EDIT: Unsurprisingly, the confirms did eventually show up, but I'm still curious as to why the Bitcoin-Qt client behaves as described in the post. Anyone here have a clue why it does?
This question pertains to this transaction (txid 002fa752ba66602fa3cfa8b60b2d1094e057a99011e46881b196a2b75cda864f):
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
It's a 2.5 BTC transaction between addresses 12Mhqv7s1W6yCD1fGQCZ8URGG2urv4xL29 and 1JHvM69LhkJPUFjDipfdtWMxEEpHUmqTLbj with a .00008192 transaction fee (a wallet and a Coinbase account). I made the transaction, then sold the Bitcoins for ACH earlier today.
The reason for the unusual transaction fee size is I was testing the free transaction relay policy earlier, and it was seemingly not working. I'd added the node for the policy by using the commandline flag -addnode=173.242.112.53, and changed the default transaction fee to .00008192 BTC which is the fee for that server.
Now, I should have changed it back at that point, but instead, I gave up on it and went on to other things and forgot about it. I didn't think about it again until, prompted by the price of Bitcoin lately, I did a small cashout to Coinbase and sold the BTC for USD. I noticed it was a bit odd it didn't prompt me for a transaction fee, as it usually does. However, the transaction seemed to be taking longer than usual to confirm, so I checked the details, and was surprised to notice the transaction as 2.500008192.
Sure enough, it had finally used that transaction fee, despite having refused to use it for every other transaction I had tried. I also noticed it was relayed by 184.152.8.228, and seems to have propagated through the network.
To make sure, I used
Blockchain's pushtx page and pasted the raw transaction into it, and got the "Error Pushing Transaction Error Pushing. Transaction already exists" message that indicates the transaction already went through.
So now, the questions.
1) Why did Bitcoin-Qt not use the free transaction relay, or the default transaction fee I set in the Preferences menu, until this transaction?
2) Why does it not seem to have used 173.242.112.53, the free transaction relay node, for the transaction?
3) When is it likely to confirm, given these circumstances? (I'd assume after some possibly substantial delay, but this question might answer itself before anyone answers.)
I sent another 2.5 BTC to Coinbase to cover the sale in the interim while I wait, but it's rather curious (and inconvenient) that using this transaction system didn't work when I was testing it, but then suddenly decided to "work" the moment it would inconvenience me. It Bitcoin-Qt broken?
I'd kind of like to actually use the free transaction relay policy for micro-transactions that I don't care when they get there, but am more willing to pay the recommended fee for "real money."
