i made a deposit at a bitcoin casino this morning that requires 1 confirmation before the btc appears in your account. normally this happens within 10 to 20 minutes but it has been 9 hours now and i'm still waiting. i contacted support but they told me there was nothing they could do. why do some bitcoin transactions take forever to confirm?
Sometimes blocks just take a very long time to confirm. On average there is a new block every 10 minutes but sometimes if a miner gets lucky it might only take a couple of minutes to solve the mathematical problem. Other times it takes much longer to solve the problem and we might not get a new block for 30 minutes or more. There is no fixed length.
You should also use a wallet with a good dynamic fee calculator. Sometimes 3 cent is enough to get your transaction included in the next block but if there is a spam attract or if the network is busy then you may need to increase the fee up to 8 or 10 cents to get your transaction included in the next block. Older btc wallets that have fixed fees should be avoided.
Make sure you keep your software up-to-date. A few months ago Roger Ver had this problem because his crappy old bitcoin software didn't alert him when he tried to spend unconfirmed inputs.
don't worry, advances like the lightening network and tumblebit will mean transactions will be instantaneous pretty soon.
Don't be a cheapskate. If the recommended fee is 10 cent then pay 15 and your transaction will be included in the next block.
Hopefully by the end of 2017 the first Lightening Network enabled wallets will be available. After that waiting any longer than a second for a transaction will be a thing of the past.
lightening network can't come fast enough because i'm getting tired of this big blocks versus small blocks debate. hopefully once small transactions move to the lightening network it will free up space onchain.
One of my transactions got stuck this week for 12 hours because of the Super Bowl. Bitcoin sportsbooks have obviously gotten really popular over the past couple of years.
If you are getting trusted by delays with bitcoin transactions confirming, you should try Litecoin instead as it's faster and cheaper. Right now both BetCoin and BetOnline support bitcoin.
I noticed last night that my Ledger Nano S allows you to resend your transaction with a higher fee if it gets stuck. Every wallet should have that feature.
Fees have halved recently, which will be good news for anyone that has a stuck transaction. There is a good chance that it will get processed in the coming days.
Many bitcoin transactions are going through with a 10 cent fee so if your transaction is stuck then the fee probably isn't the option..
We are compiling a list of transaction accelerators here for anyone that wants to speed up pending transactions.
Transaction accelerators are great but some bitcoin wallets like GreenAddress also allow you to use a feature called Replace By Fee (RBF). If your transaction is stuck because you didn't add a large enough transaction fee, RBF allows you to rebroadcast the transaction again but this time with a higher fee that you can select from the wallet. I've only used it with GreenAddress but it work great.
there is no congestion on the network at the moment so if your transaction isn't getting included in the first couple of blocks then you should switch to using a different wallet.