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Two guesses: Guess one, they made a big transaction with most of their hot wallet, partially paying out to someone who withdrew, with the rest going back to th

by rocqua 4y ago

Two guesses: Guess one, they made a big transaction with most of their hot wallet, partially paying out to someone who withdrew, with the rest going back to the hot wallet. This transaction is in the queue but not finalized yet. The network won't accept any other spends of that money. Because that would be a double spend. So until that transaction is finalized (or it gets to old) that bitcoin is 'stuck'. Or alternatively their hot wallet is empty and they have an outstanding transaction to refill it from their cold wallet. (They have the cash, but they have to wait until they can get it from their 'vault', and there is a traffic jam on the way to the vault). I am not sure the first guess actually still works this way, I vaguely recall there are now mechanisms for one transaction to 'override' another non-confirmed transaction.

lxgr 4y ago
> there are now mechanisms for one transaction to 'override' another non-confirmed transaction. There's at least two, "child pays for parent" and replace-by-fee. It's pretty hard to get regular transactions really "stuck", these days.
- rocqua 4y ago
  Ah ofcourse child pays for parent essentially always works. If I recall correctly replace-by-fee requires wallet support perhaps even at the time of creating the original transaction. But child pays for parent is just universal because it doesn't need to replace the transaction in the mempool, it just pays the miners to move it out of the mempool.
jonahbenton 4y ago
Excellent hypotheses, it should be possible to see these transactions if they are out there. That's why it's a public blockchain.
throwaway4good 4y ago
What queue? Is there a queue in the bitcoin network? I thought it was a question of paying a high enough transaction fee and you would get your transaction done faster / within 10 minutes.
- gruez 4y ago
  > What queue? Is there a queue in the bitcoin network? Yes, that's what the mempool is. >I thought it was a question of paying a high enough transaction fee and you would get your transaction done faster / within 10 minutes. that's broadly true, but if transaction volume spikes then your initial fee estimate might be too low. there are ways around this (RBF, CPFP), but it's unknown whether their wallet software handles it.
  - throwaway4good 4y ago
    How would this be an excuse for Binance to block outgoing transactions? Unless somehow all of Binance's bitcoin was stuck in the mempool ...
    - rocqua 4y ago
      It wouldn't need to be all their bitcoin, just their hot-wallets. Moving bitcoin out of cold wallets should generally be a slow process.
    - rcxdude 4y ago
      They just described a situation where most of their readily available bitcoin (exchanges do not keep more than a minimum of their available cryptocurrencies in a programmatrically available wallet) could be stuck in the mempool.
- rocqua 4y ago
  It's a queue, but not a first-come first serve one. The problem I imagine is that, once you set your transaction fee, and it turns out to be too low, it is hard to retroactively pay more fee. Just because the system doesn't allow two spends of the same output in the mempool at the same time, and canceling a transaction is hard.
lovingCranberry 4y ago
You are right about your first guess. Childs can pay fees for their parent now.

by rocqua 4y ago

lxgr 4y ago

> there are now mechanisms for one transaction to 'override' another non-confirmed transaction. There's at least two, "child pays for parent" and replace-by-fee. It's pretty hard to get regular transactions really "stuck", these days.

rocqua 4y ago
Ah ofcourse child pays for parent essentially always works. If I recall correctly replace-by-fee requires wallet support perhaps even at the time of creating the original transaction. But child pays for parent is just universal because it doesn't need to replace the transaction in the mempool, it just pays the miners to move it out of the mempool.

jonahbenton 4y ago

Excellent hypotheses, it should be possible to see these transactions if they are out there. That's why it's a public blockchain.

throwaway4good 4y ago

What queue? Is there a queue in the bitcoin network? I thought it was a question of paying a high enough transaction fee and you would get your transaction done faster / within 10 minutes.

gruez 4y ago
> What queue? Is there a queue in the bitcoin network? Yes, that's what the mempool is. >I thought it was a question of paying a high enough transaction fee and you would get your transaction done faster / within 10 minutes. that's broadly true, but if transaction volume spikes then your initial fee estimate might be too low. there are ways around this (RBF, CPFP), but it's unknown whether their wallet software handles it.
- throwaway4good 4y ago
  How would this be an excuse for Binance to block outgoing transactions? Unless somehow all of Binance's bitcoin was stuck in the mempool ...
  - rocqua 4y ago
    It wouldn't need to be all their bitcoin, just their hot-wallets. Moving bitcoin out of cold wallets should generally be a slow process.
  - rcxdude 4y ago
    They just described a situation where most of their readily available bitcoin (exchanges do not keep more than a minimum of their available cryptocurrencies in a programmatrically available wallet) could be stuck in the mempool.
rocqua 4y ago
It's a queue, but not a first-come first serve one. The problem I imagine is that, once you set your transaction fee, and it turns out to be too low, it is hard to retroactively pay more fee. Just because the system doesn't allow two spends of the same output in the mempool at the same time, and canceling a transaction is hard.

lovingCranberry 4y ago

You are right about your first guess. Childs can pay fees for their parent now.