How im supposed to migrate my coins to HD wallet with the current fee situation?

[cellard]

I want to finally make the move and send all my coins to a freshly generated wallet.dat with HD enabled, but as far as I understood, the only way is to sell the coins to yourself.

The problem is, I got tons of different payments of small amounts of BTC like 5-6 dollars per different address. Once I send all of those inputs into the new wallet, the size of the transaction will be huge and im going to get raped by a ridiculous fee, which doesn't give me the incentive to move the coins.

And if I understood it correctly, this situation also disincentives people from the "a new receiving address per transaction" privacy practice because the more different addresses you got the bigger the total size of the transaction will be and hence the more fee you will pay.

Mixing solutions are also increasingly more expensive due all the different inputs making the tx size bigger.

Looks like im stuck with my old format wallet until we somehow get segwit in for once. Honestly this sucks and we need to fix it soon.

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[1714705622]

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[Meuh6879]

old format is good.
why HD wallet ?

[Quartx]

I guess this is why people have always advised to try to not send or receive dust transactions like these, like you mentioned, sweeping even the old wallet private keys might cost you a bomb with fees. Even though segwit and increase block size might improve the fee situation, the fees you actually need to sweep it later wouldnt be reduced by that much.

[cellard]

old format is good.
why HD wallet ?

It's better, you don't need to worry about constantly making backups everytime you create a new recieving address etc, also you never run out of addresses (another concern)

Newly created wallets will use hierarchical deterministic key generation according to BIP32 (keypath m/0’/0’/k’). Existing wallets will still use traditional key generation.

Backups of HD wallets, regardless of when they have been created, can therefore be used to re-generate all possible private keys, even the ones which haven’t already been generated during the time of the backup. Attention: Encrypting the wallet will create a new seed which requires a new backup!

Wallet dumps (created using the dumpwallet RPC) will contain the deterministic seed. This is expected to allow future versions to import the seed and all associated funds, but this is not yet implemented.

HD key generation for new wallets can be disabled by -usehd=0. Keep in mind that this flag only has affect on newly created wallets. You can’t disable HD key generation once you have created a HD wallet.

There is no distinction between internal (change) and external keys.

HD wallets are incompatible with older versions of Bitcoin Core.

Also it's cool to have the HD icon in the bitcoin core wallet :p

[alani123]

I want to finally make the move and send all my coins to a freshly generated wallet.dat with HD enabled, but as far as I understood, the only way is to sell the coins to yourself.

The problem is, I got tons of different payments of small amounts of BTC like 5-6 dollars per different address. Once I send all of those inputs into the new wallet, the size of the transaction will be huge and im going to get raped by a ridiculous fee, which doesn't give me the incentive to move the coins.

And if I understood it correctly, this situation also disincentives people from the "a new receiving address per transaction" privacy practice because the more different addresses you got the bigger the total size of the transaction will be and hence the more fee you will pay.

Mixing solutions are also increasingly more expensive due all the different inputs making the tx size bigger.

Looks like im stuck with my old format wallet until we somehow get segwit in for once. Honestly this sucks and we need to fix it soon.

How many addresses are we talking about here? What stops you from entering the private keys to import the addresses themselves into your wallet? There ought to be an automated way to do this and it sure is something to consider if your wallet can handle that vomume of addresses.

[cellard]

I want to finally make the move and send all my coins to a freshly generated wallet.dat with HD enabled, but as far as I understood, the only way is to sell the coins to yourself.

The problem is, I got tons of different payments of small amounts of BTC like 5-6 dollars per different address. Once I send all of those inputs into the new wallet, the size of the transaction will be huge and im going to get raped by a ridiculous fee, which doesn't give me the incentive to move the coins.

And if I understood it correctly, this situation also disincentives people from the "a new receiving address per transaction" privacy practice because the more different addresses you got the bigger the total size of the transaction will be and hence the more fee you will pay.

Mixing solutions are also increasingly more expensive due all the different inputs making the tx size bigger.

Looks like im stuck with my old format wallet until we somehow get segwit in for once. Honestly this sucks and we need to fix it soon.

How many addresses are we talking about here? What stops you from entering the private keys to import the addresses themselves into your wallet? There ought to be an automated way to do this and it sure is something to consider if your wallet can handle that vomume of addresses.

Just something like 10 will make the fee too big, but I've got tons of small payments of 1-5 USD. That is NOT dust, that's real money, and it sucks that you have to pay an huge fee only because you used tons of different addresses (as recommended for increased privacy).

If you get paid the same amount 100 times 1 USD each time per transaction, that's 100 transactions of 1 USD in the same address. If I make a transaction using that input, does the fact that the address has been paid to 100 times, increase the tx size?

If no, then there is a tradeoff to make.. less privacy (reuse same address always to pay less fees) or more privacy (use 1 address each time, but pay a stupid high fee when you need to make a transaction)

This is a mess tbh.


Also about importing private keys, from my understanding that is a bad practice, you must send the bitcoins, not import them.

[alani123]

Sleeping each and every address would be costly, yes. But importing private keys to bundle transactions together wouldn't be as costly from my experience. The toll would be on your CPU but a good wallet would do it. It is a trade-off of some traceability for a cheaper price to pay in fees.

[achow101]

And if I understood it correctly, this situation also disincentives people from the "a new receiving address per transaction" privacy practice because the more different addresses you got the bigger the total size of the transaction will be and hence the more fee you will pay.

No, reusing addresses will not help.

To the network and the blockchain, addresses are completely meaningless. What matters are transaction outputs. When you receive Bitcoin, a new transaction output is created. This happens regardless of whether you used the address before or not. When you spend, you have to spend from those outputs. That means that spending from 100 outputs (payments) that are associated with 100 different addresses is going to be the same size as spending 100 outputs (payments) associated with the same address. Reusing addresses and using different addresses does not matter with this.

[nachius]

It's probably the worst time in the history of Bitcoin to make a move right now 

[cellard]

And if I understood it correctly, this situation also disincentives people from the "a new receiving address per transaction" privacy practice because the more different addresses you got the bigger the total size of the transaction will be and hence the more fee you will pay.

No, reusing addresses will not help.

To the network and the blockchain, addresses are completely meaningless. What matters are transaction outputs. When you receive Bitcoin, a new transaction output is created. This happens regardless of whether you used the address before or not. When you spend, you have to spend from those outputs. That means that spending from 100 outputs (payments) that are associated with 100 different addresses is going to be the same size as spending 100 outputs (payments) associated with the same address. Reusing addresses and using different addresses does not matter with this.

Thanks. Several people have mentioned exporting the private keys to avoid having to do transactions, but I think you already told me a while ago that in order to profit from the HD wallet features you can't export the private keys, you MUST transact the coins to yourself... which leaves me on this dead end position.

Im not going to waste money in fees for this to be honest, until we get segwit or something that lowers the fees im stuck with the current wallet format unfortunately, unless someone has a better idea.

[HCP]

DISCLAIMER: I ACCEPT NO LIABILITY/BLAME SHOULD ANYONE ACTUALLY TRY THIS.

If you have time and patience... and don't mind waiting for the coins to arrive... then, you can always attempt an "el cheapo consolidation"™ transaction Basically, you're going to send ALL your coins to your shiny new HD wallet, with a minimum transaction fee and pray that you can get your transaction accelerated using ViaBTC TX Accelerator  

Step 1. Ignore everyone telling you to use "Dynamic Fees" and/or "Recommended Fees" as you're going to use a manually calculated fee... and a stupid low one at that.
Step 2. Work out how many UTXOs you actually have to consolidate. "listunspent" will probably help you if you're using Core/QT.
Step 3. Do some basic maths: (#Inputs * 148) + 44 = Your guess at a transaction size in bytes
Step 4. multiply the figure from Step 3 by 20. This is your fee (use 20 sats/byte just in case you have old uncompressed addresses in inputs that make them ~180 bytes instead of 148)
Step 5. Create transaction to send your total Balance to an address in Shiny new HD wallet. In Core/QT, set amount to send to the total balance and tick the "subtract fee from amount" and then input the fee calculated in Step 4.
Step 6. Send out your transaction, get the TXID
Step 7. Start submitting your TXID to the ViaBTC TX Accelerator every hour until you get "Acceleration Succeeded"
Step 8. Go make a cup of tea, read a book, browse forums while you wait for ViaBTC to mine a block
Step 9. Enjoy the big giant UTXO that is now in your shiny new HD wallet

PROS:
+ You end up with 1 big UTXO in your new wallet to start, no need to worry about bloated transactions for a while
+ It's cheap.

CONS:
- Has the potential to go horribly wrong if you miscalculate the transaction size and/or fee. If you fee ends up below 10 sats/byte you won't be able to accelerate it using ViaBTC and your transaction will be stuck for days
- Could take hours to get transaction accelerated
- Could take more hours for ViaBTC to mine a block
- All your coins are unavailable until the transaction confirms.


Honestly, I really don't recommend this method unless you're desperate/stupid/drunk...

[HI-TEC99]

You could install electrum, and import all your relevant private keys using these instructions.

http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/faq.html#can-i-import-private-keys-from-other-bitcoin-clients

Afterwards you could try contacting either quickseller or macbook-air, explaining the situation, and asking them if they will confirm a low fee rate transaction if you send one.

They can get f2pool to confirm a transaction. If they agree you could pay them, send all your coins in one low fee rate transaction from electrum to your HD wallet address, then send them the transaction ID to confirm

You can contact them by clicking these links. However, they must be snowed under with requests to confirm transactions, so might not reply.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=pm;sa=send;u=358020

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=pm;sa=send;u=16114

They charged 0.0001 BTC per transaction last year, but probably want a lot more now.

I faced a similar issue a few days back transaction not getting confirmed due to low fee but user "QuickSeller" got my transaction confirmed in minutes when I sent him 0.0001 BTC. He has access to some pool . PM him.

[cyyap95]

You could install electrum, and import all your relevant private keys using these instructions.

http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/faq.html#can-i-import-private-keys-from-other-bitcoin-clients

Afterwards you could try contacting either quickseller or macbook-air, explaining the situation, and asking them if they will confirm a low fee rate transaction if you send one.

They can get f2pool to confirm a transaction. If they agree you could pay them, send all your coins in one low fee rate transaction from electrum to your HD wallet address, then send them the transaction ID to confirm

You can contact them by clicking these links. However, they must be snowed under with requests to confirm transactions, so might not reply.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=pm;sa=send;u=358020

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=pm;sa=send;u=16114

They charged 0.0001 BTC per transaction last year, but probably want a lot more now.

I faced a similar issue a few days back transaction not getting confirmed due to low fee but user "QuickSeller" got my transaction confirmed in minutes when I sent him 0.0001 BTC. He has access to some pool . PM him.

Or contact me   

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1934749