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Bitcoin => Bitcoin Technical Support => Topic started by: TuxRider01 on December 16, 2017, 02:29:20 PM



Title: Need advices about getting the best possible fees in my situation.
Post by: TuxRider01 on December 16, 2017, 02:29:20 PM
I have BTC still on the legacy blockchain that I would like to send to a segwit address to get better fee on future transactions. The thing is that the fees to do a transaction from a legacy address are insane (even with slow confirmations) at the moment. So I'm trying to figure out what would be the best option in my case.

I'm not in a hurry to spend or sell the BTC I have on the legacy blockchain because I'm planning to hodl most of it for a long time. However, I think it would be nice to get the BTC ready at a Segwit compatible address.

Here some questions I have:

1-Is the fees on the legacy blockchain are more likely to get lower or higher in a near future? In others words, should I wait to do the transfer to a segwit address?

2-What kind a saving aprox. in % can I get from sending BTC from a segwit address to another segwit one vs a transaction done on the legacy blockchain?

Thank you!


Title: Re: Need advices about getting the best possible fees in my situation.
Post by: achow101 on December 17, 2017, 07:03:54 AM
1-Is the fees on the legacy blockchain are more likely to get lower or higher in a near future? In others words, should I wait to do the transfer to a segwit address?
You are asking us to predict the future, which is impossible to do.

2-What kind a saving aprox. in % can I get from sending BTC from a segwit address to another segwit one vs a transaction done on the legacy blockchain?
For a one input, one output transaction, a segwit transaction will cost ~1/3 less than the analogous non-segwit transaction.



Since there is no rush, the best thing for you to do is to just send the transaction with a very low fee rate and with RBF enabled and then just wait for it to confirm. If it is taking too long, you can then bump the fee since you have RBF enabled. Otherwise just rebroadcast the transaction occasionally and wait a few days.


Title: Re: Need advices about getting the best possible fees in my situation.
Post by: bob123 on December 17, 2017, 07:37:57 AM
-Is the fees on the legacy blockchain are more likely to get lower or higher in a near future? In others words, should I wait to do the transfer to a segwit address?

First of all, there is no 'legacy blockchain' and no 'segwit blockchain'. It is bitcoin, it is one blockchain.
You can 'store your coins' in either 1) a legacy address or 2) an address in segwit format.
The fees of BTC are going higher if more people want to send coins around and are ready to pay more for that.
And if people decide to not send too much across the BTC network (and are not ready to pay 30$ for a TX), the median price of a transaction will go down.


-What kind a saving aprox. in % can I get from sending BTC from a segwit address to another segwit one vs a transaction done on the legacy blockchain?

When sending from an segwit address you can save about 35% of the size of the TX (and therefore from fee, since fee is usually calculated in sat/B).
It doesn't matter what address (P2PKH/P2SH) is recieving your transaction.