Bitcoin Forum

I am trying to send .01 btc from my Electrum wallet. But it is asking for a fee of about .006 btc. Why is that? Is there a way to minimize the fee?

Electrum has a dynamic fee system which sets a default fee based on what it thinks will get confirmed in decent time.

You can customise your fees by going to Tools -> Preferences -> Fees tab -> Edit fees manually.  To decide what fee you want to pay, you could try having a look at this page (http://bitcoinfees.21.co/), which estimates how long your transaction would take to confirm with different transaction fees.

Currently according to that site, it would be okay to pay anything 21 satoshi/byte or above, and possibly a bit less than that as well.
Are you sure it isn't 0.0006?  It would be very unusual for the fee to be that high.  Perhaps you've accepted a lot of microtransactions to your wallet which is pushing the fee up.

Hi!!! Thank you very much for responding. I am really surprised actually. This is my very first transaction to send using my electrum wallet and also
i transferred bitcoin to it ONCE so far. I am using a different wallet and i just wanted to try this desktop wallet.
I am not sure about the "Microtransactions". Here is the scenario,

1. I have .0117 btc in my wallet and i want to use it to use it to buy an alt coin
2. The electrum wallet does not allow me to send more than .006 btc
3. If i send more than .006 btc,, the wallet says "Insufficient funds". So it means the rest of the .0057 btc goes to the FEE?

I don't understand why it does not allow me to send more than .006 btc.

Hope you can help me out.

Play around with the features and get comfortable. Go on their site and find answers. If you ask other people without trying yourself you'll never learn. There are ways you can adjust the fee you pay. The smaller the fee the longer it'll take to get verified.

There's no way, friend. If you have to transfer BTC.
If you can change into other coins, then gas costs can be much lower, LTC and ETH transfer costs are relatively low, and the speed is also very fast. When BTC transfers, the block is often congested because there are too many people to use it.

I tried everything i could on Electrum wallet. I played every option but still the fee is the same (.0057btc = 33 USD)
If it is around 1-10 usd,, it should be fine.

You can customise your fees by going to Tools -> Preferences -> Fees tab -> Edit fees manually.  To decide what fee you want to pay, you could try having a look at this page, which estimates how long your transaction would take to confirm with different transaction fees.