Concerned with rogue fee leeching if switching from Bitcoin Core to Electrum

[chegalegaleg]

Hello

I'm having a real hard time transferring a balance from an old wallet.dat (2012) over to an online buy/sell site. I'm going through Bitcoin Core and it's going to take a week before the blockchain downloads. I tested a small amount transfer (around $5 worth) which went through instantly and without any problems so then I wanted to send the balance but it wasn't going through so I (presumably) abandoned that transaction and started another one in the same amount. Then I went to the Bitcore's main panel a few hours later and there was a conflict message about the amount I wanted to send so it stopped the transaction yet transactions fees were still being leeched. At the latest count it was at 68,904 confirmations and I was dinged for approx .03 BTC and climbing! I closed Bitcoin Core as I didn't want my wallet to empty out. I need help please. I just want that balance in my account on that site ASAP.

Someone recommended I use Electrum but I'm concerned that if I managed to transfer my wallet to it that I might not be able to stop the fee leaching which I am experiencing presently with Bitcoin core. At least with that program I can turn off the peers so my funds don't get sucked dry.

Thanks for your help

[mocacinno]

Hello

I'm having a real hard time transferring a balance from an old wallet.dat (2012) over to an online buy/sell site. I'm going through Bitcoin Core and it's going to take a week before the blockchain downloads. I tested a small amount transfer (around $5 worth) which went through instantly and without any problems so then I wanted to send the balance but it wasn't going through so I (presumably) abandoned that transaction and started another one in the same amount. Then I went to the Bitcore's main panel a few hours later and there was a conflict message about the amount I wanted to send so it stopped the transaction yet transactions fees were still being leeched. At the latest count it was at 68,904 confirmations and I was dinged for approx .03 BTC and climbing! I closed Bitcoin Core as I didn't want my wallet to empty out. I need help please. I just want that balance in my account on that site ASAP.

Someone recommended I use Electrum but I'm concerned that if I managed to transfer my wallet to it that I might not be able to stop the fee leaching which I am experiencing presently with Bitcoin core. At least with that program I can turn off the peers so my funds don't get sucked dry.

Thanks for your help

Your post doesn't include enough information to find out what's happening, however, this is my educated guess:
- your wallet isn't sync'ed yet,  so you only see unspent outputs whose transactions are already in the blocks you have on your disk
- you spent an old unspent output of 0.03 to create a new transaction (sending $5), the change of this transaction is going to a new address generated by your wallet (the change is 0.03 - (fee + $5 in btc), but since your wallet isn't sync'ed, you don't see this change yet

There is no "fee leeching".  IF a broadcasted transaction is confirmed, the fee can be added to the coinbase transaction the miner created to pay himself. IF a transaction is rejected or dropped from the mempool, it's like the transaction never existed, so the fee is never "leeched". Do be carefull tough, by using "abandontransaction" or "zapwallettxes", only YOUR wallet will act like the transaction never existed... However, the nodes that received your transaction will still keep it in their mempool, there is even a chance a miner puts it into the block he's working on (and if he succeeds in solving the block, the transaction actually gets confirmed, even if you abandoned it in your local wallet).
If your unspent outputs are really "disappearing", my best guess would be that your pc was breached, in this case i'd defenatly empty out my wallet by funding an address generated by a new wallet on a clean pc... But i think my first educated guess is far more likely

My advice would be to:
- either make sure you use a recent version of core, on a secure pc, and just wait untill the synchronisation is finished
- or export the private keys for all funded addresses and import them into electrum

[chegalegaleg]

Thanks so much for taking the time to write an explanation. I'm a newb in all things BTC. At this point here I just want to sell more or less half of what I own and let the other half just sit and go for the ride!

The small amount I first transferred went over with one transaction fee. The balance of my wallet that sent afterwards (which came back with the conflict) is the one where the confirmations kept piling up as well as the fees being leeched.

Regarding letting the wallet synchronize, every time I open B Core the confirmations keep pilling up as do the fees so that's why I don't want the let the wallet sync because by the time that happens I may not have anything left. I'll include some edited screen caps if that helps. The last image is where the 'status' and confirmations keep changing by the second every time I reopen that panel.

https://ibb.co/nwq25G

https://ibb.co/fu5wXw

https://ibb.co/jVTGXw

[mocacinno]

Thanks so much for taking the time to write an explanation. I'm a newb in all things BTC. At this point here I just want to sell more or less half of what I own and let the other half just sit and go for the ride!

The small amount I first transferred went over with one transaction fee. The balance of my wallet that sent afterwards (which came back with the conflict) is the one where the confirmations kept piling up as well as the fees being leeched.

Regarding letting the wallet synchronize, every time I open B Core the confirmations keep pilling up as do the fees so that's why I don't want the let the wallet sync because by the time that happens I may not have anything left. I'll include some edited screen caps if that helps. The last image is where the 'status' and confirmations keep changing by the second every time I reopen that panel.

Ok, i still don't have all the information i'd like to see, but there are a couple things i can tell you based on the screenshots:
- the transaction funding address 1Cx... is most probably confirmed... the miner's fee for this transaction is gone
- the transaction you made to the address with label "Quadrica 2" is using an output that has already been spent in the last 2.5 years (at least, that's the most likely explanation).
- you're ~2,5 years behind with syncing the blockchain. Since the transaction to "Quadrica 2" is using an output that has already been spent, it is VERY likely that there are more of your unspent output that have been spent. There is nothing you can do about it... Not syncing the blockchain will not help you (at all), it'll just hide the fact that the outputs were spent...
- the number of confirmations of all transactions will rise the more blocks you download... New transactions will probably appear (either funding your addresses, or spending)... Just remember you're looking at historic data, everything you'll see happening has already happened a long time ago, you just didn't download the history up untill now...

If you're really not confortable syncing the blockchain, you could (potentially) do the following things:
- disconnect your network
- start bitcoind or bitcoin-qt
- go to the debug window (in bitcoin-qt) and enter "listunspent"
- you'll get a list with unspent outputs up untill the last time you sync'ed your wallet... Write down the addresses
- look up the balance of those addresses on blockchain.info
- IF you find addresses that still have unspent outputs (addresses with a positive balance), let me know and i'll walk you trough the steps of exporting your private keys and importing them into electrum (in this case, just send me a PM, you can include addresses and transaction id's, but NEVER include private keys)