Fees

I moved my bitcoin from one wallet to another and they kept 87% in fees. Not sure what I did wrong but can someone please help me? I was moving it from one wallet to another.

Can you post the transaction id? Also, which wallet are you using?

The mempool is quite full right now since BTC is breaking a new ATH every day, so fees are growing each day.

Possible that your transaction has so many inputs that's why you pay almost 87% on fees plus the mempool congestion.

Like the above said post your transaction ID here so that we can analyze what exactly causes of your issue and tell us what wallet you currently using.

Quote from: Raslo on February 17, 2021, 09:58:59 PM

they kept 87% in fees.

First of all "they" meaning the wallets that are not custodial do not receive the fee. The fee is set by YOU and is received by the MINERS as they pick up your transaction and include it in a block.
Secondly fees aren't paid as a percentage of the amount but they are paid based on the size of your transaction in virtual bytes. For example if you send 546 satoshi right now you have to pay about 4200 satoshi fee (770% more) similarly if you send 100000000 satoshi you still pay the same 4200 satoshi fee (0.0042%) because as I said the fee is calculated based on the data size not amount of bitcoin.
The fee rate (the 4200) is decided based on the network status and how many other transactions are in the mempool waiting to be confirmed and how much fee they are paying. Right now there are a lot of them so you'll have to pay more fees (right now it is at 22 s/b).

Quote from: TryNinja on February 17, 2021, 10:31:20 PM

Can you post the transaction id? Also, which wallet are you using?

I was going from Electrum to Electrum.

fd8f8e1342cc538295d57876ef732096ae9ea5401aeabf7b0cf8056ccc3baa06

Quote from: Raslo on February 18, 2021, 05:15:10 PM

fd8f8e1342cc538295d57876ef732096ae9ea5401aeabf7b0cf8056ccc3baa06

Looks normal. Like we said, the fee goes to the miners that protect the network, and not to the wallet developer. Bitcoin's block space is limited, so people need to compete between each other so their transaction gets confirmed faster.

You could have sent $1 billion and you would have paid the same $4,55 amount (with the same 1 input, 1 output transaction). That's just how Bitcoin works.

Next time you can wait for the network to cool off a little bit before sending a small transaction. This website shows the state of the mempool (where bitcoin's unconfirmed/pending transactions are temporarily stored) and how much they estimate it's costing to send some BTC: http://mempool.space/

Quote from: Raslo on February 18, 2021, 05:15:10 PM

I was going from Electrum to Electrum.

fd8f8e1342cc538295d57876ef732096ae9ea5401aeabf7b0cf8056ccc3baa06

I assume that you're using a 2FA wallet because the transaction is MultiSig.
Aside from the explanation above, those types of transactions are generally higher in size (bytes) compared to Legacy and far higher compared to SegWit's average virtual size.
The higher the transaction's size, the higher the total fee will be; it's best to send small amounts like that with 1-2sat/vB fee rate when the average mempool size is low.

So then that's it? Everything is taken in fees leaving just some crumbs and that's the way it is? I understood only half of what you all said, even less trying to figure out the wallet, been saving for 4 years just to have it taken in fees? That is BS! Hell, I'm afraid to do anything with what little I have left because it will all just go to fees. I'm sunk.

Quote from: Raslo on February 20, 2021, 07:54:17 PM

Everything is taken in fees leaving just some crumbs and that's the way it is?

The fee is based on the number of bytes the transaction takes up, not the value of the coins being sent.

Quote from: Raslo on February 20, 2021, 07:54:17 PM

I understood only half of what you all said, even less trying to figure out the wallet

You paid a lot in fees relative to the amount of bitcoin you sent because of:

A) You are sending a very small amount of bitcoin, so the fees compromise a higher percentage of your total
B) You paid a high fee rate because the mempool is clogged up at the moment
C) Your wallet uses multi-sig instead of a standard address

Quote from: Raslo on February 20, 2021, 07:54:17 PM

I'm afraid to do anything with what little I have left because it will all just go to fees.

A) Don't send transactions of only a few bucks when the mempool is very full
B) Wait until the mempool is empty and then send with a fee of a few sats/vbyte
C) If you wallet is 2FA, restore from your seed phrase and choose to disable 2FA, and then move all your coins to a normal segwit address when fees are low to save yourself money in the future

Quote from: Raslo on February 20, 2021, 07:54:17 PM

You have the option to reduce the fee rate to your desired amount through the "Advaced" button when sending transaction, but lowering it way below the recommended fee rate will lead to slow confirmation time.

BTW, IDK if a $5 equivalent in bitcoin is an amount worth 4years of savings.
You must have been mistaken the unit mBTC as BTC, the former is equals to 0.001 BTC; given the amount you've sent, are you trying to spend a 0.1 BTC input?

Another, if your wallet is 2FA (check the title bar for the wallet name if it has "2fa" in it), your txn didn't added an extra output then you must have already paid their service fee of 0.0005 BTC for 20 transactions during one of your previous transactions.

yeah you confused mbtc with btc. that amount you sent is too small to be useful to anyone. no wonder the fees were so high compared to the output. you should change to btc via tools > preferences > general tab > base unit option.