There are still 14 victims of the massive Twitter hack who could still get their Bitcoin back.
These victims sent some Bitcoin to a hacker address, but their transactions are not yet confirmed on the Bitcoin network. They are currently hanging in limbo, or Bitcoin mempool. These transactions do not appear to be confirmed after many hours because the senders designated a very low transaction fee that is not attractive to miners.
Bitcoin Core developer Wladimir van der Laan confirmed this to Cointelegraph. “Miners choose the highest rate transactions, but they could also have a minimum rate below which they will not mine transactions at all,” he said.
For example, one transaction proposed a rate of 2 Satoshis per byte. The expected delay for a transaction with such a low fee is between 35 and 780 minutes. As van der Laan explained, they may never be processed:
“They may be processed when there is really nothing more appealing in the mempool (for example, some downtime on the weekend with small new transactions?), But also, they may never be processed and simply forgotten “
How these victims can get their money back
Victims with their persistent mempool transactions can send the same Bitcoin (with the same inputs) to another address they control with higher fees. Even if the miners ever process their original transactions, they will not be confirmed because the Bitcoin protocol verifies the validity of the entries. Since those tickets would have been spent, the original transactions would be rejected.
Hopefully, at least some of the victims will learn their lesson without paying the price.
