CPFP in Crypto: How Child-Pays-for-Parent Transactions Fix Slow Bitcoin Fees

When a Bitcoin transaction gets stuck, CPFP, or Child-Pays-for-Parent, is one of the few reliable ways to fix it without waiting days. Also known as child pays for parent, this technique lets you incentivize miners to confirm a slow transaction by attaching a new, higher-fee transaction that spends the output of the original one. It’s not magic—it’s just smart fee engineering. If your payment hasn’t confirmed after hours, CPFP gives you control instead of leaving it to luck.

CPFP works because miners prioritize transactions with the highest fee per byte. When you create a child transaction that spends the unconfirmed parent, the miner sees the combined fee of both transactions. If the total is high enough, they’ll confirm the whole chain—even the old, low-fee one. This is why CPFP is so popular on Bitcoin: it’s a workaround for mempool congestion, the backlog of unconfirmed transactions that clogs the network during spikes in demand. You don’t need to cancel or replace the original transaction. You just add another one on top. It’s like paying a toll to clear a traffic jam behind you.

CPFP is especially useful when you’re using wallets that don’t support RBF (Replace-by-Fee), or when you didn’t set a high enough fee upfront. Many users run into this when sending funds during peak hours, or when using hardware wallets with limited fee options. Unlike RBF, CPFP doesn’t require the sender to opt in ahead of time. It’s a post-send fix anyone can apply, as long as they control the private keys of the unconfirmed output. That’s why it’s a go-to tool for DeFi traders, miners, and anyone who can’t afford to wait.

But CPFP isn’t perfect. It requires you to have extra Bitcoin to pay the new fee, and it only works if the original transaction is still in the mempool. If it’s been dropped, CPFP won’t help. And if the network is flooded, even a high-fee child might take time. Still, it’s one of the few tools that actually puts power back in your hands. You’re not begging the network—you’re paying to move your own transaction forward.

Below, you’ll find real-world examples of how people use CPFP to rescue stuck payments, avoid missed opportunities, and save money on fees. Some posts show how it’s done on Bitcoin, others explain why it doesn’t work on all blockchains. You’ll also see cases where people tried to use CPFP but got burned by bad tools or fake services. This isn’t theory—it’s what users actually do when their transactions won’t confirm.