Cancel/Remove sweep private key transaction

[TheGitch]

Hi everyone,

I bought some BTC (50$) on a cold card for Xmas and I tried to sweep the private key in Electrum (4.4.6) some days ago.
The fees are way too low (28 sats/vbyte) for the actual network and I wonder if there is a way to cancel this transaction.

I have my wallet open on Electrum and I can see the specific transaction with the status "Only available on your computer, ..." and the software allows me to "Remove" it with a right-clic on it.

I did it.
It disappeared from my wallet but the transaction is still on the mempool, naturally unconfirmed.
Is the "Remove" feature really efficient ? Or is my transaction really stuck ?

Just wondering : can I try to sweep again this private key with higher fees ? Will it replace the old tx ?

Thank you in advance for your help.

[1714611867]

1714611867

[1714611867]

1714611867

[1714611867]

1714611867

[TheGitch]

The best way to learn is to experiment.

As I told, I did the "Remove" tx through Electrum but it didn't really do anything.
The transaction was still there, unconfirmed.

I tried to make a new sweep, as sugested and the new transaction (with higher fees) simply replaced the pervious one.
Okay, it's more expensive, but at least I can get the rest of my sats !

I would still be interested in what you would have done in this situation.

Thank you in advance for your answers.

Best regards

[BitMaxz]

How long does your transaction stuck on the mempool after you sweep the paper backup?
If it is two weeks long you can sweep the private key again but this time make sure to increase the fee.
Use https://mempool.space/ as a reference and which fees are the best to use with the current network condition.

Or I think instead of using the sweep option import the private key and bump the transaction with higher fees.

[nc50lc]

It disappeared from my wallet but the transaction is still on the mempool, naturally unconfirmed.
Is the "Remove" feature really efficient ? Or is my transaction really stuck ?

That is only available for local transactions which is not available from your selected server's mempool.
It only affects your wallet locally and not the Bitcoin network entirely so, it's not effective alone to remove a transaction from mempools.

The Bitcoin Network has many nodes with their own mempool with different settings, other nodes still keep your transaction in their mempool for various reasons like higher size setting, etc.
So, even if you removed it from your wallet, when Electrum auto-selected another server that carry your transaction or it's rebroadcasted to the server that you're using, it will re-appear in your wallet's history.

Just wondering : can I try to sweep again this private key with higher fees ? Will it replace the old tx ?

Yes you can since it should have opt-in rbf flag 'true',
But do that once you removed the transaction from your history once again because it wont let you sweep if its input is being spent.

If it's still there and you want to bump it, import the private key to a new Electrum wallet with "Import bitcoin addresses or private keys" option;
Wait for the transaction to appear in the history, right-click on it and select "Increase fee", then select Method: "Decrease payment" to be able to increase its fee rate.

[Yamane_Keto]

If the transaction does not appear for you, change the server until it appears for you, and then rebroadcast it again with a higher fee using RBF. Make sure that you choose the correct fee using https://mempool.space.
If one of the addresses that received Bitcoin is your wallet address, you can also pump the fees using Child pays for parents by creating a new transaction from the receiving address with a higher fee.

[nc50lc]

If the transaction does not appear for you, change the server until it appears for you, and then rebroadcast it again with a higher fee using RBF.

He can't do that since it's a "sweep" transaction, it needs to disappear before he can sweep it again.
The private key isn't included in the wallet so there'll be no option to increase fee, only CPFP.

But doing CPFP is just a waste of fee and block space for adding an unnecessary child transaction, he can just import the private key to a new imported wallet to be able to perform rbf
since he got access to the private key elsewhere (the one he pasted), or wait until it disappears then sweep it again with a higher fee rate.

[Pmalek]

I have my wallet open on Electrum and I can see the specific transaction with the status "Only available on your computer, ..." and the software allows me to "Remove" it with a right-clic on it.

I did it.
It disappeared from my wallet but the transaction is still on the mempool, naturally unconfirmed.
Is the "Remove" feature really efficient ? Or is my transaction really stuck ?

So the Electrum server that you were connected to dropped your transaction from its memory pool because there are many other transactions paying higher fees. However, many other nodes still have records of your transaction. That's why you can still see it on a block explorer. All servers would have to drop it without you or any of them rebroadcasting it again. Effectively "cancelling" a transaction like it never happened is pretty much impossible. But you can double-spend it and increase its fees to give it a higher priority to get included in an upcoming block. 

[khaled0111]

...

This is exactly why I never liked those terms ("cancel" and "bump"). When you click on any of them, you are just telling the network nodes: hey, I want to replace this "x" transaction with this one which is paying more in fees. It's up to those nodes whether to accept your request or to decline it. ("try to cancel" and "try to bump") would be more appropriate, especially for canceling transactions.

[Pmalek]

This is exactly why I never liked those terms ("cancel" and "bump"). When you click on any of them, you are just telling the network nodes: hey, I want to replace this "x" transaction with this one which is paying more in fees. It's up to those nodes whether to accept your request or to decline it. ("try to cancel" and "try to bump") would be more appropriate, especially for canceling transactions.

Since it's a free market, the standard setup is to accept the transaction that pays more in fees. If the miner receives the updated information from its peers (the new RBF transaction), it will want to include that in a block instead of the original one paying less. So even though you don't cancel a transaction from happening, you end up cancelling the original one by replacing it with a slightly different one.

Terms like "try to" shouldn't be used, in my opinion, because it makes the software look amateurish. It could cause insecurity among the users who might think that bumping the fee isn't a good option because the software will only "try" to make a replacement transaction.