What will happen if you pay less transaction fees ?

[BtcKing 1]

I was wondering what will happen if you don't pay enough transaction fees ? in that case will the transaction be ever confirmed ? or it will just take more time than the usual

[Herbert2020]

it depends on how much lower and how full the mempool is going to be.
if you pay a little lower fee than what you should, (for example lets say you should have paid 330 satoshi/byte but you paid 270 s/b) it will take a longer time. it can be less than a day in most cases.
but if you pay a lot less than you should have paid (for example paying 50 s/b) then it may take weeks or never.

and the mempool is the memory pool or in other words how many other transactions are waiting to be confirmed and how much fee they are paying. if it is a small number (eg 5K) then you have a higher chance and if it is a bigger number (eg 100K) you have a much lower chance.

[cjmoles]

I was wondering what will happen if you don't pay enough transaction fees ? in that case will the transaction be ever confirmed ? or it will just take more time than the usual

Well, I wasn't sure about that too once a long time ago.  So, I did a little experiment.  I sent a transaction from one of my wallets to another of my wallets with a zero transaction fee.  It didn't get picked up and several days later the transaction was cancelled so the bitcoin was returned to my original wallet.

[Herbert2020]

I was wondering what will happen if you don't pay enough transaction fees ? in that case will the transaction be ever confirmed ? or it will just take more time than the usual

Well, I wasn't sure about that too once a long time ago.  So, I did a little experiment.  I sent a transaction from one of my wallets to another of my wallets with a zero transaction fee.  It didn't get picked up and several days later the transaction was cancelled so the bitcoin was returned to my original wallet.

things have changed a bit, the transactions won't get "canceled" that easily anymore because nodes have increased their "forgetting" time to 1 week IIRC from 72 hours. and even if that wasn't the case "being cancelled" or more correctly dropping out of the mempool was not an easy thing you could count on. a node can simply relay your transaction forever until it confirms.

in case you decided to send with lower fee make sure to mark it as an RBF transaction (use clients that let you do that) so that you have an easier time bumping the fees in case you wanted the transaction to be confirmed faster.

[cjmoles]

I was wondering what will happen if you don't pay enough transaction fees ? in that case will the transaction be ever confirmed ? or it will just take more time than the usual

Well, I wasn't sure about that too once a long time ago.  So, I did a little experiment.  I sent a transaction from one of my wallets to another of my wallets with a zero transaction fee.  It didn't get picked up and several days later the transaction was cancelled so the bitcoin was returned to my original wallet.

things have changed a bit, the transactions won't get "canceled" that easily anymore because nodes have increased their "forgetting" time to 1 week IIRC from 72 hours. and even if that wasn't the case "being cancelled" or more correctly dropping out of the mempool was not an easy thing you could count on. a node can simply relay your transaction forever until it confirms.

in case you decided to send with lower fee make sure to mark it as an RBF transaction (use clients that let you do that) so that you have an easier time bumping the fees in case you wanted the transaction to be confirmed faster.

I used to use a bitcoin core client but they are a hassle (had to resync after the last update and gave up on it), so lately I've been using a bitpay wallet (because I like the convenience of the bitpay card) with the fees set at the lowest rate and then I use the viabtc accelerator to push the transaction if I need it.  It's been working pretty good....

[achow101]

the transaction was cancelled so the bitcoin was returned to my original wallet.

Contrary to popular belief, transactions are not actually canceled. There is no mechanism which can "cancel" a transaction and make it no longer "active". What happens is that your wallet chose to forget about the transaction after a while. However that does not necessarily mean that other people's nodes did too or that they don't have a copy of your transaction. If someone has a copy of it and decides to rebroadcast the transaction, then the transaction will be on the network again and can still confirm. Even if it isn't rebroadcast, it can still be confirmed.

All paying a low transaction fee will do is make your transaction take longer to confirm. Once the transaction has been broadcast, the transaction has potential to be confirmed regardless of how many nodes have "forgotten" it. All it takes is one person to rebroadcast your transaction and the whole network will "remember" it again.

[EXtremeAEX]

Contrary to popular belief, transactions are not actually canceled. There is no mechanism which can "cancel" a transaction and make it no longer "active". What happens is that your wallet chose to forget about the transaction after a while. However that does not necessarily mean that other people's nodes did too or that they don't have a copy of your transaction. If someone has a copy of it and decides to rebroadcast the transaction, then the transaction will be on the network again and can still confirm. Even if it isn't rebroadcast, it can still be confirmed.

All paying a low transaction fee will do is make your transaction take longer to confirm. Once the transaction has been broadcast, the transaction has potential to be confirmed regardless of how many nodes have "forgotten" it. All it takes is one person to rebroadcast your transaction and the whole network will "remember" it again.

Hmm, this is quite interesting, then what happens to your Bitcoins after a long period of time? Will your Bitcoins be 'locked' until the transaction is confirmed or you can choose to resend your Bitcoins?

This is something that I'm still quite unsure too, as I have never used low fees. Always thought that transactions would be cancelled and refunded if fees are too low.

[achow101]

Hmm, this is quite interesting, then what happens to your Bitcoins after a long period of time? Will your Bitcoins be 'locked' until the transaction is confirmed or you can choose to resend your Bitcoins?

This is something that I'm still quite unsure too, as I have never used low fees. Always thought that transactions would be cancelled and refunded if fees are too low.

Some wallets will choose to forget that a transaction happened or allow you to respend the coins after a certain amount of time or after you tell it to do so. This allows you to create another transaction which spends those coins, but that does not necessarily mean that the second transaction will be confirmed or will be the one that confirms. If nodes still remember your first transaction, then the second one will be rejected as a double spend, because that's what it is. The first transaction can still confirm too. Once one of the two transactions confirms, the other one instantly becomes invalid and will be dropped by all nodes on the network.

If your wallet does not support such features, then it may seem like your coins are "locked" or "lost" or unspendable, but they actually aren't. It just means that your wallet does not provide enough advanced functionality for you to make these double spends (and rightfully so). There is nothing in the network rules that prevent you from creating multiple double spends, just that only one of those double spending transaction will confirm.

[cjmoles]

the transaction was cancelled so the bitcoin was returned to my original wallet.

Contrary to popular belief, transactions are not actually canceled. There is no mechanism which can "cancel" a transaction and make it no longer "active". What happens is that your wallet chose to forget about the transaction after a while. However that does not necessarily mean that other people's nodes did too or that they don't have a copy of your transaction. If someone has a copy of it and decides to rebroadcast the transaction, then the transaction will be on the network again and can still confirm. Even if it isn't rebroadcast, it can still be confirmed.

All paying a low transaction fee will do is make your transaction take longer to confirm. Once the transaction has been broadcast, the transaction has potential to be confirmed regardless of how many nodes have "forgotten" it. All it takes is one person to rebroadcast your transaction and the whole network will "remember" it again.

I understand....It's just easier to explain it as a "cancellation" than try to explain the intricacies of what is actually taking place on the network.  I guess I should probably be more specific when I am responding to people's questions so that I don't disseminate false information.  Thanks for the clarity, expert advice is greatly appreciated.

[hajimasan]

I was wondering what will happen if you don't pay enough transaction fees ? in that case will the transaction be ever confirmed ? or it will just take more time than the usual

Nothing will happen and everything will happen . ofcourse here you will get confused .
In the most of the cases the Bitcoin with low fee get confirmed with long time , may be it can take week  . if you will pay much lower then low fee then it may take to confirm for month also .
But sometimes with the low fee the transaction get stuck in the Bitcoin blockchain network . I mean if you will pay much low fee and not get confirmed for long time then it is believe that the transaction is not included in the network block and now you should again rebroadcast your transaction ( free of cost ) .
Here in my country India the best big exchange zebpay pays very low fee from zebpay to zebpay users and only data written  in the form but the transaction take confirm from one month to two month .
So if you don't need to sudden use your money then pay very low fee which is sufficient to confirm in months .

[bitbunnny]

If you want your Bitcoin transactions to be performed punctual and fast you will not use low fees anymore. Many users object that but higher fees are reality now otherwise you risk your transactions will take a very long time or even not to be confirmed at all.
So, basicly what will happen it's your own decision, you take the responsibility.

[EddyGameta]

I was wondering what will happen if you don't pay enough transaction fees ? in that case will the transaction be ever confirmed ? or it will just take more time than the usual

The time it takes for a fee-less transaction to be confirmed can vary vastly. While sometimes you're lucky enough to have it confirmed within the next block (as if you had paid the standard fee), other times it may take days.

This depends on the current transaction volume and miners' level of altruism. Most notably though, it depends on the number of Bitcoin Days Destroyed. Older coins (coming from older transactions) are conventionally assigned higher priority, and thus will generally be included in a block sooner.

As your transaction is pending (unconfirmed), the coins it is spending are getting older and older every day, so the chance of finally getting confirmed is slightly increasing overtime. This should prevent your coins from becoming completely unaccessible, stuck in the void.

No transaction can be rejected though, there's just no such thing in the protocol.

Finally, if this happens to you and you're not willing to spend some arbitrary time in uncertainty waiting for the confirmation, you can perhaps try to create a double spend transaction with higher fees, hoping it would be picked up by a non-standard (though pragmatic) miner.