There is also ViaBTC's and Antpool's free accelerators, but they are usually full. You need to keep trying from time to time until you get your transaction in. Good luck!

https://www.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator/
https://www.antpool.com/user/prioritiseTransaction.htm

It does. You usually can't trust any "transaction accelerator" since 99% of them are a scam and fake. But BTC.com has its only mining pool, so you can pay them so they include your transactions in the next block they mine (or maybe now they have some deal with other mining pools...? I don't know).

It is indeed expensive, so it's your call. Either wait or pay them for a quick confirmation.

Well, it's still going to take some time since the mempool is congestioned and fees are a bit high.

What your other friend suggested with the $1 transactions was a good idea, but the sender just didn't execute it well. You can accelerate the transaction by asking the sender to make 2 new transactions with a higher fee, but just not any transaction.

The coins should be coming from the addresses that received the change from the transaction.

For example, the second transaction: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/2c8082ae3a9e9e498c8d2b8e13173b82cb35f738fd81611e56bb14056285579e


The 1GvZT... address (your sender's address) is sending 0.04048187 to your address (19G7D....) but there is also 1BJdY1... that is receiving 0.00040253 BTC (the change of the transaction). This address is also owned by the sender, so he must spend those 0.00040253 BTC so the miners must confirm your transaction before confirming the new one (the new one depends on the old one).

Unfortunately, I don't think Blockchain.com supports coin control (spending only the 0.00040253 BTC originated from that transaction), so his only shot is probably to send all his balance to himself with a higher fee (that is, if Blockchain.com allows him to spend unconfirmed coins, which I'm not sure if it does). I hope that's not too confusing.

I just searched for your transaction in a few other block explorers and the two transactions actually show up on BTC.com and Blockchair.com

https://btc.com/2c8082ae3a9e9e498c8d2b8e13173b82cb35f738fd81611e56bb14056285579e
https://btc.com/59e6605571ee88d6e87a7fa75b18423337bff15f86444a69959d12e2a0e09c89

Because of that, I managed to get the HEX of the transaction and push it back to the mempool through Blockchain.com website. It should show up just fine now.

What did we learn today? That Blockchain.com sucks. Consider something more secure like Electrum (electrum.org), which is a desktop wallet (do some research to not fall for scams and phishing websites, though).

Please answer a few questions so we can find out what happened.

Does the BTC show up in your Blockchain wallet?
If you check your transaction history, do you see any of those two missing transactions there?
If not, do you see anything at all that justifies your balance increasing (any other transaction with same value)?
How much did he sent you (in the first 2 transactions)?
What is your Bitcoin address?

I highly doubt that a transaction would be dropped from the mempool after just 1 and 2 days.

You could specify the wallet you're using so other users can help you better. The default expiry date for a transaction is 2 weeks, so it's unlikely it was dropped except a node manually did that.

RBF is not advisable to use, it's better to check for the suitable fee at the time of sending so as to prevent it getting stuck, here are some tools to check that;

The transaction most likely was dropped from the mempool due to the fees being too low when this happens block explorers also remove the data reason why the txid is not assessible. Sending small amounts of bitcoins to the same address does not hasten the initial transaction. Ask the sender to confirm if the bitcoins has been returned to their address.

Some wallets allow one to bump the fee after broadcasting. You can also use RBF, where you send the exact same output but with a higher fee.