Unconfirmed Bitcoin Transaction? Why It Happens and What to Do

It's been two hours. The exchange says your withdrawal is complete. The person you paid says nothing has arrived. Or you've sent bitcoin to sell, school fees are due tomorrow, and the deposit still says "pending".

An unconfirmed Bitcoin transaction is stressful, but it rarely means lost money. Most of the time it's simply waiting in line. Here's how to find out where it is, and who can do what about it.

Where an unconfirmed transaction actually is

When you send bitcoin, your wallet broadcasts the transaction to the network. Computers running Bitcoin (nodes) check it and hold it in their mempool, a waiting room for transactions that haven't been put into a block yet. Miners choose transactions from there to fill each new block, and a new block arrives about every ten minutes on average.

Block space is limited, so miners favour transactions that pay more for the space they use. That's the fee rate, measured in satoshis per virtual byte (sat/vB). When the network is quiet, even a low fee gets in quickly. When it's busy, low-fee transactions wait, sometimes for hours, occasionally for days.

Once a transaction is in a block, it has one confirmation, and each block after it adds another. Our explainer on blockchain confirmations covers why apps wait for a certain number before crediting you.

Step 1: find the transaction ID

Every Bitcoin transaction has a transaction ID (also called a TXID or hash), a long string of letters and numbers. You'll find it in the sending wallet's history or the exchange's withdrawal details. If you're the one receiving, ask the sender for it.

If an exchange shows no TXID yet, the transaction may not have been broadcast at all. That's a delay inside the exchange, not on the blockchain, and only the exchange can explain it.

Step 2: look it up on mempool.space

Paste the TXID into mempool.space, a free Bitcoin block explorer. You'll see one of three things:

• Not found. It hasn't been broadcast yet, or it was dropped. Check with the wallet or exchange it was sent from.
• Unconfirmed. It's in the mempool, waiting. Note its fee rate in sat/vB and compare it with the fee levels the site currently suggests. If yours is well below them, it will keep waiting until demand drops, unless someone raises the fee.
• Confirmed. It's in a block. If the receiving app hasn't credited it yet, that's now a question for the app, not the blockchain.

For a fuller walkthrough of reading an explorer, see how to track a crypto transaction.

Step 3: work out who can fix it

The sender: Replace-By-Fee (RBF)

RBF lets the sender broadcast a new version of the same payment with a higher fee. The new version replaces the old one in the mempool, and miners pick it up sooner. Wallets often call this "Bump fee", "Speed up" or "Increase fee". It only works from the wallet that sent the transaction, and not every wallet offers it.

If you withdrew from an exchange, you can't bump the fee yourself. The exchange built and signed that transaction, so contact the exchange with the TXID.

The receiver: Child Pays For Parent (CPFP)

CPFP works from the other end. The receiver spends the stuck incoming coins in a new transaction (the "child") and attaches a generous fee. Miners look at the pair together: to collect the child's fee, they have to include the parent too, so both get confirmed.

This only works if you control the receiving wallet with your own keys. If the bitcoin is heading to an exchange or an app's deposit address, CPFP isn't available to you. The sender has to bump the fee, or you wait.

Nobody can bump it: wait

Most stuck transactions confirm once the network calms down. If one sits long enough with a very low fee, nodes may eventually drop it from their mempools, and the coins become spendable again in the sender's wallet (some wallets need a manual step before they show this). Don't treat a transaction as cancelled until the sender's wallet clearly shows the coins available again.

When to contact the other side

• You paid someone and they're waiting. Send them the TXID and the mempool.space link so they can see it's on its way. If it's urgent and your wallet supports RBF, bump the fee.
• Someone paid you and it's stuck. Ask them to bump the fee. If you hold the receiving keys, CPFP is your option.
• You withdrew from an exchange. Contact the exchange. It controls the transaction.
• You sent bitcoin to an app to sell. If it's still unconfirmed, the app is waiting for the blockchain just like you. If it's confirmed but not credited after a reasonable wait, contact the app's support with the TXID.

Two warnings

Unconfirmed isn't final. Until a transaction is in a block, the sender can replace it. That's exactly why apps wait for confirmations before crediting you, and why you should never hand over goods or naira on the strength of an unconfirmed payment.

Ignore "accelerator" offers in your DMs. Mention a stuck transaction online and strangers may offer to push it through for a fee, or ask for your seed phrase to "fix" it. Nobody needs your seed phrase to speed up a transaction. Here's how those fake crypto support scams work.

Making it less likely next time

• Check current fee levels before you send, and pay a rate that matches how urgent the payment is.
• Use a wallet that supports RBF, so you can fix a low fee yourself.
• Send from a SegWit address (starting with bc1) where you can. It uses less block space, so the same fee rate costs you less. Our guide to Bitcoin network fees has more ways to save.

Selling bitcoin with KWIQ

To sell on KWIQ, open your BTC wallet in the app, copy the deposit address and send on the network the app shows. Trades are fully automated, so most sales are done in minutes once your deposit is confirmed on the blockchain, and swapping to naira has zero fees. If a confirmed deposit hasn't shown up, KWIQ's 24/7 support can check it with your TXID through live chat in the app or on kwiq.app.

Ready to sell? Download the KWIQ app, check the rate and naira amount it shows, and confirm only when you're happy. The full steps are on our sell bitcoin for naira page.