Topic: Some questions about verifying bitcoin transactions (Read 156 times)

You're very welcome.

"Yes" (If someone keeps on rebroadcasting it to the network) and "No" (eventually it will be dropped [no specific time since each node varies from one another] by all of the nodes [gone from mempool] and it will appear as if you never sent that transaction in the first place).

Correct (for the first part). Unfortunately I haven't used their services yet (as I said before), so it would be best for me to not answer this question.

If they're a pool miner, they don't have that ability but if they're a solo miner, then they could determine which transactions to include or not (probably with some sort of configuration that I'm not aware of, since I'm just a pool miner [like most users]).

SFR10, that’s really helpful, thanks.

My transaction has now verified at last. However, I still have some further questions.

1.   Is it theoretically possible for a BTC transaction to remain unverified forever (say if the fee offered is too low, or is zero)?
2.   Ok, so I guess some (or all) of the transaction fee I paid to HitBTC to transfer BTC from my HitBTC account to my Bitstamp account went towards getting the transaction verified. I am just wondering – would an exchange like HitBTC actually have any incentive to ensure that BTC transfers out of its exchange get verified quickly or even get verified at all (apart from bad reviews from its users perhaps)? As long as I can go to blockchain.info and see that my transaction is there (but unverified) HitBTC can claim they have done all they can.
3.   How does an average person running mining software decide which transactions to verify? Do they just get the software to seek out the transactions with the largest fees?

The option (transaction fee) has always been there. Depending on the transaction size (inputs/outputs) and network congestion it varies.
https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/#fees

Not sure if the exchange you're using (haven't used HitBTC and Bitstamp) is similar to the local exchange that I'm using but whenever you're sending BTCitcoins through an exchange, you have less control over your money and as result some options might be missing. If the exchange itself decides to choose a low transaction fee (on congested periods like the past couple of days), then the possibility of the transaction to receive a confirmation in a delayed manner is very high.

That page tells about the number of input and outputs of the transaction (aside from the self explanatory information). When you use an exchange, they usually pay in bulk so they could save up on transaction fees. All the excess payments to different addresses that you see, is for other users on that exchange (all of those payments will receive a confirmation at the same time, since it's just a single transaction).

Correction: Transactions with higher fees (or at least recommended fees), are the ones to receive a confirmation faster (not larger transaction, in case you meant the amount that is being sent).

Because of it's low transaction fee (already has confirmations), it moves down in terms of priority.

Unfortunately no. Depending on the transaction fee that you pay, you'll be competing against other users transaction (in terms of having it included in the next block that will be mined).

Hi All

I made a small bitcoin transaction from my HitBTC account to my Bitstamp account two days ago, and I am still waiting for it to verify. I have made other transactions (e.g., from my Bitstamp account to my Blockchain wallet) that have gone through in about ten minutes. I have a few questions about this and about how transaction verification works in general. If you have any links I will take a look, but I have already read a few guides, and I still cannot find the answers I am looking for, so it would be great if you could help with my questions below directly. Sorry, there are quite a few related questions here.

1. I understood that new bitcoins were created each time miners verify a new block on the chain, and that creating new bitcoins becomes more and more difficult over time. So was the business of paying miners fractions of existing bitcoins to verify transactions recently introduced to compensate for this difficulty, or has this option always been there?

2. In a guide to the electrum wallet I read that each time you make a transaction from your electrum waller you can choose to offer up a fraction of the amount to miners so they can verify it. But you do not get this option when you are trying to send bitcoins from a bitcoin exchange account, so where does this leave you then? Do you just have to accept that sending bitcoins from a bitcoin exchange account is going to take longer?

3. I recently learned that I can look up the transaction by going to blockchain.info and searching for the destination address. I went there and saw that the transaction was unconfirmed. I was also presented with a link entitled “Unspent Outputs”, which took me to a page where I was presented with the following links with a time and date

f163916101ef8b83018bc0821e8e20fa3e8b4fc400ba30678b185bc16fee6445    2017-12-19 21:14:40

I clicked on the link and was taken to the following page   
   
https://blockchain.info/tx/f163916101ef8b83018bc0821e8e20fa3e8b4fc400ba30678b185bc16fee6445/63

This page lists several transactions, including mine. It looks like the total value of the transactions is about 51 BTC and all of them are still unconfirmed. So what is this page telling me?

Have all these transactions been put into the same block, and is it the block itself that is waiting to be verified?

I have heard that larger transactions get verified more quickly because the rewards are more attractive to miners, but if it’s a block of transactions that needs to get verified, then what difference does it make if some of the transactions in it are small?

Also, I assume several other transactions have been verified in the past two days, so why is mine taking so long? Aren’t transactions and blocks verified sequentially in time order? How does someone running mining software decide which transactions they are going to transfer?