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I am using blockchain.info.

I have made a bitcoin transaction of 22.00883562 BTC to the address 1A9eUAc78tGx65X3CuC9WfSKXXgxjU8ccC.

You can see the transaction at https://blockchain.info/tx/97c1af82111cdcf17f878eb6df20c17c59c1b1fc04e8cdce36b8ac6c6d1c969a

I have paid a 0.001 fee but it has been almost 30 hours and it still shows "Unconfirmed".

What could be the error? Also, more importantly, how do I cancel the unconfirmed transaction and get back my coins?

Umle
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2 Answers2

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Cancelling unconfirmed transactions is easy. Just submit a higher fee double-spend transaction. For example: if you sent a 0-fee transaction, it could take a day before it gets mined onto a block. You can send another transaction with the same inputs that just sends the money back to yourself. On this transaction you put a higher fee. This becomes more likely to be mined and will get included in the blockchain - invalidating the slower-to-confirm original.

Some tools to help out: https://github.com/petertodd/replace-by-fee-tools

dbkeys
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Erik Aronesty
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    How do you double spend if you are sending from a wallet and now no longer have that same amount? IE I've sent from an XRP wallet to Changelly to convert it to BTC over at Coinbase. Now I don't have enough XRP to send. – Leon Gaban May 26 '17 at 21:42
  • This. In theory looks nice, in practice but really – PedroD Jun 06 '17 at 08:37
  • @LeonGaban: I believe that in that case, you're screwed. Anybody knows a workaround? – PPC Jun 23 '17 at 11:30
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You cannot cancel an unconfirmed transaction. When a transaction has been transmitted to the chain, it's unstoppable. Luckily everything went well for you I see, and it was probably an error on blockchain.info, as pointed out in the comments.

Mathias711
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    You can cancel an unconfirmed transaction - by double spend this input, therefore original tx will be canceled. Moreover, even if transaction is included in block, it can be canceled - all you need to do is to mine two consecutive blocks without this tx. Therefore, the first block will be orphaned, and all the transaction it has will be unvalidated. This is the very reason we should wait for 6 confirmations. – Maciej Mączko Apr 24 '14 at 19:33
  • Ahh, I didnt know that. But isnt it quite easy to cancel your BTC transaction in the supermarket (when its implemented), a few seconds after your transaction? That would be a huge disadvantage – Mathias711 Apr 24 '14 at 19:40
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    I didn't say it is easy, only that it is possible. I think we can pull this on our own. All we need to do is to buy cheap VPS across the globe (digital ocean?), and using ssh - double spend our coins to our address as soon as we initialize transacion in the supermarket. This is double spending. Note that the bigest BTC processor, Bitpay, does accept 0/unconfirmed txs, because they understand the risk and pay for double spends from their own pocket. – Maciej Mączko Apr 24 '14 at 19:57
  • Cancelling unconfirmed transactions is easy. Just submit a higher fee double-spend transaction. – Erik Aronesty Jan 15 '16 at 18:34
  • @Maciej Mączko : I like "mine two consecutive blocks". So easy! Would you please lend me your (super)computer for a day, so that I mine a few blocks, just for sport? :) – PPC Jun 23 '17 at 11:26
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    @PPC Thanks for your comment. As I said three years ago, it isn't easy, it is (was) possible. Back then, strong ASIC would give you two consecutive blocks once in a month. – Maciej Mączko Jun 24 '17 at 21:06