Several weeks ago I sent bitcoin from my electrum wallet to the alphabay marketplace. As of today, the transaction has yet to receive a single confirmation. Has this happened to anyone before? Is my money just gone? I sent it with a 50 sat/B fee, and I figured it would have received confirmations by now. I know that your alphabay wallet address expires after a week, so is my money gone forever now? I appreciate any help.
EDIT: For reference, I originally sent the bitcoins sometime in early May, I believe around the 4th or 5th. I've had to wait a couple days for confirmations, but never anywhere near this long.
What's happened is that your bitcoin hasn't been transfered. Miners are rejecting your transaction because the fee you alloted is too low.
This is what's common now with bitcoin, low fees = stuck transaction.
You simply need to refresh your wallet (google to get a stuck transaction out of your specific wallet) and your money will return to you. You might find that your wallet tries to send out the same transaction over and over again, if that occurs, you need to spend some bitcoin from your address that's being used (any amount, it doesn't matter, send it to yourself) so that a transaction goes out and gets confirmed. Once this is done, your original transaction you tried to send to alphabay will be marked as a "double-spend" and ignored forever.
TLDR: Don't worry, your bitcoins haven't gone anywhere. You just didn't pay enough fees so nobody is accepting your transfer.