Bitcoin Forum

Are some Bitcoin wallet address more friendly to transaction fee than the other or I am the one that is not getting things right? I noticed that address that Start with b use fewer transaction fee than one that starts with 1, or there is more to this transaction of a thing that I still need to learn more about?

What wallet are you using? Electrum allows you to adjust fees even if up to 1 sat per byte. Segwit and native (bech32) wallets have cheaper fees. The addresses that starts with 1 are the legacy wallet address and yes, they're quite more expensive than the other two.
Here are some reference that you can check about them ~

• SegWit Vs Native SegWit (Bech32) : A Comprehensive Guide (https://www.blockchain-council.org/cryptocurrency/segwit-vs-native-segwit/)
• difference between SegWit and Legacy address (https://help.crypto.com/en/articles/4056348-send-and-receive-btc-ltc-difference-between-segwit-and-legacy-address)

Note that if withdrawal is going to come from exchanges, they've got fix withdrawal fees regardless of the network congestion and status.
Always check about the recommended fee: https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/

To be more accurate: bc1q is native segwit address, while bc1p is taproot address. Address started with 1 is legacy address, and the another one is started with 3 is segwit or multisig. Each address have different calculation especially on the size as you can see the table below.

This is an on chain network, you can reduce your transaction by using Bitcoin in lightning network where the address started with ln.

Tools to check transaction size

• https://bitcoindata.science/plot-your-transaction-in-mempool.html
• https://jlopp.github.io/bitcoin-transaction-size-calculator/
• https://bitcoinops.org/en/tools/calc-size/

In order to minimize your transaction fee, you must use as cheapest fee rate as possible but still meets your need. To achieve this, you must check mempools with and pick relevant fee rate.

• https://mempool.space/ (Basic)
• https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,24h,weight (Advanced)

Remember to use RBF (Replace-by-Fee) opt-in for your transaction, later you can bump fee.

Perhaps you can change the transaction fees but considering the time span to be recognized and got confirmed will also matter on the fees you set.
If you are paying higher fees, we can expect a fast confirmation process but if you set to the lower fees, you will certainly be expecting a long wait before it arrives at its destination. If the time lapse or delay is not your concern, they make your way to put on the cheapest fees. But for me, as long as I was not paying too much like $1, I'll choose the suggested transaction fees as an option.

By the way, I was using an electrum wallet - segwit btc address...the fees are still fine and it also varies on the network traffic.

I've been a victim of wallet addresses before I learned this, to the point of paying over $3 for a single Bitcoin transaction in the past. First, you need to know that there are custodial and noncustodial wallets, the former set the price you would use, and it will be with their fee+miner's fee, so you will pay more. While the latter will allow you to pay the miner's fee alone.

And the address starting with b might be right if they are Segwit addresses, as in bc1..., they could save you about 16% of the fee. But you have to consider the Mempool while doing the transaction too.

Probably the best book about bitcoin, mastering bitcoin by antonopoulos

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/mastering-bitcoin/9781491902639/ch05.html


And it is important to understand that what is more important is the number of inputs and outputs in your transaction,  not the value transacted

Transaction fees depend on transaction size which again depends on inputs and outputs. Other than this, you can also say segwit consumes less space than legacy. So, when you are using bc1 addresses, it's likely that the transaction size is minimized while with an address starting 1, the size would be higher. So, segwit transaction fee will be low, as expected. Regarding wallets, there are wallets that allow you to use a fee per byte as said above, for example, electrum. You can use 1 satoshi per byte but the fee should be picked based on the number of pending transactions in the network.

There's a way each addresses has it own pattern by which the transaction fee is being calculated but for more easier ways, you can always adjust your transactions fee when using wallet like electrum or you can import your wallet on electrum wallet if you're using another cold storage and adjust it, aslo try to study the mempool before making transactions, sometimes it get congested and later get less busy, this will also helps you achieve a lower transaction fee.

Segwit address start with bc1, not just b.

This threads can also help you: Minimizing bitcoin transaction fee (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5320216.msg56441031#msg56441031)
                                                        Pay-to-taproot (P2TR) transaction fee (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5370591.msg58417300#msg58417300)

If 1 input and 2 outputs of legacy to legacy transaction is compared with segwit to segwit, there should be 42% fee reduction.

It is virtual size (vsize or vbyte), or transaction weight that is considered. But if it is legacy address transaction, the size is the same as the virtual size, but not for nested and native segwit.

Yes, it does make sense and nothing wrong there. You may read this article to understand more, Lower Transaction Fees with SegWit  (https://support.blockchain.com/hc/en-us/articles/4417082145428-Lower-Transaction-Fees-with-SegWit#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20benefits%20of,effective%20size%20of%20a%20transaction.). Bitcoin transaction fees always depend on the size in bytes. So, native SegWit addresses create smaller size transactions in bytes, resulting in lower fees than Legacy addresses.

It depends on two things
- Wallet software you use: Is it custodial or self-custodial (non-custodial)? If it is custodial, you are not allowed to control inputs, outputs and fee rate. If it is self-custodial, you can control those things including fee rate. When you set lower fee rate, you will have cheaper transaction fee.
- Wallet support for different types of Bitcoin address: Legacy, Nested Segwit, Native Segwit and Taproot. Transactions with Segwit (Nested, Native and Taproot) will be cheaper than with Legacy types.