The Bitcoin network is seriously clogged now, I have had many problems with transactions and maybe you too, if you've set a low fee, it can be stuck in limbo for up to 1 week before being rejected. But I have quickly figured out how to solve this issue if you have unconfirmed transactions for a long time.
The solution:
- RBF (Replace by fee) Transaction, if it's supported by your wallet
- Double-Spend the transaction and put a higher fee manually
Now the RBF should be straightforward, but not all wallets support it, so I am going to show you the hard and long way to fix it, by teaching you how to double-spend a transaction.
WARNING: Don't be evil! Don't use the double-spend for chargeback scams! You should only use it to fix your limbo unconfirmed transactions as a last resort!
Double Spending
- First of all you will need Electrum Wallet, because it's easier to edit and configure, so download it, and verify the download signature: https://electrum.org/#download
DISCLAIMER: The address and wallet shown below is not mine and it's not associated with me at all. I have just picked a random Bitcoin address with an unconfirmed transaction from the memory pool.
I have picked a random wallet, and named it RANDOM, it's watch only, but you get the idea, this should be your wallet with an unconfirmed transaction in it. I will demonstrate here how to fix that unconfirmed transaction. You can fix multiple unconfirmed ones too, just by repeating this procedure.
We have 1 unconfirmed transaction here, and we need to get rid of it, so here is what you will do:
Disconnect the Internet, because we will remove this transaction from the wallet, it's unconfirmed so don't worry. Don't reconnect the Internet, because it will re-download it, and you have to start all over again.
Copy the hash of the transaction, by right clicking on it and copy. It should be a SHA-256 hash, the one used in this demonstration is:
8dbb8e508aaaf858412559c8047e034cda7f1f35c6738238b9db84a3cca9b872Create a Backup of the wallet, so if you mess up you can restore it!
Open the wallet file with a text editor. The format of the wallet is JSON, so it should be easy to edit if you are familiar with it.
Press CTRL-F on the keyboard, and search for this hash in the file. It should appear 4 times, in different places, you need to delete them, but carefully to keep the JSON syntax intact, so I have highlighted what you need to delete, it should be different for you, but you will get the idea, it should be everything that is highlighted:
Here the section between the [] brackets needs to be deleted + the coma above.
This is the transaction data section, the TX hash and right below the data should be deleted, as highlighted above.
Delete everything between the {} brackets in the highlighted stuff + the comma after the brackets.
Delete everything between the {} brackets in the highlighted stuff + the comma after the brackets.
- Now open the wallet (you should still be offline), and check it it loads. If it loads then you did a good job. If it doesn't load then you restore the backup and do it again because you probably deleted something that you should have not.
The unconfirmed transaction should no longer be there, so that now we can spend it again!
- Re-create the transaction, but this time put a higher fee:
- Go to : http://bitcoinfees.21.co from another PC or phone (your pc should still be offline) and check what is the optimal fee
- Currently it is 100 satoshi / Byte, but in electrum it's KB, so multiply that by 1024
- 100 * 10^-8 * 1024 = 0.001024 satoshi /KB
- Go to Electrum's preferences, and set your fee preference
Sign your transaction, and save it to a file, it should end with .txn extension
Now, start your Internet, and create a fresh electrum wallet. You have to make a new one to broadcast it, because the other one will get updated as soon as you go online, and it doesn't let us send this way, so you should make a new wallet, but it's just a dummy wallet.
Open the dummy wallet, and load your saved transaction from file. Then just click on the Broadcast button, and you are done!
That's it, you are done now, your previous unconfirmed transaction will be cancelled, and it will be overwritten by this new one we created, and with a proper fee, it should get confirmed in no-time!
THANKS FOR READING, ASK QUESTIONS IN THE COMMENTS BELOW!
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