Problem with sending BTC without fees

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What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. send e.g. 1 BTC to the Android phone
2. send 1 BTC back to the PC, set transaction fee to 0
3. balance is 0, but neither blockexplorer or bitcoincharts show the transaction

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
Balance should be correct, no matter if a transaction was successful or not.

What version of Bitcoin Wallet are you using? On what Android version and
what phone? Don't just state 'most recent', this is not enough info.
Version 1.26, Android 2.2

If you have problems with particular transactions, what is your Bitcoin
address? If you happen to have transaction IDs, please state them as well.
16agtyQcnBp2YakaAAf5UhpNL3f9NWBXD3

Please provide any additional information below.

The full story:
Transferred 0.0005 to phone to test, but a transfer back could not be done: 
balance dropped to 0, it's in the transaction window, but no transaction 
traceable on the web. I guess it's the anti-spam-policy of the nodes. Next try 
was with 1.0 BTC, transferring back 1.0005 BTC (the 0.0005 were still 
existant), but this is not allowed by the app due to too low balance. 
Transferring 1.0 failed also, again because of fees I guess, because I left the 
fee field 0.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by peterhol...@gmail.com on 16 Aug 2011 at 9:26

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Does a "reset blockchain and transactions" actually help? Or do I loose my 
money then forever?

Original comment by peterhol...@gmail.com on 16 Aug 2011 at 9:28

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I just saw today: the transaction with 1BTC back succeeded somehow later, so 
there is just the 0.0005BTC actually still in the wallet.

Original comment by peterhol...@gmail.com on 17 Aug 2011 at 8:08

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I'm afraid the behaviour of Bitcoin Wallet (showing a balance of 0) is correct 
in this case, because you signed a transaction sending away all your Bitcoins 
and you can't spend it again.

Why it takes so long to get confirmed by the network is another story. In this 
case, you should not have assigned a fee of 0. As soon as fee rules will be 
implemented by BitCoinJ, this will not be possible any more (see separate 
issue).

Removing a pending tx that does not get confirmed (for whatever reason) is 
currently only possible by resetting all transactions & blockchain (Options 
Menu -> About). You will not lose any confirmed tx and the Bitcoins associated 
with it, but it takes some time to refresh the block chain.

Original comment by andreas....@gmail.com on 17 Aug 2011 at 9:26

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As I said about the 1BTC: The transaction got actually confirmed in a
block, of course later due to the lack of fees, but that's ok.

The only left issue is now the 0.0005BTC which is too little to
transfer away :) But thanks for the tip, I will reset tonight at home
the blockchain, so I will have the app being aware of the correct
balance again!

Peter

Original comment by peterhol...@gmail.com on 17 Aug 2011 at 3:03

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I just want to add that I can confirm this. Two tiny 0-fee txs don't even show 
up in the list of unconfirmed txs. 

Original comment by harald.schilly on 3 Oct 2011 at 2:31

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I noticed last night that the fee field's label still says "(optional)" next to 
it, but if the field is blank or zero, the send button is disabled. Awesome. 

1.) Could the (optional) be removed, thus telling the user that the fee is 
essentially mandatory? Or show some kind of a warning if the amount/fee is too 
low to be processed by the network?

2.) A tooltip or some kind of help function explaining the fee would be REALLY 
nice for folks new to Bitcoin, potentially using it for the first time on their 
phone. I didn't understand the fee AT ALL until last night when I read a long 
article about it. I think it could be summarized like this:

"The transaction fee (commonly referred to as "tx") is a fee paid to the 
Bitcoin network as an incentive for your transaction to be confirmed quickly. 
The larger the fee, the more likely it will be processed quickly. The minimum 
fee is currently 0.0000X."

Original comment by colind...@gmail.com on 4 Mar 2012 at 7:10

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@colindean:

You can enter 0 fees. There are actually nodes that will relay and confirm your 
transactions:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Free_transaction_relay_policy

For plans to suggest a sensible to the user, see these issues:

http://code.google.com/p/bitcoinj/issues/detail?id=45
http://code.google.com/p/bitcoinj/issues/detail?id=107

Original comment by andreas....@gmail.com on 4 Mar 2012 at 7:42

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I sent 0.001btc with 0btc fee. 3 days later it won't go through,but it is 
locking up the rest of my balance. ie my balance is displayed correctly (I 
think) on the main screen but I just can't send any of it.

Original comment by david8bl...@gmail.com on 10 Jun 2012 at 6:40

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As of version 2.21, a warning dialog is now displayed. I'm closing this because 
there is not anything more I can do.

Original comment by andreas....@gmail.com on 7 Nov 2012 at 9:50

• Changed state: Fixed