1\ There is an alarming amount of misinformation (fueled by the media) on what exactly happened to Bitcoin yesterday, and whether funds were "double spent"
Here's everything you need to know 👇
2\ On the 18th, a user broadcast a transaction with very low fees.
When users underpay fees, their transactions gets stuck because miners have more profitable opportunities.
Users are left with 2 options:
a) wait until fee levels drop
b) tell miners they will increase fees
3\ The most popular way to (b) increase fees of an already-broadcast transaction is through a "Replace By Fee (RBF)" transaction.
Put simply, RBF is a copy-and-paste of the original transaction with higher fees and an explicit instruction to favor the new transaction instead.
4\ Nearly a day passed after our infamous user broadcast the original transaction and miners did not include it.
So the user decided to issue an RBF on the 19th with higher fees... but not high enough!
And the transaction was again stuck...
5\ A couple of hours later, the user decided to bump fees up again via a second RBF!
This time around the user paid enough fees.