Bitcoin Forum

Good day all, happy new week, I have found this forum so help but always having question to ask as I am knowing more about bitcoin.

I am thinking if someone want to send bitcoin to many people or many addresses, if the transactions is done separately for each addresses, the more the transaction fee will be getting higher. I want to know if there can be an alternative way to do this.

Is it possible to send to more than one address but only one fee will be charged?

If yes. How can I do it?

I will appreciate all your responses.

usually wallets do support sending to multiple addresses and all you have to do is click a button like "add new recipient" or simply add more addresses in a textbox where you enter the recipient address and separate it with a new line. it all depends on the wallet you use, you'll have to look into the options your wallet offers. you can also always ask the developers to add the feature if it were missing.

in Electrum for instance it is the new line thing. you choose the Tools > Pay to many option and enter each address with the address, amount format each in a new line.

But what about the fee? Is it still going to be the fee that will be charged for only one transaction? Or will be more?

You pay only one fee, because even if you send to more than one address, such a transaction still counts as a one on chain transaction. Of course, you need to count on the number of inputs (address from which your coins will be sent) and outputs (address to which you will send your coins) on which the size of the transaction ultimately depends. The amount of the fee at that time is a combination of the size of the transaction and the current fees.

If you take the current example of a transaction that has one input and 20 outputs (send to 20 different addresses) and you want the first confirmation within an hour, the fee would be around 66202 satoshis (79 satoshis/byte) for Legacy transaction.

https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/fee-calculator/

The overall fee you pay depends on the fee rate (sat/B or sat/vB) and the actual size (bytes or virtual bytes).
Fee [sat] = fee rate [sat/size] * size

A single transactions with 1 input and 20 outputs is at roughly ~800 vByte.
20 Transactions with 1 input and 1 output each, are roughly 3-4 times larger in size. And therefore the fee would also be 3-4 times larger given you use the same fee rate.

At the same fee rate (satoshi/ (v)byte), you will get cheaper transaction fee if you send it to multiple addresses at one batch. You can save fees when you do it with sendouts to different receivers or when you consolidate your inputs.

• Fees are low, use this opportunity to Consolidate your small inputs! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2848987.0)
• Save fee by reduction in transaction size with batch payment (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5265947.msg54916972#msg54916972) (click to see details)

I appreciate your answers. That means for 20 transactions, single payment 20 times in fee will be 20 times higher. But if I send to 20 addresses at ones, the fee can only increase 3 to 4 times due to the transaction size. This is still lower.

What matters is the size of the transaction, not the actual amount been sent. I think I understood this in details now.

Thank you all.

I think you misunderstood me.
Sending 20 single transactions with 1 input / 1 output each, costs 3-4 times more than sending a single transaction with 1 input / 20 outputs.

If you play with the site linked by Lucius (https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/fee-calculator/):
1 input / 1 output: ~138 vbytes
20x 1 input / 1 output: ~2760 vbytes
1 input / 20 outputs: ~784 vbytes




Correct.
And the size is determined by the amount of inputs/outputs and the address type (are you using legacy, multisig, segwit, ..).

Beginning with what bob123 and everyone else said was correct and this is not the answer to the question you asked but;

If you are just concerned about fees you can still send for 1 sat/vB if you can wait a bit. Overnight on the weekends there are many blocks that are not full or are full with 1 sat transactions. Now, if it's noon on Thursday and you need to be in the next block or 2 then you will probably be paying a higher fee then Sunday at 3 AM.
So if you want to do a send to many to save fees what time you do it is also important.

-Dave

I get you more and clearly now. Which is the reason I even asked question. I have also gotten that. Thanks.