Alright, a folowup question: if you send a BTC transaction with no transaction fee, it just disappears into the nether? Or does this just mean that it will sit out there on the ledgers for who-knows-how-long until...... what? Does it eventually get picked up and processed or just left out in limbo forever? I can't imagine that accidentally sending a transaction without a tx fee means it is just thrown in the garbage. So what is the procedure to resolve such issues?
It depends on the wallet.
Bitcoin-Qt will continue to re-transmit the transaction forever until it gets confirmed. Although it is likely that it will get confirmed eventually, there is no guarantee. In theory, it could remain as an unconfirmed transaction for decades.
https://blockchain.info/wallet will stop transmitting the transaction after a few days. At that point it will begin to be dropped from the memory pool of the peers on the network. Eventually the transaction will simply cease to exist. The bitcoins will then be back under the control of the person who sent the bitcoins.
As you can see behavior varies by wallet.
That is scary and a HUGE warning to everyone. So there is nothing I can do but sit and hope it comes back to me. I'm just glad I learned this with such fractional BTC. Hope no one else gets screwed by this.
Most well designed and well written wallets will warn you if you try to send a transaction with an insufficient fee. Your transaction is less than a kilobyte in size, and has no "dust" inputs or outputs. As such, it will most likely get confirmed within a few days.
I like the "most likely get confirmed" part. I know that's not you - it's the beast. This must have happened many times by accident - there should be some sort of mechanism to fix the "oh i forgot the tx" --- actually -- wallets should not allow a tx without a fee, at least not without a bit of warning screen. I mean, this accident must happen all the time. If it is "SO OBVIOUS" that you have to send a TX fee, then the wallet should at least warn "No tx fee?? Really? This tx may not happen at all -- are you sure you want to try anyway?"
I am not deflecting responsibility for adding the tx fee, but I do think the wallet app should not let me just send tx without pointing out that I should add a fee if it doesn't ADD IT AUTOMATICALLY like usual - is that an amount issue? It should ALWAYS put in the fee, and then be allowed to be removed, rather than have the fee be manually entered and if not -- fine, no one will see this tx ever. Thanks for throwing your BTC in the garbage.
Fix the wallet or tell me how to fix my transaction. Because this is going to become a guide.
