Received Random Unconfirming BTC

Question

I've been using BTC for years now. This is the first time this has happened.

Woke up yesterday to an unconfirmed transaction of around $30. Completely confused, I wondered where this came from.

Anyway, it's been 30+ hours since receiving the funds. Still not confirmed, and still completely confused.

My question really, could this be fraudulent BTC? How the hell did they get my address, and how long until I could possibly see this confirmed?

Txid: 987ee6a4930d7610ea081250dfc49d4fdd0ade093d740b4c18c5f78db2bc05c7

Answer 1

My question really, could this be fraudulent BTC?

Not sure about fraudulent, but there are parties that send (near-dust) amounts of Bitcoin to existing addresses, hoping the wallet will merge the output with those sent to different addresses, as to figure out correlations for tracking.

$30 is a bit much for this, though! It could also be that someone copy/pasted a wrong address and accidentally sent to you.

How the hell did they get my address,

Have you used it before? If so, they probably just found it in the block chain.

and how long until I could possibly see this confirmed?

Depends on how much fee they attached. You could help it by creating a CPFP transaction spending it.

On the other hand you might not want to. If someone sent it by accident it is better for it to never confirm so that they can reclaim it at some point.

Answer 2

There are several reasons you can get random BTC:

• Somebody is very generous and likes you
• People send BTC to random addresses as part of mixing sometimes
• Somone is trying to know the identity behind that address. So when you spend bitcoins, they are tracking the outputs to get clues. For example you may use that BTC on a exchange where you have a public profile.

Don't worry too much, enjoy the BTC while you have it and use a mixer while spending!