Bitcoin Forum

First of all, since nobody can accurately predict the future, please keep in mind that what I'll be telling, although the logic tells they should happen, there's no certainty.
Also, this is for those how use proper, non-custodian wallets.


As you have seen, the transaction fees were quite big lately and some of you know that there were accidents in Chinese coal mines, power outages and miners off grid for a while, causing this.
If you have been following websites like https://mempool.space/ you know also that the things are a bit better now, but the mempool is far from empty and high fees can still be needed.


What's the news?
In 3 days from now there should be the new difficulty adjustment (https://btc.com/stats/diff). The new difficulty adjustment is supposed to ensure that the miners find an average of 6 block/hour. And it happens every 2016 blocks (~every 2 weeks). This will make the thing better.
What's even more interesting? This time almost certainly the difficulty will be adjusted downwards, while the miners are basically back (https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-hashrate.html#3m).


This means that I expect that for around 2 weeks, starting Saturday (3 days from now), the miners will find a bit more than the 6 blocks/hour, helping the mempool clear up.

All in all, I expect the transaction fees finally go down. So if you have transactions that can wait, if you want to consolidate small inputs and such, the 8-9 May week-end could be a great moment for them.

The mining difficulty that will be adjusted will really help, but I noticed the mempool has being getting less congested, it even gotten to the extent the fee of 17 sat/vbyte were getting confirmed recently, and some blocks are mined even less than 2 to 3 minutes in such time (I noticed this yesterday and today). The mining hashes have being increasing compared to some days ago which means the miners are getting back to work or some new miners are substituting. But, you are very correct, if 20 sat/vbyte transactions can get confirmed today, if the mining difficulty is adjusted over the weekend which will be adjusted to compensate the remaining reduced mining hashes, more possibly the mempool will be less congested to the extent 10 sat/vbyte transaction (or even maybe less) could get confirmed.

It's just luck between some blocks, the pace for the last 24 hours is close to what is supposed to be
you can have 4 blocks in 10 mins and then half an hour without one, just as I speak 24 mins  ;D

It's not just that the normal pace was back up exactly before the weekend so it helped the cleaning but I can guess a lot of people postponed their transactions or switched to a different coin, unfortunately.

The real problem is that while a difficult adjustment might return things to normal the current "crisis" has shown what's the capacity of the network, you can't tell people endlessly to wait or to use another coin, in the end, they will simply go away and that's it. And exchanges need to start implementing LN, they have one of the biggest footprints in the blockchain, they profit the most from BTC it's about time to put those millions they make to make from fees to good use.

That's correct. There were even some lucky blocks down to 11-12 sat/vByte. I expect that we may reach under 10 sat/vByte in the week-end and I hope for under 5 sat/vByte one week later.



Sad, but true. And the exchanges are not in a hurry to implement, since it's still "advertised" as beta. And even afterwards, they may not change if the(ir) users don't pressure them a little.
Still, we're for now way better than in the worse months of 2017...

As stompix said, it just some luck cause I sent a 31vbyte transaction yesterday and it took 2-4 hours before it gets a single confirmation.
The downward of the difficulty adjustment that will take place in the next 2 days, 17hrs, 30 mins at the time of writing this message will help in term If tx but I don't know if you guys know that it will also cause dump in price of the market probably market correction.

Miners will turn on their rigs again and difficulty adjustment won't help the network resolves all waiting transactions in the mempool in a few hours or days. It would take one or two weeks for the network congestion. IMO, the next one or two weekends will give cheaper transaction fees but the size of total waiting transactions in the mempool will still be high.

I think waiting for next two weekends is good.

And now blocks were mined for one hour as of now! :(

Thanks OP for letting us know about the possible price drop but yesterday I was lucky because when the fee went down to 20 sat/byte I made some of the transactions which I put on hold for more than 2 weeks due to the insane fees. :)

To predict the fee market it is more accurate to predict the price because the main thing affecting the number of on-chain transactions hence the fee spikes seems to be the price. Whenever there is a big jump or a big drop there is a lot of people buying and selling bitcoin which requires moving a lot of bitcoin (to and from exchanges) that creates the on-chain traffic hence the fee spike.
Recently the fees came down mainly because the panic sell ended (of course partly because the hashrate went back to normal).

In a couple of days even if hashrate increases and difficulty drops so that miners find more blocks per day, if the price starts jumping up (eg. reaching $70k) we will end up seeing a fee that is higher than the fee from past week.

The transaction fee is incredibly high at the moment and it did go down a little as compared to what it was a few days back. One of my transaction is still stuck because I accidentally entered 9 sat/byte thinking it will go down in the coming days. A checked on mempool.sapce and up to 10 sat/byte are being confirmed. Waiting for it to go down by this weekend.

I can not disagree. Price is key of transaction fee changes on the network. Rises or falls will cause higher transaction fees. It is not a matter of how difficulty is and hashrates.

Miners temporarily turn off some of their rigs to exploit panic from senders. Same difficulty, less miners, lower hashrates are only worse for senders. Miners don't lose Bitcoin or satoshi and they indeed eran more Bitcoin or satoshi by confirm transactions with higher or more expensive fees.

How do you earn more from fees when you turn off your gear and you're not mining blocks?
So you're forfeiting a block every day for a week for an extra in fees of around ~1 BTC?
Does that make sense to you?

The last block fees were 0.84224237 BTC  the reward was 6.25000000 BTC, how many of those you need to do to compensate for every day you haven't mined?


A weekend at the normal hashrate cut 80vMB from the top, there is another one coming before the adjustment that should force some extra 25 blocks a day, under normal circumstances one week from now on you the only ones left will be 1sat/b transactions.

I'll add that the bigger chunk of those extra/bigger fees will be most likely received by the remaining miners, not those turning off the gears.
I don't know who has come with this idea, I've seen it propagated in other threads too. And it indeed makes no sense.  :)


We'll have about 1/4 of the week-end at this pace and the rest will be on lower difficulty. Yay!
I didn't want to be overly optimistic and say 1 sat/vByte, but I do expect to fall under 5 sat/vByte anyway.

This will still depends on mining hashes in relation to how congested the mempool is, normally before the whole thing of reduced mining hashes, 5 sat/vbyte were not even getting confirmed as usual as before, even during weekends, I remembered the last time 5 sat/vbyte transaction getting confirmed exactly on the Easter celebration day. After that day, the mempool was not so not less congested to confirm a transaction getting approximately below 10 sat/vbyte. Before the Easter day, the last time transaction with a feerate below 5 sat/vbyte get confirmed were in February and a time before. The mining hashes with the mempool congestion when bitcoin reached $50000 has not being getting less than 5 sat/vbyte transactions confirmed easily.

There is nothing that can not happen, and your guess can be right, but I think transaction below 5 sat/vbytes may be yet be stuck in the mempool for long as transactions around 10 sat/vbyte or slightly lower are the lowest even getting confirmed even on weekends like on Sunday before the whole mining hashes drop in China due to the blackout you mentioned above. So, the recent mining difficulty adjustment may not still necessary result into 5 sat/vbyte and more lower transaction to get confirmed easily even during weekends. Although, just an assumption.

I've already sent today a tx at 7.7 sat/vByte and I had to wait only about 30 minutes to get it confirmed.
I guess I was a bit lucky too, but for now the things go almost better than expected  :)

And the 5sat/vb has been breached also, the pace is at 22% faster blocks than expected, that's close to ~30 more blocks or 178 per day as we speak.
The change is so ridiculous almost all estimators, including the one in mempool.space is showing every kind of fees, jumping extremely every single block.

https://i.imgur.com/BFRzK1w.png
Still about 1/4 of a day with little to no traffic so if we reach the 1sat/b it will probably happen only next Monday at best unless something totally out of ordinary happens. But there is a hidden and ugly aspect in this, usage is minimal during weekends, probably real life and try p2p transactions have dropped like a stone.
Don't know if the drop is actually something to celebrate for....whatever don't care anymore.

It's already Tuesday and the mempool is still decreasing (we touched 4 sat/vByte). I'd say that the usage is closer to normal, but the +22-25% pace of mining (bigger than the max 17% I expected) handles all the daily load and then some.
I do celebrate the fact that the problem from previous difficulty period is getting cleared up nicely. Of course, this also means a drop in fees.

P2P transactions may have been dropping indeed, some decided to wait, as I also suggested in this thread. But I am sure that this difficulty period they will send all of those transactions and more, also consolidating the inputs and preparing for future bad days.


I do agree that this kind of situation should not happen and the network should be stable and at reasonable price (not for high priority, but still go through in 10-14 days), but nothing is perfect in life after all...

I'm up to 2+ months for a TX sent via the Zap LN wallet https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/transaction/bb128bd08a78bb985a6fb40b78b822c484a58ba0bbc6fa6fd540565d52e1d022 - No CPFP no zaptransaction, nothing available... (I'd inadvertently set the TX fee to one sat, not ten sats...)

Hopefully the number of tX's will keep subsiding ... otherwise ... I'll just have to keep re-sending...  (any suggestions will be gratefully received).

It should get confirmed in the week-end.
And if it doesn't and you can import the seed/keys to Electrum (sorry, I'm not familiar with Zap), you can increase fee, since it has RBF enabled (just then it will become another transaction, which may matter or not)

There doesn't seem to be anyway to export privkeys from Zap wallets.  Zap also doesn't allow you to spend unconfirmed TX's (and you can't cancel a TX already in play).

I appreciate your estimate that the TX will clear by the week-end.  Hopefully you are right.

Really? Today already 3 sat/vByte transactions were included, and in several blocks, including the last two. It's now less than 30 MvB from the top.
And since the tx was first seen 2 months ago, I guess that the sender has the patience to wait a few more days  ;)

Armchair experts such as yourself seem to overlook to fact that as I've said previously, Zap Wallet has no option to do anything of the sort.  Not zaptranasaction, not CPFP, not even a double spend nore export the privkey and move the funds to another wallet.

Rebroadcasting the rawtransaction and waiting are my only options.


How very true.

I'm holding and expecting for the fee to lower as you suggest on this thread. The current fee is almost 7% of the total amount that I'm sending. The current fee on electrum wallet showing 83sats/byte on 5 to 25  which is quite lower compared on the fee you start the thread. Your analysis seems pretty good and thanks for this suggestion.

Don't trust any of those estimators, and electrum despite being my favorite wallet has, unfortunately, another shitty one.
I've said it before in a previous post, it's a really bad time for estimators as there are a lot of spikes in fees coming from exchanges that batch transactions (such as Binance) that overpay by a wide margin and this push temporary the fee up..
Block 682147 had an average fee of 22sat/b,  682149 went to 93sat/vb and this is happening all the time, somebody just paid 700sat/b..why...god knows.

The mempool is going to be empty for the first time in months, seems like the perfect storm is happening, the hashrate is not only back to the normal values but its actually higher so it might be possible the May batch of miners is getting deployed, then we had Labour day, the Golden Week and Orthodox Easter in the last week, more free days less usage, and on top even if this pace ends it will happen just before another weekend.

But at the same time, this will probably be the last chance to consolidate inputs and to take advantage of low fees, unless we repeat history with another accident.
So, @Timelord2067, the only suggestion I can give you is.... don't do it again!  ;D

I have not tried this before but I think you should be able to export you Zap wallet keys to Electrum using this guide.

https://openoms.gitbook.io/lightning-node-management/technicals/restorelndonchainfundsinelectrum

Hmm, from my point of view is the other way around, if the goal is HODL it doesn't really matter as you don't plan on making transactions anywhere soon and I don't think people will HODL dust worth 3 dollars each grain :).


On one of the wallets that I use for buying stuff and other things, I have currently about 11 worth less than 0.0001 BTC and 5 less than 0.001 BTC what am I supposed to do with those? Coin control does help you once in a while but over time you will have a lot of those unless you overpay each time and send all the satoshis with no change, would you do that with every transaction, as I assume we're talking about purchasing stuff, not depositing to exchanges.

Hey thanks for the information - I wasn't even aware something like this could be done!  I've been importing the relevant privkeys as we speak.  Once they're imported, I'll use a more appropriate TX fee (I had been intending to make the TX fee 10 sats, but wasn't paying attention that it was just one sat).

Kudos.

Maybe another time. This 2 sat/vByte tx was confirmed 3 blocks ago. And  it's not even Saturday :)

*Deep sigh*

Yeh, I know... I spent the last 24 hours importing the privkeys from the Zap Wallet via the instructions @FinneysTrueVision very kindly provided and then the TX confirmed anyway...  I set up to shift those funds to another wallet using 20 sats as the TX payment value and it got confirmed within three minutes.  (First TX value too little, second too much).

Thanks everyone for your help.

This time is a bit faster compared to month ago where I made a transaction of 20sat/byte and it got confirmed less than a day but next time I made a other transaction with same sat/byte it takes more than a week before it gets confirmed but now it is much lower. I tried to rebroadcast many times but no luck, maybe it's not legit.

I want to send some btc from nano ledger to coinbase.



When I was using the nano ledger with ledger live and put in an amount to send... say 0.05 btc... it showed the option to change the btc fees.. and it was standard which was 89 sat per byte?  I clicked on low... and all it did was 88?  Then put high and it went up to 90.  But when you look at the price of it... it was essentially 8 dollars more or less for either of these options? It shows the words sat per byte.  Is that the same thing as sat/byte and sat/vbyte?  Im confused if sat/byte and sat/vbyte is the same or not?




So what is the lowest amount i could change that 89 to where it would do the transaction pretty fast?  I assume right now... it probably would go through in less than an hour?  I thought it was twenty dollar fee last time but now avg fee is 8 dollars?  Do you need to make any changes with ledger live settings for the fees... or you only need to change that 89 to another number?  I heard 10 should be the absolute minimum one should ever put down?



I assume putting that low of a fee...  might mean it takes whole day for transaction to go through?  But if it does go through, nano ledger will tell you went through but not confirmed right?

 I want to test a tiny btc deposit to my coinbase address since i never sent one to it just in case.  Then i would send a bigger amount.  If im going to test say a l0 dollar btc transfer from nano ledger to coinbase, you would recommend send with a cheap fee right?  Risky to do this with say 5 sat/kb?  Or should i do more?



I just took a look right now and on mempool it shows


Low priority
35 sat/vB
$2.89


Medium priority
56 sat/vB
$4.63


High priority
91 sat/vB
$7.53



About 12 hours ago or a bit more ago, i remembered the low priority was much lower and so were the other ones.  So basically if you are not in a rush, check this site to see what is the low priority, medium priority and high priority correct?


Im looking at the latest transactions and it seems almost everyone is putting at least 20 sat/vb with the majority of the fees being like 80 sat/vb.  That is normal right when thats how the low/medium/high priority fees look like now?  So that is why i almost see no transaction like last night when many fees were around 5 sat/vb?


Also is there a way to see the transactions without it going so fast like on mempool?  I want to look for people who pay a low transaction fee like say 20 sat/vb or less... and are sending say up to 5000 dollars for example.  Like i just copied and paste this transaction


https://mempool.space/tx/6bc68b7e4b8fda1cf03aac76ec5b9fb1d22eb44a67efd524dc5c6a62c04ded2e


So this person paying

Fee   3,859 sat$2.26
Fee rate   17.2 sat/vB


‎0.08661796 BTC or around 5000 usd.


I see it immediately shows ETA is l0 minutes or l block.  Then a minute later... 20 minutes or 2 blocks.   Im going to see how long it takes for this transaction to confirm.  So after it shows l confirmation on the transaction, its pretty much confirmed right?

What client are your using, Ledger live?
Because every wallet has a unique implementation on "guessing" the fee rate per priority level.
And there's really no way to accurately tell if the transaction will be mined in the next block or x number of blocks, so the numbers that you're getting are mostly estimates.

For the tiny amount versus large amount: it's wrong to assume that a transaction with low output amount will have lower fee rate or can be mined faster with a lower fee rate than a transaction with larger amount.
Miners only care about the "fee rate" when prioritizing transactions, that's the X sat/vB of the transaction.
(and other factors like if the parent txn is also unconfirmed)

For the total fee: It's the transaction's virtual size (in virtual Bytes) that will make the total fee higher or lower.
Your example transaction for example, it has a fee rate of 17.2 sat/vB, that'll determine if it's priority or not, prioritization is the same whether it's a $5000 deposit or $10.
It's virtual size is 224 vB (displayed below) multiplied by 17.2 sat/vB = 3,859 sat or $2.26 at that time.
The virtual size is based from the number of inputs and outputs as well as the address type.

No, definitely no. Just because you are sending a small amount for testing purposes doesn't mean you should set low fee rate. (remember, the fee you have to pay depends on the transaction size/weight, not on the sent amount)

I'll try to explain why you shouldn't do this (unless you know what you're doing): let's say your wallet only received a $1000 transaction, if you send 10$, the whole amount in your wallet will be used as input and the remaining $990 will be sent back to you. If this transaction remain stuck because of low fees, any new transaction you are going to make has to pay higher fees than what's actually needed in order to accelerate the first one. Besides, you have to make sure the wallet app you're using allows spending unconfirmed balance.

He is sending to Coinbase, and it can be Coinbase.com which is a custodial wallet, it will not be able to spend unconfirmed transaction on such wallet. As he is sending to his own wallet, why don't him just as a sender enable replace-by-fee and make sure the transaction support replace-by-fee so that he will be able to double spend it with higher fee in case of stuck transaction which will be the best way to increase the fee so the transaction can be included into a block by miners.

So you're basically doing the same thing but at a higher fee since you're still using more outputs than one.


Especially since we talk about small sum by comparison if I had 15 outputs and I would be able to consolidate them at 1sat/b then spend it in 5 consecutive purchases with change at 10sat/b just like you do with 3 outputs I would still be doing this 4$ cheaper even considering the first consolidation fee.
At 20sat/b it will simply become useless to even use some of the outputs so I would simply end up with money I can't spend.
there are more examples in loycev's topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2848987.0) and I still stand by my opinion, consolidation periods like this one are best for people who had a ton of dust.

Luckily for me, I didn't get greedy and I did consolidate my inputs at 2sat/b.
I don't know who these guys are (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/3EiEN1JJCudBgAwL7c6ajqnPzx9LrK1VT6?page=2) but because of them and their 60vMB of transactions, we didn't get an empty mempool after all.

You're right. Although 1sat/vByte miracle did happen, it didn't last long and 2 sat/vByte was the safe way to go.
I've consolidated mine at 2.1 sat/vByte.

But I feel like I reached my goal: awareness for this "event". The next difficulty adjustment will be before the week-end and we'll get back to what we call normality, with mempool increasing more than decreasing and this kind of "chance" will probably won't happen for a while.