Blockchain/Electrum question

So yesterday I made a transaction that would not get confirmed so I kept bumping up the fee till I finally got to 170 sat/byte fee which said it should be confirmed in 25 blocks and now here it is almost 24 hours later and there are no confirmations on the blockchain and Electrum still says expected confirmation time is 25 blocks. I also have like 3 other transactions from like 9 days ago which show on the blockchain with no confirmations but those were sent with low fees but still they are 9 days old. Shouldn't they have cancelled? Can anyone help me figure out why I have no confirmations on these?


Comments


[2 Points] Markush60:

crazy, just sent coins received in about 10 mins to dream with a low ass fee. luck of the draw maybe... 9 days thats crazy dude


[1 Points] exmachinalibertas:

There's not really anything you can do. You can redo with even higher fees, or wait for your wallet to tell you it's "cancelled", or just keep waiting.

Basically, unconfirmed tx's just sit in nodes' RAM for a few days, either until the tx gets in a block or the node decides to drop it. There's no hard and fast rule for when that happens, and your wallet is just guessing when it gives you a confirmation time estimate. The Bitcoin network itself doesn't know about confirmation times. As far as Bitcoin is concerned, the transaction doesn't even exist until it's in a block. It's just your wallet software that is telling you that it will probably be mined soon, but it has no way of knowing that. So you can keep waiting, or double spend it. There's no way to speed up the current tx. It has a set priority based on its size and fees.