<p>I bought some bitcoin back in 2013 and transferred it to my private wallet managed by MultiBit classic 0.5.17. I have successfully used the system and spent some of the funds in MultiBit Classic as recently as July 2016. Everything worked flawlessly up until that point.</p>

<p>Now I (and I imagine many others) find myself in a tricky situation. MultiBit classic does not allow for transaction fee adjustments and has a hard-coded 0.0001BTC transaction fee. Currently this is about an order of magnitude too low for any transaction generated with such a fee to move along. I know this because I have three transactions stuck in "unconfirmed" state for over a week now. I have tried to migrate the funds to a different wallet, but so far have had no success. MultiBit HD, the replacement for classic does not import secret keys. I also tried Electrum, but that only imports secret key into a "watch only" wallet, so I can't spend any funds from it. I am still looking and trying, but am getting really exasperated. If anyone knows of a way to transfer my bitcoin held in MultiBit Classic 0.5.17 into a modern wallet where I can set transaction fees so that I can move transactions along, please let me know.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-12-22T16:57:14.153Z
Did you follow [this when exporting the private key(s) from Multibit?](https://multibit.org/help/v0.5/help_exportingPrivateKeys.html)
Chak
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-12-22T17:30:05.740Z
Yes, I did. I exported the private key without password and then copied the key into the appropriate place in Electrum. It took the key and displayed my coin properly, but would not let me spend any of it since it only creates "watch only" wallets in this manner.
Vladimir Ferdman
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-12-22T17:35:54.933Z
That's weird. What is the first 3 characters of your exported private key?
Chak
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-12-22T17:46:20.537Z
First three characters are L47. But I think I just got it to work. I went through the same steps as last night but created a new wallet using import option instead of standard. Then I used the private key generated by MultiBit Classic (not password protected) and it seemed to have worked. I just issued a payment with the new wallet from Electrum and it showed up on Blockchain.info. Still unconfirmed, but I adjusted the fee to 910 sat/byte, which seems to be an amount that gets things moving these days. So I believe the issue is resolved. I may have been too tired last night to get it right.
Vladimir Ferdman
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-12-22T17:47:09.280Z
This whole ordeal has been driving me nuts for days, so I may have been too frustrated to go through the steps correctly or to find the correct steps.
Vladimir Ferdman
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-12-22T19:18:04.377Z
Good that you solved the issue. Your private key is a compressed base58 encoded private key, so Electrum should have no problem with that.
Chak
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-12-22T21:29:06.290Z
Yes, I knew it was able to use it yesterday, but it seemed (to my yesterday exasperated self) that it will only create a "watch only" wallet with an imported private key. I am very glad I figured it out. I already made a successful transaction that got confirmed in less than two hours with a fee of 910 satoshi/byte.
Vladimir Ferdman
<transaction-fees><multibit><wallet-recovery>
Ho to spend bitcoin in MultiBit Classic in these times of high transaction fees?
Vladimir Ferdman
# Ho to spend bitcoin in MultiBit Classic in these times of high transaction fees?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2017-12-22)

I bought some bitcoin back in 2013 and transferred it to my private wallet managed by MultiBit classic 0.5.17. I have successfully used the system and spent some of the funds in MultiBit Classic as recently as July 2016. Everything worked flawlessly up until that point.

Now I (and I imagine many others) find myself in a tricky situation. MultiBit classic does not allow for transaction fee adjustments and has a hard-coded 0.0001BTC transaction fee. Currently this is about an order of magnitude too low for any transaction generated with such a fee to move along. I know this because I have three transactions stuck in "unconfirmed" state for over a week now. I have tried to migrate the funds to a different wallet, but so far have had no success. MultiBit HD, the replacement for classic does not import secret keys. I also tried Electrum, but that only imports secret key into a "watch only" wallet, so I can't spend any funds from it. I am still looking and trying, but am getting really exasperated. If anyone knows of a way to transfer my bitcoin held in MultiBit Classic 0.5.17 into a modern wallet where I can set transaction fees so that I can move transactions along, please let me know.

**Tags:** transaction-fees, multibit, wallet-recovery

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Did you follow [this when exporting the private key(s) from Multibit?](https://multibit.org/help/v0.5/help_exportingPrivateKeys.html)  
> **username_0**: Yes, I did. I exported the private key without password and then copied the key into the appropriate place in Electrum. It took the key and displayed my coin properly, but would not let me spend any of it since it only creates "watch only" wallets in this manner.  
> **username_1**: That's weird. What is the first 3 characters of your exported private key?  
> **username_0**: First three characters are L47. But I think I just got it to work. I went through the same steps as last night but created a new wallet using import option instead of standard. Then I used the private key generated by MultiBit Classic (not password protected) and it seemed to have worked. I just issued a payment with the new wallet from Electrum and it showed up on Blockchain.info. Still unconfirmed, but I adjusted the fee to 910 sat/byte, which seems to be an amount that gets things moving these days. So I believe the issue is resolved. I may have been too tired last night to get it right.  
> **username_0**: This whole ordeal has been driving me nuts for days, so I may have been too frustrated to go through the steps correctly or to find the correct steps.  
> **username_1**: Good that you solved the issue. Your private key is a compressed base58 encoded private key, so Electrum should have no problem with that.  
> **username_0**: Yes, I knew it was able to use it yesterday, but it seemed (to my yesterday exasperated self) that it will only create a "watch only" wallet with an imported private key. I am very glad I figured it out. I already made a successful transaction that got confirmed in less than two hours with a fee of 910 satoshi/byte.  

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## 0 answers

