Bitcoin Forum

The issues with the high network fees have been persistent for a while now and records have it that this is not the first time this is happening in the Bitcoin network, but since this high network congestion has been mostly associated with the Bitcoin market rise/increase, it is pertinent for us to formulate a tool that can help us sail through this phase of the network experience and also build an experience that will help us through similar situations in the future.
For an early Bitcoin adopter, it is essentially important to start up with the right mentality and approach to avoid using all your Bitcoin savings for paying fees just because you want your transaction to go through at all costs, for for me, the advice is make no transactions and keep holding since the goals are for long term accumulation so that that to be achieved there is need for patient and resilience, by saving up with no transaction record.
Just my two cents, I don't know who needs to read this.

This is good, but if you must pay someone, then you can't really do that.

My advice is:

1. Try to make transactions with as less inputs and outputs as possible.
2. Wait for times within the day when the fees go lower.
3. If you can, use the Lightning network. If you don't have the technical skills to setup a node, or you don't want to bother with it, just use Wallet of Satoshi or MUUN wallet. Send some Bitcoins there and then you can pay with LN.

Bitcoin network has been congested for over a month now and there are multiple reasons but primarily ORDI spam attack on the network is causing the most damage and lasting longer than usual.

If you stop making all your transactions then you are not going to be affected at all but what are the solutions for those who really want to make transfers even when the network is congested, there are few choices which is making fewer inputs and outs as possible so the transaction size will be low means the transfer fee too.

Another hack that can really save you some pennies is by following the steps suggested by Charles-Tim

Mempool is congested, use ViaBTC free accelerator. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5473634.0)

Is nice of you to have shared this link, i will give it a read-through to see hope I can gain some extra insight as to how best to handle the Bitcoin congestion issues that have resulted in this continuous high fee and congested networks that lead to delay in transaction time for those that use average to moral fess.

Yes most at times high transaction congestion is caused by high demand of bitcoin during bull period. But this particular case is not about that and that is why it seems to have persisted for a longer time. I think ordinals are the true cause of this problem.


Right now I will also advise the use of bitcoin transaction only for large amounts not small amounts. You can also follow the advice of using small inputs and outputs. If you already have UTXOs which are smaller amounts I will advice you use coin control to freeze them for the moment. This particular case should be a reason why we need to pay more attention to consolidating smaller UTXOs

The thing is when a Bitcoin investor do DCA, they have to buy BTC in their scheduled time, so to avoid paying high Fees and accumulate more inputs that in the end will  charged more when moving our coins, we have to compromise and leave our BTC in an exchange which is against the "not your wallet not your coins" belief.

Remember making a transaction does not only mean transferring our holdings to another wallet but also transferring new coins to our own wallet.  Buy not moving any coins, if one prefer p2p trades, this means not doing any trades from other people.  Besides every incoming will add up to the input and moving several input in one transaction cost more.

When you have to do a transaction because you have to do it, you have no other option but wait until the fees drop down. That's all you can do when you are in need or just pay the fee and accept those fees as part of your losses. It's not always that these fees are going to be high, there will be some time that it's lower than the peak of these fees but still, considerably high. Don't make a transaction when you're going to send $10 and the fee is like $5-$8. Of course that doesn't make sense if you're going to do it, if it's about accumulation. If it's coming from the exchanges and they don't mind to pay the fee, that's fine but if you'll shoulder it. Save that money and buy in huge batches when fees drop.

There will be situations where people will have to send out bitcoins. In addition, bitcoin is pumping + holidays coming up so it's quite tempting IMO.

It's a bit of a prevent is better than cure idea but I suggest making it a habit to consolidate UTXOs everytime the mempool isn't congested. This way, when congestion occurs, there will be less transaction size for your future transaction. Moreover, if someone wants to take advantage of ViaBTCs free transaction accelerator, this would be helpful because there is a set transaction size limit.

I don't even think it's only the newbies. It's also applicable to the old members. Because I see no reason why a newbie who is trying to save some stash in his potfolio will go for a higher transaction fee just to achieve the goal of making a haste transfer. But as the case may be, if they chose to do so, I sudjest they used blue wallet or electron wallet to import there non custodial wallet seed phrase, and make the transfer by setting the sat/vbyte at low fee and later accelerate the transaction with the use of accelerator.

I point out in the topic title that this advice is needed for newbies, i also clearly stated in the first line that the both older cryptocurrency members and newbies alike can fine this thread helpful, I believe many old timers have also hard a read through this thread already.
Really that is a good suggest mate, i have not thought of that before but then also i knew that Bitcoin transaction accelerators have it limitations also but i do have not been vast in knowledge to point out these limitations to the use of Bitcoin transaction accelerators, much more interested now that I have blue wallet as my Bitcoin wallet I will practicalize that process by using low fees and using Bitcoin acceleration service to push the transactions through.

Good advice for the long term.
But if you need a transaction to do DCA, it really has to be done quickly.
If you only want to buy in one transaction and it will be held for the long term and there will be no transactions at all, that is the first investment that must be large. Several transactions are required to accumulate long-term asset ownership.

That's one of the lamest ideas you'd ever wanna give to some gamblers in here... Okay,.. let's say you deposited and wagered about $500 on some odds, and then it cuts; do you not have to withdraw your funds just to avoid making too many transactions? How do you cope in situations like this?? - if the most reckless gamblers would rather stake thier houses without any assurance to win, but the still do... How much more for a regular gambler that could possibly hit his early luckdays?
Note: if you don't wanna take the risk to including payment of high fees just to fund your crypto wallets, stop gambling!

Sandra 🧑‍🦰

Yes, ViaBTC is a free transaction accelerator that has been in the ecosystem for years already. You can used it for free and wait for it to push through. I can vouch it myself as I have used their services in the last couple of months since the fees started to go up and become  very expensive to average joe. But I would agree on some of your points that you point here. If you are not in a hurry to make a transaction then don't. Just simply HODL and wait for the network congestion to subside at least to a levels that you are comfortable with regards to the transaction fees. Or you can follow this thread: [Dec 2023] Fees are high, wait for opportunity to Consolidate your small inputs. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2848987.740)

How does this work?

Between the times when people go to bed a d wake up, there is less traffic on the network and the fees drop at these times. That's always the best time to take advantage of a kinda low transaction fee.
Yes, lightning network works but it is yet to find its application in software wallets like Electrum wallet. It is there not not generalizable.

Other solutions could be using an accelerator. To a degree I heard they may play a small role on Bitcoin transaction fee reduction.

Since we set a target for a long term, there is no need to hurry transfer our Bitcoin to exchange wallets. So, just keep the Bitcoin on the private wallets, we don't target to take profits in the near future. I'm sure most of Bitcoin holders will take profits after the Bitcoin halving, which means they probably send their Bitcoin to the exchange wallets after Q2 of 2024.

However, if most Bitcoin holders will send their Bitcoin in the same time in 2024-2025, I assume there will be another increase in Bitcoin transfer fees in the next year. But if we send our Bitcoin to exchange wallets too early, it will be also very risky to keep the Bitcoin on exchange wallets. Honestly, I'm also a bit confused about when the right time to send our Bitcoin on the exchange.  ;D

You have to use coin control and try to use a smaller amount of UTXOs as input.

For example if you have 5 UTXOs of 40k sats each and 1 UTXO of 200k sats, then if you have to pay someone 200k sats, the best option is to use 1 UTXO and not 5 UTXOs.

The more inputs you add up, the larger the transaction's size.

I dont see any way that this thread relates to gambling as you have focused all your attention on gambling even though no were in the ops or entire comments of a member mentioned gambling, of course, you should know that, anytime you choose to gamble,  just know that you are already risking your money and if you take gambling for fun and not some sort of addictions or greed tendency you should deposit and gamble only an amount that you can afford to lose, in fact, it is a dumb thing to do if you make a deposit,  then request for withdrawal when you did not make any big win.
If you know you are going to withdraw the deposits when the odds go against you, why then do you make the deposits in the first place, let just stop all this misunderstanding and focus on the real discussions.

High transaction costs for long-term investors will not have an effect because they have no intention of making transactions at all, but high costs are an obstacle for businesses that use the Bitcoin network when carrying out daily payment transactions such as those currently taking place.

When the red box is visible on mempool.space which has reached 214 sat/vB around as of this second, it is absolutely impossible to make a transaction.
The best advice in my opinion is to be patient until all this is resolved and return to relatively low fees.

Your advice on how to avoid paying high fees for bitcoin transactions is not to make any transactions. That advice isn’t really useful and it doesn’t seem to be a solution for people who still want to make bitcoin transactions.

Your goals for long term bitcoin accumulation may not be the same goals of the next person. Although a lot of bitcoin holders may have plans to hold their coins, a good number of them use their coins for anonymous and other transactions.
There are some free and paid services that helps in accelerating your transactions. A list of such services would be more helpful.

The question in this your suggestion you're bringing forward is for how long are we going to keep postponing our transactions, how many people making payments or any kind of transaction will be interested in doing this, there are times whereby we've enjoyed the network fee as low as 1 sat/vbyte and now that things were the way they are appearing, we are left with no choice because if you keep waiting, you may never arrived at 1 sat/vbyte anymore or something even close to that, in business, you sell base on what you buy.

You're here telling people not to spend Bitcoin as an advise to help with high transaction fees, that's ridiculous. Bitcoin is money and people want to spend it, they want to use Bitcoin to pay for a commodity and other stuffs, because it is fungible. If you want to advise people on how to minimize the cost of making transactions, then you should be telling them to consolidate their inputs when fees are lower, they should use free transaction accelerators and they should also use coin control to reduce the inputs that would be used in a transaction.