How to Cancel A Bitcoin Transaction? What to Do if a Transaction Froze?

The user database of the Bitcoin network is growing every year. The novelty of the industry implies the presence on the market of a large number of non-professional investors. They, because of lack of experience or by trivial inattention, can voluntarily lose their digital assets, simply by sending them to the wrong wallet. In this article we'll talk about why you cannot just cancel a BTC transaction and what to do if it froze. Contents: (please, click the topic to scroll down to it)

1. Is it possible to cancel a BTC transaction?
2. Why is it impossible to return Bitcoins?
3. The transaction isn’t responding, what should I do?
4. Conclusion

1. Is it possible to cancel a BTC transaction?

As already mentioned above, unfortunately, it is not possible to cancel the transaction in the Bitcoin network technically and physically. In the history of the coin, many users, on their own bitter experience, were convinced of this feature of digital currencies. At first glance, this may seem to be a developer's fault, but if you recall the blockchain technology, which underlies cryptocurrencies, then everything falls into place. The fact is that Bitcoin is a decentralized system, that is, it does not have a single center from which it would be possible to correct the direction of transactions. It is worth noting that cryptocurrencies gained their popularity precisely for the opportunity to exchange coins without the control of intermediaries. You can see the transaction queue, but you cannot return the funds. Transactions in digital currencies are different from traditional electronic systems. The process of conducting transactions consists in rewriting the balances of two wallets (the sender’s and the receiver’s). Data about this operation is written to the registry, after which it is no longer possible to change it.

2. Why is it impossible to return Bitcoins?

Due to the peculiarities of the technology, it is not possible to reverse the transaction. If You, for example, bought something on the Internet and paid bitcoin, but want to make a return of the goods, then You need to contact the seller to make a new transaction to Your wallet. Since the data on Your payment has already been successfully entered in the register and nothing can be done about it. But what to do if You accidentally sent money to the wrong wallet? Let's be honest, unfortunately, you have to put up with it, since most likely you will not get it back. Although the Bitcoin address, to which the transaction was made, is in the public register, there is no possibility to find a person by name or surname. Therefore, You cannot 100% know of whom you have sent your digital assets.

3. The transaction isn’t responding, what should I do?

A long time of confirmation of transactions in the Bitcoin network is the weak point of this payment system. The BTC algorithm is designed in such a way that it can handle only 7 operations per second, so sometimes users have to wait for the transaction to complete for several hours or even days. But it happens that they hang for a very long time, for what reasons can this happen?

• a sudden break in the Internet signal;
• setting a too small commission fee.

What should you do in this case?

1. First, you need to make sure whether the operation is actually suspended or whether the queue has just not yet arrived. Open Block Explorer, it will be indicated there.
2. Next, go to the debugging console (Help-Window-Debug-Console);
3. Get a private key from your wallet.
4. Export private access keys to all bitcoin addresses, on which there are funds.
5. After that, close the application and delete the wallet.
6. Again run the client of the wallet program, create a new wallet and import private keys. Prepare that this process will take a sufficient amount of time.
7. Done. In the new wallet, access to blocked funds will be resumed. In this way, you can undo an unconfirmed Bitcoin transaction.

It is important to understand that this instruction does not apply to cloud wallets.

4. Conclusion

Performing transactions on the Bitcoin network one should be extremely careful, since they cannot be reversed. This is both the main feature and the lack of the system. Subscribe to The Coin Shark news in Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coinshark/