte transaction, that would be a fee of 0.00029760 BTC instead of the 0.00019046 BTC that you paid.

It's difficult to say with certainty, but at the fee that you paid I'd guess that it might confirm sometime in the next 12 hours.

[erikalui]

It's happening since yesterday. My transaction of 0.03 BTC also took 2 hours to get confirmed with a fee of $0.1. You just need to wait as there's no other option.

[ChasingCarsEU]

Your transaction fee of 512 nanobitcoins (51.2 Satoshis) per byte isn't too bad, but given the current backlog of transactions waitig to be confirmed, I think I'd have increased that to something more like 800 nanobitcoins (80 Satoshis) per byte for quick confirmation.

That would be a fee of 0.00029760 BTC instead of the 0.00019046 BTC that you paid.

It's difficult to say with certainty, but at the fee that you paid I'd guess that it might confirm sometime in the next 12 hours.

Thank you for the explanation!

I'm just now starting to look into bitcoin technicalities and therefore I had a few doubts.

How do you check the current backlog of transactions waiting to be confirmed ?

And how do you do those type of calculations into knowing what kind of fee should be sent to hurry the transaction up ?

Cheers!

It's happening since yesterday. My transaction of 0.03 BTC also took 2 hours to get confirmed with a fee of $0.1. You just need to wait as there's no other option.

Oh alright, thank you!

I'll just wait then!

[DannyHamilton]

Thank you for the explanation!

I'm just now starting to look into bitcoin technicalities and therefore I had a few doubts.

How do you check the current backlog of transactions waiting to be confirmed?

A lot of people use the https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ website to get a pretty good look into the current state of transactions and fees.

Others have written their own software to monitor the memory pool and recent blocks of their own full node.

And how do you do those type of calculations into knowing what kind of fee should be sent to hurry the transaction up ?

A well written bitcoin wallet should already be doing these calculations for you and recommending a fee to get fast confirmation.  Unfortunately there aren't very many well written wallets yet.  I've found that the Bitcoin Core wallet "Recommended" fee has worked well for me as long as I've had it running for at least 30 minutes (preferably longer) before I send my transaction and I set the "Confirmation Time" slider all the way to the "fast" setting.

It needs to be running for a bit so it can collect information about the transactions in recent blocks as well as transactions currently unconfirmed.  If you just start it up and immediately send a transaction, it won't be able to calculate accurately.

If you know which outputs are going to be spent by the transaction (if your wallet provides coin control features), and you know how many new outputs you are going to create, then you can get a pretty good estimate of the size of the transaction before you send it.

[ChasingCarsEU]

Thank you for the explanation!

I'm just now starting to look into bitcoin technicalities and therefore I had a few doubts.

How do you check the current backlog of transactions waiting to be confirmed?

A lot of people use the https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ website to get a pretty good look into the current state of transactions and fees.

Others have written their own software to monitor the memory pool and recent blocks of their own full node.

And how do you do those type of calculations into knowing what kind of fee should be sent to hurry the transaction up ?

A well written bitcoin wallet should already be doing these calculations for you and recommending a fee to get fast confirmation.  Unfortunately there aren't very many well written wallets yet.  I've found that the Bitcoin Core wallet "Recommended" fee has worked well for me as long as I've had it running for at least 30 minutes (preferably longer) before I send my transaction and I set the "Confirmation Time" slider all the way to the "fast" setting.

It needs to be running for a bit so it can collect information about the transactions in recent blocks as well as transactions currently unconfirmed.  If you just start it up and immediately send a transaction, it won't be able to calculate accurately.

If you know which outputs are going to be spent by the transaction (if your wallet provides coin control features), and you know how many new outputs you are going to create, then you can get a pretty good estimate of the size of the transaction before you send it.

Checked https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ and it looks pretty neat. Thank you for the advice, I'll totally start using it now.

Ohhhhhh totally got it now. I assume blockchain doesn't do it like Bitcoin Core does. I haven't seen a 'Confirmation Time' option on blockchain aswell.

I'll most likely consider switching wallets after your great explanation and advice on Bitcoin Core.

Thank you, cheers!

[DannyHamilton]

Ohhhhhh totally got it now. I assume blockchain doesn't do it like Bitcoin Core does. I haven't seen a 'Confirmation Time' option on blockchain aswell.

I'll most likely consider switching wallets after your great explanation and advice on Bitcoin Core.

Blockchain.info is one of my least favorite of the most popular wallets.  They've just had too many bugs and downtime in the past for me to feel confident using them for anything more than a bit of "pocket money".

You may want to look into other options instead of Bitcoin Core.  Bitcoin Core is a full node which means that it will download and store the entire blockchain.  That's well over 70 GB of transaction data.  It will also take a while to process through and validate all of those transactions before you can start using it.

I know MultiBit HD and Electrum are pretty popular lightweight wallets that don't need to store the entire blockchain for you.  I'm not sure what features either of them have for choosing transaction fees, btu it might be worth at least looking into them both.

[achow101]

OP, if you can figure out how to sign raw transactions from blockchain.info, then you can use my transaction Fee Booster program: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1506632.0 to do an RBF or CPFP transaction. However, if you do an RBF transaction, this transaction: https://blockchain.info/tx/47456159ba48af0ef8f0357467535135d7344722ef96df65c5f1457ce321f62f , which depends on your transaction, will be invalidated if the RBF tx confirms.

I know MultiBit HD and Electrum are pretty popular lightweight wallets that don't need to store the entire blockchain for you.  I'm not sure what features either of them have for choosing transaction fees, btu it might be worth at least looking into them both.

IIRC Electrum uses dynamic fees so it will always choose the optimal fee but MultiBit HD uses a fixed fee.

[InvestexMarkets]

Electrum is the one I always turn to. Its easy to use, has good features and like you say dynamic fee's. many choices of servers too and other options and wallet types hardware. multisig.

[DannyHamilton]

OP, it appears that your transaction is now confirmed.

If you are done with this conversation, then I suggest you use the "lock topic" button at the bottom of this discussion thread to prevent a lot of spam on the thread.

[ChasingCarsEU]

OP, it appears that your transaction is now confirmed.

If you are done with this conversation, then I suggest you use the "lock topic" button at the bottom of this discussion thread to prevent a lot of spam on the thread.

It is indeed.

Thank you all for the advice and I'll now be locking the topic