Fees for New Electrum old wallet.dat private key sweep

[naukop]

How do you pay fees for sweeping old private keys into new Electrum wallet?


I have an old wallet.dat from 2014 bitcoin-qt (0.8.5).

Followed the instructions on https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transferring_coins_from_Bitcoin-Qt_to_Electrum

• Generated private keys from the old wallet.dat
  
  Installed Electrum 2.8.3, made new wallet with seed
  
  In Electrum Wallet->Private Keys->Sweep
  
  Entered private keys, left default receive address and pressed Sweep
  
  Transaction Report was generated by Electrum and the amounts appeared to be correct (for 2014).
  
  Saved Transaction in signed_xxxxxx.txn file
  
  Then Closed.
  
  Now nothing is happening in the Electrum receive address.
  
  Blockchain.info is showing the receive address as being unused.
  
  Still have 0mBTC in the new Electrum wallet.

So my question is shouldn't have I had to pay some fees for sweeping these private keys?

How do I ensure that the sweep gets added to the blockchain?

PS Electrum client has the default dynamic fee structure.

EDIT: Had to BROADCAST the transaction  

Sitting Unconfirmed right now.

Still not sure how the fees get applied, surely miners are not going to sign my 2kbyte transaction out of goodness of their heart anymore...

EDIT2: Okay, got 1 confirmation already and it appears a fee of 291.594 sat/B or about 18USD was paid automatically by Electrum. Still wondering how that was determined.

[kolloh]

How do you pay fees for sweeping old private keys into new Electrum wallet?


I have an old wallet.dat from 2014 bitcoin-qt (0.8.5).

Followed the instructions on https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transferring_coins_from_Bitcoin-Qt_to_Electrum

• Generated private keys from the old wallet.dat
  
  Installed Electrum 2.8.3, made new wallet with seed
  
  In Electrum Wallet->Private Keys->Sweep
  
  Entered private keys, left default receive address and pressed Sweep
  
  Transaction Report was generated by Electrum and the amounts appeared to be correct (for 2014).
  
  Saved Transaction in signed_xxxxxx.txn file
  
  Then Closed.
  
  Now nothing is happening in the Electrum receive address.
  
  Blockchain.info is showing the receive address as being unused.
  
  Still have 0mBTC in the new Electrum wallet.

So my question is shouldn't have I had to pay some fees for sweeping these private keys?

How do I ensure that the sweep gets added to the blockchain?

PS Electrum client has the default dynamic fee structure.

EDIT: Had to BROADCAST the transaction  

Sitting Unconfirmed right now.

Still not sure how the fees get applied, surely miners are not going to sign my 2kbyte transaction out of goodness of their heart anymore...

EDIT2: Okay, got 1 confirmation already and it appears a fee of 291.594 sat/B or about 18USD was paid automatically by Electrum. Still wondering how that was determined.

It looks like Electrum uses the Dynamic Fees feature, if it is enabled, to estimate the proper fees during the Sweep process. If Dynamic Fees is not enabled, it likely uses the per KB fee defined in preferences.

[HCP]

Still not sure how the fees get applied, surely miners are not going to sign my 2kbyte transaction out of goodness of their heart anymore...
EDIT2: Okay, got 1 confirmation already and it appears a fee of 291.594 sat/B or about 18USD was paid automatically by Electrum. Still wondering how that was determined.

When you sweep, Electrum just treats this as though it were creating a 'normal' transaction from the wallet. Simplified process goes something like:

- Find all the UTXO's on the blockchain that are controlled by the private keys being swept and use them all as inputs... giving you a "TotalIn" amount of BTC

- Set the entered receive address as the output target address.

- It then uses whatever fee setup you have configured to set the fee for the transaction. In your case, you had Dynamic Fees enabled, so it would have received a notification from the Electrum Server Network regarding the current fee rate required (in BTC/kB) and then calculated the total fee based on that fee rate and your generated transaction size. It would then subtract that fee from the "TotalIn" amount to create "TotalOut" amount.

- "TotalOut" amount assigned to output target address.

- Transaction gets signed by the private keys to prove ownership.

- Transaction gets broadcast.

- Bitcoins arrive in new address