I accidentally used a too low transaction fee for a Bitcoin transaction yesterday and after 24 hours the transaction still didn't confirm, so I looked into what can be done.

I quickly stumbled upon the [ViaBTC Transaction Accelerator](https://www.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator/), a mining pool that helps people get their transaction unstuck for free by giving priority to the stuck transaction when they find a block. It allows you to enter the transaction ID that is stuck, solve the very simple captcha, press "Submit" and... It probably tells you that the transaction couldn't be accelerated because too many people are using the free service.

<center>![2017-05-14.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmc4w3za14HP9RYzzu8fuAwHUpNEvwyG4HE9pbndkdwNaG/2017-05-14.png)</center>

I tried over and over again but it was always overloaded, just too many people are trying to get their stuck transaction fixed using ViaBTC right now and it's only getting worse as Bitcoin's popularity grows. I was about to give up, when after another long search on Google, I stumbled upon this information:

ViaBTC accelerates 100 transactions every hour. So you need to be one of the first 100. This limit is reset at every full hour. 9:00, 10:00, 11:00 and so on. So to get your transaction accepted, wait until just seconds before the next full hour, enter your transaction id, solve the captcha and then, the second the full hour has started, hit Submit! Didn't work? Maybe your clock is off by a few seconds and it isn't the full hour yet, so just do it again, enter your txid, solve captcha, hit Submit.

Using this "trick" (it's really just knowing how the accelerator service works), after unsuccessfully trying to get my transaction accepted by the ViaBTC accelerator for hours and hours, it finally worked on the first try and my bitcoin transaction finally started to confirm after an hour or so (it can take up to 12 hours I believe, depends on when the ViaBTC pool finds a block).

I can't tell you for sure if this was just pure luck and chance or if this "trick" truly works, but it does seem to work since I've tried using the accelerator at least two dozen times before and it didn't work, then I tried it at the full hour mark and it worked instantly.

Hope this helps people who end up in the same situation as me. And I'll try to be more careful about choosing a good transaction fee in the future. I am a scatterbrain though :)