The reason for all the slow transactions and what to do about it

Dear sisters, mothers, brothers, and peoples of this earth,

I have seen a great number of people who have had issues with their Bitcoin transactions taking a long time to confirm, or not confirming at all. Many are asking why this is and what to do. I have seen a number of answers from people who are helpful but don't seem to understand exactly what's going on.

I will attempt both a brief, and a compelete, version of the situation.

Situation

The Bitcoin blockchain has a limited capacity. There is a a lot of debate on the best way forward, and there are two pretty opposing camps. The details don't matter, but the effect is the same: the number of transactions that can happen is limited to approx 3-7 transactions per second.

Your transactions are slow because many other people are transacting. If you want to get your transaction in the chain you must pay competitive fee.

How do I pay a fee that will give me a fast confirmation?

https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ has a chart with the amount of satoshis per byte you should pay. If you know what that means check it out. If you don't know what that means read the next paragraph sister

Using Electrum, go to Tools > Preferences, and select the tick box for "Use dynamic fees". This will make Electrum give each transaction a fee based on the current fee market.

I already sent my transaction before reading this beautiful post. wat do?

If you sent the transaction to an address you do not control e.g. a market or a tumbler the best you can do is try the ViaBTC Transaction Accellerator. It may or may not work. If not, you'll just have to wait and try again with another wallet software (outside the scope of this post; if you need this PM me)

If you sent to and address you do control you can use a feature called Child Pays For Parent. That's a long way of saying, make a transaction from the address you're waiting on coins to arrive to, and pay double the fee (enough for this transaction and to add more to the older one).

If I can assist any further please let me know. I will try to check this post occasionally but feel free to DM any questions as well.

TL;DR

The number of transactions the network can handle is limited. Many people want to make transactions. In order to get your transactions confirmed quickly you must use a competitive fee. Use Electrum and choose "dynamic fees" in settings.

Postscript

If anybody has anything else to add, or any corrections, let me know.


Comments


[5 Points] entrippy11:

This thread is dedicated soley to helping guide users through issues with the congested chain.

But I would like to take this comment, and any children, as a political aside to say that supporting Bitcoin Unlimited is IMO the best way to support a healther Bitcoin network. I agree that transactions needs to be more scalable (i.e. segwit) however right here, right now, we have issues we need to overcome and I don't think they'll be detrimental in the long term.


[2 Points] monaquaregia:

Thank you for taking the time out to type this. Really informative.


[2 Points] xmr_is_private:

Bitcoin currently supports ~3.5 transactions per second in practice.

The core development team refuses to increase this limit with a blocksize increase for reasons beyond scope of this post (tldr they seem to be corrupted by TPTB).

Bitcoin Unlimited is a competing implementation of the Bitcoin code base that aims to increase the blocksize according to market preference.

Until the market forks Bitcoin to Unlimited, it's worth noting that a competing currency, Monero, is both private and supports over 1000 transactions per second today.


[1 Points] tcrypt:

This could probably be made up into a general announcement/sticky.


[1 Points] RIP_Meth_9000:

TL;DR / Seek rehab you dirty drug addicts.....Bahahahahahaaaaa!!!!!!


[1 Points] chuudtheblowfish:

I mean like what practical event could be causing this? Like there aren't any holidays right now, etc.


[1 Points] I5uEQKrv4u5KR3fb7yyC:

It sucks that this has to happen honestly and I dont see this shit going away unless btc gets fucked to the point miners are forced to do something in order to satisfy everyone elses needs. Good thread though, this shit needs to be stickied


[0 Points] None:

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