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Bitcoin => Bitcoin Discussion => Topic started by: robber on June 09, 2020, 09:05:47 AM



Title: Can someone explain the bitcoin fee predictor table for me please?
Post by: robber on June 09, 2020, 09:05:47 AM
Ok so I understand this website here https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/#fees shows the correllation between fees and processing time for bitcoin transactions. I read all the information on the page but it doesn't explain much (or am I just a noob?).

What do the big horizontal bars represent? Why are there two of them for each price bracket? Why are some of them green, brown and blue?

Please help me get the smarts.


Title: Re: Can someone explain the bitcoin fee predictor table for me please?
Post by: o_e_l_e_o on June 09, 2020, 11:21:42 AM
The first bar (of varying color) at each bracket is the number of current unconfirmed transactions at that price bracket. The second bar (gray/blue) at each bracket is the number of confirmed transactions made today at that price bracket. The first bar changes color based on the site's estimation of how many blocks it will take for a transaction with that fee to be confirmed - green for the next block, yellow for a delay of 1-2 blocks, and so on.

Now, having said all that, that site is legendarily awful for suggesting a fee, and always grossly overestimates. The only time you need to pay its suggested fee is if you absolutely must have your transaction confirmed in the next block. If you can wait a couple of blocks, then you can usually pay a far lower fee and save yourself some money. The current suggested fee of 26 sats/byte would put you around 0.2 MB from the tip of the mempool, whereas if you look at a graphical representation of the mempool here (https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,8h), you can see that the mempool is pretty much emptying every couple of blocks. The minimum fee of 1 sat/byte would still get you confirmed within a few blocks.


Title: Re: Can someone explain the bitcoin fee predictor table for me please?
Post by: DaveF on June 09, 2020, 12:50:44 PM
In addition to what o_e_l_e_o said about bitcoinfees.earn.com and  https://jochen-hoenicke.de/ working well I have been using
https://mempool.space/ for a while now and it really seems to work well.

It gives a very simple picture of what the average fee has been in the few blocks the expected fee to get in the next few blocks and on the bottom of the page the number of unconfirmed transactions and the size of the mempool.

Now the estimates for fees are based on 10 minute blocks and the number of transactions staying level, a bit of variance can blow any of the estimators out of the water. But I feel that it is a quick and easy look to see what you need to pay.
 
-Dave


Title: Re: Can someone explain the bitcoin fee predictor table for me please?
Post by: robber on June 10, 2020, 02:57:34 AM
thanks guys, super useful, good work  8)