When you make a bitcoin transaction, it needs to be verified by the blockchain network. This can take anywhere from a few seconds to a few days, depending on network conditions.
During this time, your bitcoin funds will appear in your wallet as “unconfirmed” or “pending.”.
Once your transaction is verified by the blockchain network, it will be given a green tick and the funds will be released from your pending balance and into your available balance. If your transaction is not verified within a certain period of time (usually around 72 hours), it will be marked as “failed” and the funds will be returned to your available balance.
There are a few reasons why your bitcoin transaction might not be getting verified. The most common reason is that there are not enough miners confirmations yet.
Miners confirm transactions by including them in the blocks they mine. The more miners that include a transaction in their blocks, the more “confirmed” it becomes.
If there are not enough miners confirming transactions, then the network will slow down and transactions will take longer to verify. This usually happens during times of high network usage, like when there’s a big bitcoin sale or when new bitcoins are being mined (added to the circulating supply).
If you’re trying to send a large amount of bitcoin, or if you’re sending bitcoin to an exchange or wallet that requires many confirmations, then it’s best to wait for 6-12 confirmations before considering the transaction complete.
Another reason why your bitcoin transaction might not be getting verified is because the fee you included was too low. When you make a bitcoin transaction, you need to include a small fee in order for it to be verified by miners.
This fee goes to the miners who confirm transactions and add them to the blockchain.
If you don’t include a high enough fee, then your transaction might not get verified quickly (or at all). This is because miners prioritize transactions with higher fees over those with lower fees.
So if you’re trying to send a large amount of bitcoin, make sure to include a high fee so that your transaction gets confirmed quickly.
The last reason why your bitcoin transaction might not be getting verified is because it’s considered “double spending.” This happens when someone tries to spend the same bitcoins twice.
For example, if someone tries to buy two different items at the same time with the same bitcoins, that’s double spending.
The Bitcoin network prevents double spending by only confirming one of those two transactions. So if you’re trying to spend bitcoins that you’ve already spent somewhere else, your transaction will likely never get confirmed and those bitcoins will remain locked up in limbo.
If your bitcoin funds are stuck in pending for more than 48 hours, then it’s probably best to contact the recipient of the funds and ask them to return them so that you can re-send the funds with a higher fee. Most people are understanding about this kind of thing and will return the funds if they can see that you’re trying to make a good faith effort to get the transaction confirmed.