Stung By The Lethargy Of Bitcoin. My First Big Bitcoin Delay & Some Tips For How To Avoid Them.

This will be a shorter post to signify a progression in my experience in using cryptocurrency. I've long sung the praises of the utility of Bitcoin and have only experienced delays of perhaps up to half an hour. This is still in my mind a high quality service.

Many of you will know that I'm a vehement opponent of the banking system. One of the most stressful and lengthy transactions I've performed was in the form of fiat via an international SWIFT transfer. The funds were withdrawn immediately from my source account and simply never showed in the destination bank for over 5 weeks.

To me the funds were lost but the banks involved attempted to convince me that this wasn't the case and that everything was normal. I made the point that they have a strange definition of "lost" if after over a month, no funds in either source or destination account doesn't qualify. I initiated traces which cost further funds and wrote many emails in an attempt to locate the funds. Ironically, I could have purchased a ticket on an ocean liner and physically moved the funds faster than the SWIFT electronic system

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Currently, I'm experiencing a maturation in my crypto experience and exposure. You see, it's now 12 hours ago as I type this that I sent my most recent BTC transaction and I've still not received the funds. It's actually a blocktrades conversion to steem and it's for a reasonable amount too. I'm wondering how long the window is open for a blocktrades conversion as this time window puts me in uncharted waters. I presumably will get an exchange rate at the time that the block is mined which means that I miss out on any advantage that may have occurred between the pair at the time of transmission.

Both BlockExplorer.com and BlockChain.info indicate zero confirmations to date and honestly I'm not sure how long such blocks can sit there unmined. I sent the funds from a blockchain wallet; the first I ever set up. There was no facility to specify the transaction fee so perhaps this is something to look for in a wallet. It's a fairly common feature now from what I understand. Consequently, I thought I'd put up a quick list to help people avoid such scenarios - even though there's not a huge amount you can do.

• Use wallets that allow you to increase the transaction fee to encourage miners to min your block
• Think about the quality of service you are after when sending transactions. Until you're hit with a big delay, you wont really know how you'll respond to the stress
• When starting out, try with a few smaller transactions just to get a feel for the system before shifting any big funds
• Consider looking at the utility of the cryptocurrency you wish to invest in in addition to the price action. It's little point moving funds into an investment that is difficult to transact in!
• Try the technique described here although it's something I've not tried myself...

My transaction is currently in 977 memory pools but has a low miner preference so it's actually unlikely that it'll go through. Part of me is frustrated because I wanted to perform a transaction yet another part of me is happy for the experience as this is how we learn.

What do you all think? I've heard of tricks that can be performed such as the use of viabtc transaction accelerator but I have no experience with it (and a quick check this morning indicated that the site is down). There's another suggestion of sending a second transaction to your own wallet with a big fee and exploiting the Child Pays For Parent feature; again something I've not tried before. Perhaps both of these are worth researching. Nothing as bad as my 5 week wait with the banks but a concerning situation nonetheless

Thanks for reading!