Topic: Is the Bitcoin network Slow today? Please Help! (Read 2716 times)

Thank you very much for these valuable insights everyone.  


Apology accepted.. and thank you for the explanation. As a matter of fact, when I finally see my transaction showed up and do my business, I went over what everyone said again and I finally gets why some people think I'm a scam. A big face-palm followed. I was so embarrassed that a thought of ditching this account and start a new one humiliation-free crossed my mind. Oh well....

Also, I thought you can send/receive Mt.gox dollar from here https://www.mtgox.com/users/sendMoney

Anyway, let's hope the following week will be a better day for bitcoin than the last one!

When you withdraw from Mt. Gox, the transaction will be announced to the network and after some time it will show up in a block.  To see if a transaction has been processed by a block look at BlockExplorer:
  - http://www.blockexplorer.com

The delay between when you send bitcoins (e.g,. withdraw from Mt. Gox) to when that transaction appears in BlockExplorer can range from just seconds to many minutes -- unless the transaction is deemd "low priority" and then it could take hours even.

Before the transaction is included in a block it will likely have been seen by Bitcoin Charts which publishes a list of Unconfirmed Transactions (unconfirmed, as in it has not yet been included in a block):
  - http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin

In most instances, when the payment appears in either of those site view the recipient should be able to feel comfortable that payment has been sent and is truly enroute.

Two workarounds for slow bitcoin network:

1) Patience:  Wait a long time, possibly several hours.

2) Try the 0.3.23 release candidate, which attempts to address this problem.

The network has been flooded with new users, many of whom do not support incoming connections.  This causes a problem with the P2P code in versions <= 0.3.22.

If you are brand new to the network, -dnsseed may also help.

If you truly did not understand that you could send your MtGox/TH coins directly to your buyer then I genuinely apologize. There is no method that I know of to send MtGox USD to another user (which you indicated you wanted to do) which among other oddities triggered my scam radar. You can of course transfer USD out of MtGox to another exchange.

In attempt to make it up to you I will try to explain why it appeared to you that BTC transfers from MtGox/TH were being delayed for hours when in fact they were not.

When using MtGox/TH and similar BTC exchanges and you initiate a Withdraw/Transfer of BTC in your account to a BTC address (your wallet) the exchange pushes the transaction (tx) onto the network almost instantly. There may be a delay of a couple seconds but probably not much more than that. This does not mean however that it will appear in your wallet in seconds.

The tx that is on the network will not become visible in your wallet until it is included into the block chain and your wallet (Bitcoin client) has the block chain downloaded. The tx will be included in the block chain once a miner on the network solves a block but it isn't always the next block solve that your tx will be included in. Sometimes it takes several solved blocks before your tx is present in the block chain. Until this happens you will not see the balance reflected in your wallet.

Once your Bitcoin client has the entire block chain downloaded and your tx is bundled into a block then and only then would you see the balance reflected in your client. Your client does not know about your tx until it sees it in the downloaded block chain.

Also, if your buyer had a Bitcoin client running and had the entire block chain downloaded you could have simply asked him for a BTC address for you to send coins to and done a 5 BTC Withdraw at MtGox/TH using his BTC address as the destination and he would have seen his 5 BTC show up in his client as soon as the tx was included in a solved block. There is no need to transfer coins from an exchange to your own wallet/client in order to make a payment to your buyer, you can simply make the payment at the exchange to your buyer.

And Quantumplation was correct, I and other folks are apprehensive and cautious lately, likely overly so and I apologize. I have been scammed once on the forums here so I have an instinctual tendency to watch out for scams taking place.

I hope this helped to answer some of your concerns of why it appeared there was a substantial delay in the network processing transactions.

Because I don't know what on earth went wrong, ok? If I request a withdrawal to me, and 3 hrs later I still see nothing on my screen, how can I be sure that if I do exactly the same thing to my buyer, he WILL get the bitcoins within a reasonable amount if time!

I'm sorry for being a noob, alright? I opened a new wallet in a new PC, so there's not suppose to be any problem. From my viewpoint at that time, anything could be the cause - withdrawal was held up? something wrong with my account? withdrawal slow because of increase in volume? Did the transfer ever even took place? I didn't know anything about blocks/syncing/blockexplorer until now. If I try withdrawing to my buyer anyway, perhaps that withdrawal could be delayed too, and he still would be e-mailing me. And after I finally find some other method to pay him, perhaps that withdrawal could show up later tonight. Then, I would be double-paying him.

Also, Tradehill said you will receive your withdrawal within 12 hours, so I couldn't risk that.

But even if I'm a noob, I know that I can't scam anyone if I send a non-reversible payment upfront!

Thank you!


PS. To anyone that press reporting on me, so now that can't post in any thread other than this one, it would be GREAT if you would undo that action somehow.

Sure thing!  If you want a clearer explanation, send me a private message.  And don't mind everyone else, they're just super apprehensive because we've been hit by the Trollpocalypse and a slightly tumultuous market.  Granted, I won't begrudge a man his caution...

I still suspect something funny going on here. If you needed to send BTC to your buyer all you had to do was withdraw from MtGox/TradeHill to your buyer's BTC address, problem solved. You do not need to withdraw from the exchanges to your own wallet then send to your buyer, that is silliness.

My block count finally reached 130k and I finally received the withdrawal! It finally showed up!
Thank you very much everyone for your advice! I learned many things about blocks today.

Getting started using the bitcoin client does take some time.  Perhaps an eWallet such as MyBitcoin.com would be a little more convenient for you?

I don't see how he could scam someone if he's paying mtgox USD upfront

I too wondering why you don't just buy bitcoins using those Mt. Gox USD and send the bitcoins yourself.  It'll cost you less than 5%.

If you have coins in MtGox/TradeHill and can withdraw them to your new wallet in another PC as you state you did you can send them from MtGox/TradeHill to your buyer who is waiting for you. You are trying to scam someone into making a BTC payment on your behalf to your buyer...who most likely is none other than yourself.

You don't actually have to confirm them at this point, because the coins, in the abstract sense, are there, your client just has to process the block-chain to realize it.  You can try downloading the block chain from someone who already has it through a more direct route (HTTP, FTP, etc), it might be faster.  I might be able to provide a mirror for you if you want.  Just be patient.  While bitcoin is in it's infancy, the client wasn't written for every day use.  It's still not even version 1.0 yet.  In the future, there are various solutions that have been discussed before that will allow pure "thin" clients that rely on a smaller block-chain in exchange for a higher amount of "trust".

Thx. It's close.. but increasing so slow..   and ... Wait... so... I can transmit some BTCs first without having that confirmed amount in my wallet? (like sending money I don't have?)

What the hell??? I'm initiating the payment, and Mt.Gox transfer can't be reversed! (... right?)
It's not like I'm asking with paypal or something. Plus.. it's only for 5 bitcoins.. (that's $60 in today's rate, sadly)
I'm having a real problem here!


Edit: For some reason, I can't send PMs now.. I hope it's not because of you clicking report to admin on me!

Good try DonnyCMU. Ignore this scammer.

Search your address on block explorer. If the transactions are in a block, count how many blocks away from the current block it is and if you've got enough confirmations, I think you can safely give the buyer whatever you sold them and wait for your client to sync up later?

It has been syncing for 3.5 hours...   T^T

And my buyer is e-mailing me about it every 2 hours.

If you don't have ~130185 blocks in your client, it's not caught up with the swarm yet, and still syncing.

Anyone? I'll pay with Mt.Gox $ or Dwolla or whatever! Please help!

Also, so is it normal to wait hours for btc withdrawal from Mt.gox or Tradehill to show up?