Bitcoin Forum

A while ago I decided to sweep a Paper wallet with a few coins and I was kind of in a hurry ...so I chose "max fee" and I just clicked continue without even checking what the miners fees would be. It turns out that the miners fees was over $1000 for that transaction and I was absolute gutted after I checked it.

In my country you can buy a good second hand car with that amount of money, so you can understand my surprise when I saw that. I never ever thought that the fees would be that high.. seeing that I did a paper wallet the week before with 1 coin and the miners fees at the lowest setting was just over $15.  >:(   

It is my own fault and I should have converted the bitcoin amount to the Fiat value... but as I said.. I was in a hurry. It would have been nice if Electrum could have given me the option to display the miner fee value in the Fiat currency of my choice... so that I know how much it will be, before I click.. "proceed"  :P

Ouch and expensive moment.
 

I think when you are making a large transaction then it's better not to hurry in it. Double, if needed triple check the address, amount and miner's fees before hitting the broadcast button.

Nah.... I learnt my lesson and I will never do it again. I am just thinking of the other people who have not learnt this lesson and they too might lose some valuable money. If we are serious about not being expensive and doing it better than Banks, then we should build some features that would prevent situations like this.

I just hope one of the developers would visit this thread and see the problem like I am seeing it and come with some kind of solution. (I am not an idiot, just someone who was in a hurry and who made a silly mistake.. and that cost me more than $1000)  >:(

There's an issue created here by another user previously: https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues/6664.

It won't be difficult to do it, I'll see if I have the time in the future to do a pull request for this.

Just showing the FIAT conversion rate should indeed not be that hard... Verifying said conversion rate (people WILL trust you with their lifesaving if they know this feature exists... If you mess up, if the exchange API gets compromised,.... they might lose hundreds of bucks and blame you) and adding some context is probably a tad bit harder.

If somebody who accepted hundreds of micro-payments (for example from a faucet) wants to consolidate (or spend) during a feewar at this ATH, he/she shouldn't be supprised if he/she had to pay a couple hundred bucks in fees, if the same person spends one unspent output at a dip in both the mempool congestion and the price he should be able to get away with a couple of bucks in fee. For us, that's trivial, for a beginner it's not...  So i guess this feature should come with some context...

Personally, i think it would be a good idea to issue a warning to somebody that's using a feerate (in sat/vbyte) that's more than 50% above the feerate necessary to have a decent chance of getting into the next couple of blocks... I honestly tought this feature already existed, but since i usually try to cheap out on fees i've never actually seen it in action, so my memory might be playing tricks on me when i remember such a feature.

There is if it's above 500 sat/byte or more than 5%, as said in the issue.

The current fiat values isn't turned on by default and actually requires the user to enable an it manually and show the source. I'd think the issue with the fiat accuracy would be the issue that encompasses the entire client, instead of the fee rates only, when enabled, you can put the fiat value and the BTC value would be converted automatically.

As mentioned in the issues... If you have the "fiat" value configured, it shows fiat on the "standard" preview window:
https://talkimg.com/images/2023/11/15/zsVRJ.png

Nothing on the "Advanced" preview though.


I guess the thinking is... if you're interested in "fiat" values, you would have "fiat" display turned on... and if you're using the "advanced" preview, you should really know what you're doing and be able to notice things like "excessive" fees... at least, I think you should if you're using the "Advanced" preview :P


EDIT:
Sooooooooo, I got bored this morning :P https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/pull/6968

I'm hoping I did the whole pull request thing properly... I'm a bit out of practice with git and commits and pull requests etc! :P

Yea, that is exactly what I needed.... so if this is enabled.. you can never make this type of mistake again. Thank you for the time and trouble you put in to do this.  ;)

I hope this can be added as a default option and not as an advanced option, because most "newbies" never fiddle with advanced options and it just adds a more user-friendly spin to the wallet.  ;)

You deserve a few Merit points for this.  ;)

electrum usually warns you if the fee is very high compared the amount you are trying to send to the recipient. default settings are a fee higher than 600 sats/byte or 5% or greater than the amount you wish to transfer.

Yea, but let's be honest... if you have done several transactions in the past and you have "clicked" on that warning every time... you tend to stop noticing it. The process becomes "automatic" ..like you clicking on the "Accept" option for the common ..."Have you read the terms and conditions" on many sites.  ::)

A visual display of the value of the miners fee in the Fiat currency of your choice, will definitely pull your attention and it will prevent mishaps like this in future.  ;)  (I would never have clicked "proceed" ...if I saw "$1000" in the miners fee section)

Damn, that's some huge fee you paid there  :o

I am guessing your address or addresses was/were having so many Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs) so when you tried to sweep the wallet, a transaction with so many inputs was created.

Whenever you notice that your wallet has got so many UTXO's, the best thing to do is sweep them when the fee rate is usually low (Fees are low, use this opportunity to consolidate your small inputs! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2848987.0)) It looks a pointless procedure, but it prepares you for the time you urgently need to send Bitcoin and saves you from spending a lot in fees since you will have to only use 1 input.

Usually weekends tend to have the lowest fee rates - Bitcoin transaction fees (in sats/kb). Sunday, Saturday are best to move BTC (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5250569.0)

I doubt this.

The mistake did not happen because you weren't shown the FIAT value of your BTC.
It happened because you were unwary.

The next time, in such a moment, you might paste the wrong address or still choose a fee way too high, etc..

Taking a minute to check everything should always be done. If not, mistakes like these happen. At least the miner was happy about that transaction.

Just as an update to this... https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/pull/6968 has been merged into "master"... so soon you will be able to see miner's fees in fiat on the appropriate dialogs ;)

Thanks to the "real" Electrum dev's for their review and patience.

Another happy ending.  I felt some merit was due above too.  Good catch and display!