Topic: Phishing, scam, etc...I'm a noobe. (Read 364 times)

Yea, the calculation of the fees has always been an issue for beginners. A few years ago, I was in a hurry to send BTC as payment and I just chose the maximum fee, without calculating the cost. (Electrum) ... so I ended up paying more than $1000 to send something like 1 bitcoin. (Miners were very happy to gobble that up in minutes)

You sometimes have to bump your toe to learn hard lessons, but I think your $60 was way cheaper than my $1000 fee. 

I used to make free transactions, as long as one of the inputs aged long enough to reach "medium priority" in Bitcoin Core, and the total transaction was less than 1000 bytes. Those were the days, but unfortunately those days are long gone. The "input age" was removed as a consideration. That's too bad, because giving priority to aged inputs could actually be a good way to separate real transactions from spammers.

Sorry about your experience, though it may be worth mentioning that it has not always been this way, we used to make tx's with 1 sat/vByte and get it confirmed without waiting for too long, but right now those people making ordinals tx are making BTC unusable because of the high tx fee it creates. There are layer 2 solutions if you would like to explore that area, though take note that it is not a complete solution to the problem, but a partial one. Hopefully the ordinals spammers get bored and leave, so tx fees can return back to normal.

As much as I like Bitcoin, I can't deny that current transaction fees and on-chain limitations are bad. Bitcoin can't grow without more users, which it can't handle because all blocks are full. My first Bitcoin experience was a good one back in 2015: I could make many transactions at a very low fee, which gave me a good feeling of how Bitcoin works. You can't do that now without paying a small fortune in transaction fees. And even if it's "just" a few bucks per transaction, that's too much just to try it out.

Litecoin still has low transaction fees. For $0.01, you can make about 50 transactions. The good thing is that Litecoin works about the same as Bitcoin.

I went to a reputable btc transaction accelerator site and paid them $60 to help push the transaction through.  It confirmed in less than an hour after I payed him.  I am also leaving bitcoin and any new headaches from it behind. I was advised to get the electrum wallet and/or to start learning about litecoin. 

This was a journey I hope I never have to endure again, lol.  Many thanks for everyone's advise and opinions here.

Virtually yours,

plokert 

Thank you for the explanation DannyHamilton, you succeeded in explaining in a more approachable way what I intended to transmit to OP in a very condensed matter (which was not the ideal considering his experience).

OP: From this discussion it really seems that you are not in need of that transaction to complete ASAP. If I were you I would just sit and wait for the transaction to process. If you would like to initiate the process that DannyHamilton described, you can try following this guide[1] now that you know what happens within the blockchain whenever that method is used.

---

[1]https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/guide-use-cpfp-if-your-stucked-transactions-from-blockchaincom-wallet-5324302

First: you are (of course) correct. But if Blockchair shows "Senders" and "Recipients", I think the phrase "sending address" is less confusing to someone who's new to Bitcoin than "UTXO". And I'm so used to this, that I didn't even think about it being technically incorrect.

When bitcoins are sent to you, and they are not yet confirmed, they are technically still spendable by you.  Some wallet software (such as the one you are currently using) will either not provide this ability to you, or will hide it and require you to turn on advanced tools to use that ability. (because spending unconfirmed bitcoins can open you up to some frustration situations in some circumstances)

Other wallets, such as Electrum, make this a bit easier to do.

So, the suggestion that was made (if you become impatient about waiting for the low fee transaction to confirm), is to create a backup of your current wallet, and then import that backup into an Electrum wallet where you would then be able to perform the rest of the suggestion.

This will give you access to all of your bitcoins and transactions from within the Electrum software instead of the wallet software you are currently using.

The next part of the suggestion is to create a transaction in Electrum that spends the bitcoins that you are waiting to receive (the ones that have been sent to you but which are not yet confirmed).  You can create this transaction to just send the bitcoins to another address in your own wallet, so that they are still yours after this new transaction completes.

The trick is to pay a high enough fee for this new transaction so that it covers the cost of both itself and the shortfall on the transaction you are waiting on.

Because of the way Bitcoin works, the miners are UNABLE to confirm this new transaction of yours unless they ALSO confirm the transaction you are waiting on. So, since miners (and mining pools) are incentivized by their desire to pay for their equipment and electricity (as well as earn a profit), they will confirm both transactions at the same time to get the fees you paid.  You are effectively increasing the fee on the transaction you are waiting to receive by adding that extra fee to a new transaction that REQUIRES confirmation of the original.

The other thing you may have noticed from my description is that if it turns out the site you interacted with is NOT legitimate and that transaction is removed and NEVER confirms, then the new transaction you created will also never confirm (since it entirely depends on the existence of that initial transaction), and so you won't have risked any additional bitcoins. The second fee will never be spent, and the entire chain of two transactions simply never happens.

---

LoyceV, I'm disappointed. "sending address"? Really? I thought you knew better.

I may be misunderstanding what your suggesting I could do here.  The Transaction in question here did NOT originate from my phone app.  It is (however) my bitcoin that I had sent to another party.  I then withdrew those coins from their website using their bitcoin withdraw system.  I had the option of choosing one of 5 options for the bitcoin withdraw.  Not knowing anything about current amounts needed, I chose the middle option.  That option puts me to were I am today.  I have severed ties with that agency since they said they cannot assist in increasing the fee rate for this transaction (which I believe to be false).  My entire point with this posting was to ask: If there is a way to get this transaction to confirm faster.  Even if I had the top notch bitcoin app on my phone, I don't think that would be possible since this transaction did not originate from my phone app.  Also, and before others announce here, I will not spend $70 to increase the "chances" that I get this $200 back.  I assume I'll just need to wait it out.  "Normal" refunds can take 7 - 10 days to be refunded back to credit accounts so this is about right so far lol.  I don't know enough about the mechanics of using bitcoin interfaces but I'm learning.  All education costs something I suppose.  This is just that.  On the other hand, If someone tells me they can get this increased to confirm sooner, I'd be open to pay a "helpers" fee.    All said and done, I'll sit this one out and simply hope it clears.

So it is this[1] wallet. I have installed the application but I didn't find any option to make a CPFP. I found an option to raise fees (you get access to it in the three dotted option that appears in the menu of sending bitcoin) but it is just a fee selector. It seems that you are not alone in this struggle per this[2] recent post of a user in Bitcoin StackExchange.

Worst case scenario you can always backup your wallet (Safety -> Backup wallet) set a password and then import it into Electrum (for example) and proceed to make a CPFP transaction there by looking at your pending transaction. There is also the option to directly obtain the mnemonic seed[2] of the wallet but I cannot vouch for it's authenticity.

---

[1]https://github.com/bitcoin-wallet/bitcoin-wallet
[2]https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/119615/how-can-i-raise-the-fee-of-a-transaction-in-bitcoin-wallet-app

This is the one I'm using.  There are no tools for adjusting anything with it.  lol   https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.schildbach.wallet&hl=en_US&gl=US

This[1] Bitcoin wallet app? Or this[2] bitcoin wallet app? While having similar names, do note that one of them (the first one) doesn't have any association with bitcoin.org (I don't know if you were aware of this). The first option supports CPFP though (not sure about the second one). As you may have noticed fees have gone up quite considerable since yesterday and if you're in a rush, CPFP is your best bet. Have you tried selecting the transaction on your application? I suppose that it should lead you to a new menu where it would present you the possibility of bumping the fees (assuming you are using the [1] wallet).

Complementing Z-tight reply, you are able to use this method independently of having control of the sender address or not. What you are actually doing with this process is chaining together the outputs of the "stuck" transaction with a new transaction with a higher fee thus incentivizing the miners in processing both transactions, solving your issue.

---

[1]https://bitcoin.org/en/wallets/mobile/android/bitcoinwallet/?step=5&platform=android
[2]https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/BitcoinWalletMobile

I'm using Bitcoin Wallet App.

This is called CPFP and you can only do it if you are in control of the receiving address and if the wallet software that you use allows you to spend unconfirmed utxo's. You already said you control the receiving address, so what wallet software are you using?
Mempool.space tx accelerator has not fully launched and if you create an account now you'll just join the waitlist. But if you want to use a tx accelerator to speed up your transaction, you can try both ViaBTC's free and paid acceleration service: https://www.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator/

"does the balance appear in the “Bitcoin Wallet” app? If so, create a new transaction using any address from your wallet and pay fees higher than High Priority at https://mempool.space".  

I can only do this if I originated the transaction, correct? (I did not originate the transaction)

In other instances it is because of the fee you have paid to transfer your Bitcoin, faster transactions need higher fees than the average, you wan't it faster then you need to pay to be prioritize the transactions, correct me if I'm wrong thank you

I did not use the Bitcoin Wallet, but does the balance appear in the “Bitcoin Wallet” app? If so, create a new transaction using any address from your wallet and pay fees higher than High Priority at https://mempool.space. Then your previous and new transactions will be confirmed within 30 min.

If the balance does not appear, you will need to pay a mining pool to confirm it. You can try https://www.f2pool.com/user/tx-acc.

If you do nothing, it may be confirmed within 9 days.

Okay,  The transaction is hovering at around an hour to confirmation but it's been that way for over 6 hours now.  I've been studying up in ways to "boost" the speed.  As a noobe I have "Bitcoin Wallet" app, I know... It's not the best and kinda useless for tools. lol.  mempool has a button to accelerate the transaction but it appears the wait list to use it will prob be longer than it might take for this to clear on it's own, lol.   I'm wondering if there's a way to use bitcoin from my wallet to speed this transaction up?  Keep in mind, I submitted a withdraw from the site I sent this bitcoin to originally.  I have broken ties with that site since.  any further advise would be appreciated,  Thanks.

I want to thank everyone for your responses and taking the time to assist me.  The transaction still looks like it's creeping its way to completion so I'll wait and see.  Thank you all again.

P.s.  I'll post if it clears

As others have said, the fee rate of your transaction is at the current fee level situation rather low to get confirmed quickly. It may take hours or even some more days to confirm. If fees rise it may take even longer to eventually get confirmed.

I suggest to work yourself at least through the pages for beginners at https://learnmeabitcoin.com, you won't regret it.

Take it easy and slow down, learn your bits and pieces of Bitcoin to avoid silly mistakes or worse loosing money and coins because of lack of understanding and knowledge.