Mining fee exceeds amount wanted to send

[insomnia12]

Hello guys, im completely new to electrum and it might be stupid thing i don't get. I put some bitcoins into my wallet and tried to send them, but the mining fee is so huge that it must be some kind of mistake. For example if i try to send 0.0089 the fee i get is 0.12656. Could you help me to sort it  out, cuz it feels like i just lost everything i put there, huge thanks!

[1715638320]

1715638320

[1715638320]

1715638320

[1715638320]

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[mocacinno]

Hello guys, im completely new to electrum and it might be stupid thing i don't get. I put some bitcoins into my wallet and tried to send them, but the mining fee is so huge that it must be some kind of mistake. For example if i try to send 0.0089 the fee i get is 0.12656. Could you help me to sort it  out, cuz it feels like i just lost everything i put there, huge thanks!

The fee is calculated based on the size of the transaction.
The size of the transaction depends on the amount of inputs and outputs.

If you filled your wallet with dust inputs (for example, faucet earnings), it is well possible the wallet decides to add a huge fee when using hundreds of dust inputs to create one or two outputs.

For example: you requested a payment of 0.001 at 1000 faucets... This adds up to 1BTC
You want to spend this one BTC:

The size of your transaction is estimated as:
in*180 + out*34 + 10 plus or minus 'in'
1000*180+1*34+10 = 180044 bytes.

https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ teaches us you should add 80 satoshi's per byte to have a 90% chance of getting in the next couple of blocks...
180044*80 = 14403520 satoshi's = ~0.145 BTC fee

At the other end of the spectrum: if you bought 1 BTC from an exchange at once, your address has 1 inputs. When you want to spend this input, your fee would be (1*180+44)*80 = 17920 satoshi's (0.0001792 BTC)

In both virtual cases, you're spending 1 BTC worth of inputs, but in the first case you need to pay 1000 times more in fees to get a decent chance of getting added to a block in a short period of time.


Could you verify if you funded your wallet all at once, or with loads of small inputs?

[pedrog]

Those 0.0089 BTC are made out of a lot of really small transactions, fee is based on how many bytes a transaction has, more inputs the bigger the transaction is.

You need to import that address to a wallet where you have full control of inputs and fees, then you choose a bunch of inputs (less than 200) and exclude 1 shatoshi inputs, wait for a time when the network is not congested and you can try to consolidate all your inputs paying a small fee.

Good luck.

[insomnia12]

I sent 28 pounds worth of bitcoins all at once from localbitcoins website wallet. Its my first time that i decided to give a chance for this currency so im really new to it.. Could you explain what are satoshis? And every step how i can sort it out? Thanks a lot

[ranochigo]

I sent 28 pounds worth of bitcoins all at once from localbitcoins website wallet. Its my first time that i decided to give a chance for this currency so im really new to it.. Could you explain what are satoshis? And every step how i can sort it out? Thanks a lot

One satoshi is basically 0.00000001BTC. I think i get what problem you are facing.

Electrum, by default, uses mBTC as a denomination instead of BTC. 1 mBTC is 0.001BTC and 0.12656mBTC is 0.00012656BTC and that is actually a fee that is fairly low.

You chose to send 0.0089mBTC which is 0.0000089BTC. I believe you are trying to send 0.0089BTC. Key in 8.9mBTC into the send amount. I would recommend dragging the fee slider to the middle too.

The responses above are fairly well written but it is quite technical and you don't have to know them.

Tldr; You chose to send 0.0089mBTC (0.0000089BTC) and the fees were 0.12656mBTC (0.00012656BTC).

[insomnia12]

Thank you so much! It sorted everything!