Pending Transaction Issues

I made a transaction yesterday, but it still hasn't been confirmed. So, I decided to cancel it and sent it again today with a higher mining fee, yet it's still unconfirmed. This isn't normal since it typically gets confirmed within a few hours.

You need to use the fee required as of now which you can find at https://mempool.space/  which is over 40sat/vbyte at the moment.

I am curious about how you cancelled a transaction because you can’t cancel a bitcoin transaction but rather will have to wait for it to either confirm or be dropped which takes at least 14 days. But what you can do is to bump the transaction or double spend it to another address. Check the https://mempool.jhoenicke.de/#BTC,24h,weight for fee estimation

What do you mean by cancelling the transaction? Do you mean you used RBF feature and replaced the transaction with a new one sending the fund to your own address? If so, take note that with doing so, you waste you money as you have to pay fee for two transactions. You could replace the unconfirmed transaction with a new one paying higher fee. Anyways, the network is so congested now and as mentioned above by LucyFurr, the fee rate of around 40 sat/vbyte is now required for getting confirmation. What was the fee rate you used for your transaction?

I guess OP is using Electrum where they have such a feature called cancel TX, which you can find it in the middle of the image below (ignore the arrow towards bump fee) But the feature is nothing but double spending the TX to their own addresses using a higher fee than the previous fee used. @OP, please post your TXid or let us know how much fee you have used while doing RBF.

Thank you for all the comments and I went ahead and increased the fee to the current ask on mempool.  Also, thanks for letting me know that cancel in Electrum is not really "Cancel".  I will watch more closely on how I am sending in the future.  Appreciate your responses.

Right. There is no way to ask nodes to remove your transaction from their mempool without broadcasting a new transaction which is replaced that. In the future, whenever you are in hurry, bump the fee. With canceling the transaction and then making a new one, you have to pay more fee and you may even make the situation worse.

Are you sure you can do that? I think in sparrow if a utxo is part of an unconfirmed transaction it can only be used for RBF or CPFP but it can't be spent in another tx. I think so

That is what that is called 'cancel a transaction'. It is also replace-by-fee. Like in Electrum, if you click on cancel transaction, the transaction would be replaced by another one in which the transaction is sent back to an address on your wallet. Also very possible you can send it to another address, but wallet do not include that feature but it is possible.

You can actually double spend an unconfirmed transaction without RBF and you can also do that with RBF. But the problem is most full nodes will reject it because it nonstandard, that’s why the most accepted form is the RBF which is why most wallets support it. When you actually double spend either with RBF or not both transaction exists only after one gets confirm first (mostly the one with higher fee) and the other one becomes invalid.

Hang on guys. I realise I must have been misunderstood. I was wondering specifically about the text in red colour by Charles-Tim. I think that most wallets don't support it. When you select a utxo to be part of a tx and you broadcast it, then it can't be selected again, unless for RBF, which by default I think means sending again to the same output address.

I don't know any wallet allowing to make the replacement transaction to a different address. So, you are kind of right. It's only electrum that allow you to use the outputs that have been already spent in an RBF-enabled unconfirmed transaction to one of your own addresses. Even electrum doesn't allow you to use any address you want as receiving address in the replacement transaction, however there's a workaround for that. Charles-Tim is also right. According to BIP125, the replacement transaction must have at least one same input as the original transaction. It doesn't say anything about outputs. So, you can use any receiving address(es) you want as the receiving address in the replacement transaction. If you can't do so, it's just because your wallet doesn't allow that.

If you double-spend with the RBF option, you're allowed to create a completely new transaction, using the unconfirmed output. Right on the left, click on the - - and you will be allowed to change the destination. Every wallet I've come across treats RBF as a double-spend, which is correct. When you replace a transaction, you're literally double-spending the inputs until one of them is mined in a block. So yeah, it has to contain at least an input of an unconfirmed transaction.

It's crazy how fee rates get jacked up once Bitcoin begins to surge in price. Yesterday, it was 52 sat/vbyte when I checked because I wanted to make a transfer. Now that I checked again, it's 48 sat/vbyte. I don't know what OP got as the bearest minimum for a transfer when they made theirs. Now, here's the thing for those who bemoan lack of mass adoption for Bitcoin. I think this fee thing is a major part of the problem for Bitcoin, not necessarily lack of government support or approval.

I have checked, too, and according to the mempool, even 35 sat/vB is a low priority. This is insane. Spending more than a dollar for $50 transactions is too much already. I agree with you as well. If we consider that mass adoption will increase the number of transactions, the mempool will get congested as it has for the last couple of days. Would you spend that much money as fee-only? Do you remember how congested the mempool was when the BRC-20 tokens craze was there? Most of the time we see lightning networks as alternatives, but that's not a proper solution.

You can cancel/eject a Bitcoin transaction but you would have to pay a fee. The fee for cancellation or ejection is more than the transaction fee. I have cancelled transaction on the same day using Electrum wallet. It does give you the option  if the transaction takes more time. For me it took like 12 hour or might be more. If you are using Mycelium wallet then I am not sure but, I am certain  that my it does provide you the option to cancel a Bitcoin transaction.

Yes there is a feature like that on electrum but what it means is that you’re actually double spending your transaction to your own address by paying higher fee. The reason for the higher fee is to get it confirmed first to your address before the original or first transaction gets confirmed since the miners prioritizes transactions based on fee rate. It is not different from bumping transactions using RBF this one just sends it back to your own address directly. Technically you can cancel a bitcoin transaction you can just double spend it to another address using a higher fee

Opt "Cancel' transaction in Electrum is somewhat misleading. In fact it creates new (RBF) transaction that returns BTC to the send address of the "canceled" transaction. That is why the fee is increased when comparing it with that one relevant to the "canceled" transaction.

Sorry there is a difference in bumping a transaction fee than getting a transaction ejected from the Blockchain. Bumping the fee is to encourage a miner in getting the transaction confirmed. While ejection from the Blockchain is getting it out and crediting it back to the wallet. Technically Bitcoin was meant to act as a payment processor and behave somewhat similar to fiat currency. The point was to make a cheaper way to make payments globally. That is why such features were added to it. As of now with the uncertainty on the transaction fee and how much to spend as the fee is more volatile than the Bitcoin price. I assume such features should be shared with everyone. I think your way of explaining is more appropriate than mine  . I am not a technical guy but I am aware of things happening within the Bitcoin ecosystem. I have also seen the cancellation fee being lesser that the transaction fee. The problem here is that I cannot show you but it does happen.

There is no other  way to " eject" transaction from blockchain,  rather than to have 51% computational power of the whole network. Probably you meant mempool. In this case the new transaction  with the higher fee is included into block while the old one just disappears from mempool.