Author

Topic: Confirmation Times (Read 453 times)

sr. member
Activity: 294
Merit: 250
February 24, 2013, 12:09:08 PM
#5
Thanks, I think I get it.
legendary
Activity: 2506
Merit: 1010
February 24, 2013, 04:13:51 AM
#4
I sent two transactions within 4 seconds of each other. The first took 16 minutes to confirm, the second is still unconfirmed 1.5hrs later.

Chances are what happens is that your second transaction used the change that was output back to you from the first transaction.   

When you spend a coin that was only recently received (even if it came from your own wallet), then the bitcoin network treats that transaction different from a coin that is about a day or more old.   It does this to protect the network from griefing that occurs.  If it didn't do this, then a user could cheaply send funds back and forth from a single wallet at little cost yet at the same time impose a significant cost to the rest of the network in bandwidth and storage costs.

If that is what happened then a higher fee on the second transaction might have helped a little.  Also, you can split up a coin yourself in advance so that when you do spend there are multiple older coins that can be chosen for spending without having to re-spend the change output from a recent transaction.
sr. member
Activity: 294
Merit: 250
February 24, 2013, 01:22:12 AM
#3
Yes AND no.
I left the default on for the first few transactions, had a slow one and turned it off for awhile. Had even more slow ones, turned it back on.

And all of my unconfirmed just went through at the same time as I was typing that. Like 7 of them.
newbie
Activity: 48
Merit: 0
February 24, 2013, 01:16:13 AM
#2
have you been paying the network fee?
sr. member
Activity: 294
Merit: 250
February 24, 2013, 01:04:15 AM
#1
I am posting this here because, well I should probably know the answer but I dont. Im still fairly new to bitcoin.

Anyways, I sent two transactions within 4 seconds of each other. The first took 16 minutes to confirm, the second is still unconfirmed 1.5hrs later. And I am noticing this with other transactions as well. One took only 3 min to confirm, while I have others that are still unconfirmed after over 165 min. One that is still unconfirmed even said Network Propagation 107% (now at 0%). So, what is going on here? Why do some confirm almost instantly, and others seemingly not at all?
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