Since launching about a year ago, the number of emails we receive asking for help with bitcoin transactions has steadily increased to about 50 per day. Many of these are requests for help with stuck transactions, where the transaction is still unconfirmed despite using BTC Nitro to accelerate them (for free). So…a couple of things to be aware of here:
1. We don’t own the blockchain
It would be cool if we did…but we don’t. By design, the blockchain is decentralised meaning that no single person, government or private entity can dictate how it’s used, how it works or what happens on it. All we have is a handful of nodes connected to the blockchain, a bit like how you probably have couple of computers connected to the Internet. You use it, but you don’t own it. What does this mean to us? It means that we can’t force anything unnatural to happen such as magically clearing a stuck transaction that’s been in the mempool for 2 weeks because you used 5 sat/byte miner fees when you sent some bitcoin to Coinbase. In fact, the vast majority of emails we receive say things like:
please can you confirm my transaction I sent last week. It’s still saying unconfirmed in my wallet and I think this website is a scam
Really? And yet when we look in the blockchain explorer we can see that you sent the equivalent of $500 using almost zero fees! Unfortunately this means that nobody can really assist you here (or at least not free of charge). Also it’s not a scam because we didn’t charge you anything or display any ads. In fact, our free service is exactly that…a best effort to rebroadcast your transaction with not guarantees that it will work. Now, if your transaction has been dropped from the mempool, our accelerator will help bring it back to life but as we don’t own the blockchain, we can’t force miners to confirm your transaction (at least not at the time of writing).
2. We’re not a developer support forum
Another common request we get is for help with troubleshooting your blockchain apps. We’re simply too busy building our own to become the blockchain’s official support forum! Please don’t send us emails with dozens of screenshots asking for help with troubleshooting your code as we won’t be able to reply with anything useful. There are plenty of places where you can get help fixing your broken scripts and some great resources such as bitcointalk.org. We recommend you try getting help there…even we get ideas from members of that forum.
3. We’re ad free…at least for now
The next most common request we get is asking us for advert space. We offer a free service that will always be free. If one day we don’t feel like covering the costs or running BTC Nitro anymore, then we may be forced to put up ads. But we can promise you now that it won’t be for your pr0n or gambling website…we’ll only select high quality, bitcoin or blockchain relevant service providers to link to.
End of rant! We love bitcoin, we love blockchain and we love our users. We’re always here to help with accelerating your transactions using the tools on the homepage but please think about what you’re asking for before you email us. Some things are simply not possible 🙂
The BTC Nitro Team