Low transaction fees

[Bruru]

Last week I was introducing friend of mine into BTC,  tried to send him 5 dollar in BTC using Mycelium, just for fun.
33 dollars was the suggested transaction cost. I'm doing non-segwit transactions on my Ledger for 5 satoshi's with confirmations in the first block.
Why are wallets setting such high fees ? Am I just getting lucky that my transaction aren't getting stuck (all the time) ?
Is this also the reason were having this transaction debate, bad fee management ?

Also: When I do a transaction, blockchain.info list my transactions as unconfirmed while they are already confirmed, what's up with this ?

Thx
Bruru

[EXtremeAEX]

These are the recommended fees nowadays to get a good confirmation time of less than 30mins-1hour, which is roughly 2-3 USD, but sure, you can send at a lower fee and wait longer, and you are lucky for your transactions to go through fast. The reason for our debate is that the fees may seem too high if you are just spending >5 USD.

Perhaps your wallet defines a confirmed transaction as 'confirmed', but blockchain might take 6 confirmations to mark it as 'confirmed', so that a case of double spending would not occur.

[HeRetiK]

[...]

Is this also the reason were having this transaction debate, bad fee management ?

Yes. Well, not bad fee management but scalability. The large fees are just a symptom of the Bitcoin's currently limited scalability, leading to limited transaction throughput, leading to high transaction fees if you want your transaction to confirm in a timely manner.

[Bruru]

My point is that there are no high transaction fees, and lets be fair,  limited transaction throughput, 5 satoshi TX getting confirmations in the first block.
I did 25 non-segwit transactions today, all confimed in the first block, highest fee was 50 satoshi's. So again, why are wallets setting such high fees ? Optimal fee is 300, Mycellium suggest 16291 in normal fee.

[HeRetiK]

My point is that there are no high transaction fees, and lets be fair,  limited transaction throughput, 5 satoshi TX getting confirmations in the first block.
I did 25 non-segwit transactions today, all confimed in the first block, highest fee was 50 satoshi's. So again, why are wallets setting such high fees ? Optimal fee is 300, Mycellium suggest 16291 in normal fee.

I failed to read between the lines of your original post, sorry about that.

There are different ways to estimate appropriate transaction fees, I remember Mycelium being one of the wallets that got critized for their calculation method. What apparently happens is that some wallets determine the "optimal" transaction fee based on what other transactions in the mempool pay. As a result they are upping their fee recommendation, resulting in high fee transactions being sent. What you get is a feedback loop of ever increasing transaction fees. Which is more or less how its supposed to work, however as you rightly pointed out the fee calculation is way too conservative with some wallets.

The scaling problem is still very real though. It may be aggravated by overly conservative fee calculation algorithms, but if you're unlucky you still run risk of your transactions getting stuck for days if your fee is too low.

[shursight]

33$ is not the actual rate for those kind of transactions, better to move or just use another wallet in order to make tiny payments.
And last week the whole blockchain was so congestioned, maybe it is because of that, but it never touched more than thirty dollars per transaction, that is an insane cost, and most for those kind of tx of less than $10 each one. I sent some money on last week and it only costed me ten dollars for fees, and it took more than six hours to receive the first confirmation.

[1NV3ST0NM3]

Whichever wallet you shift we all have to realize the fact that along with price of bitcoin btc transaction fees are increasing too and that too with a great pace. 3$ is a very standard usual fees to get your transaction done in an hour. So if you want to send someone $10 you will end up paying its 30% as a fees. I dont think bitcoin would prosper with such a system.

[tomahawk9]

Last week I was introducing friend of mine into BTC,  tried to send him 5 dollar in BTC using Mycelium, just for fun.
33 dollars was the suggested transaction cost. I'm doing non-segwit transactions on my Ledger for 5 satoshi's with confirmations in the first block.
Why are wallets setting such high fees ? Am I just getting lucky that my transaction aren't getting stuck (all the time) ?
Is this also the reason were having this transaction debate, bad fee management ?

Also: When I do a transaction, blockchain.info list my transactions as unconfirmed while they are already confirmed, what's up with this ?

Thx
Bruru

Last week the network was getting spammed with low fee transactions so everyone had the same problem. Last week the issue was getting out of control so debates/discussions about the scalability issue were popping up more frequently.
Wallets use bad/weird algorithms to put your transactions in highest priority so that's why you get high fees.
No, you aren't lucky, most of the people who know how to use their wallets don't have any issues, same goes for those who know how to be patient.
As of now, there are no issues with high fees, mempool has around 38k unconfirmed transactions tx, 90% of those tx are low-fee transactions (1-20 satoshis, most likely spam tx), right now you can send coins within the 11-30 satoshis range and your transaction will go through in a short time.

[Bruru]

thx for the clear responses.

I'm not a scalling problem denier, I just never noticed any problems what so ever. Today I'm deliberate trying to create a stuck transaction to test CPFP.
No succes what so ever :-)

[thesmallgod]

well i have not use the wallet you mentioned before but i believe all wallet have a pre define transaction fees when you are sending coin. depending on how fast you want your transaction to be confirm. that means if you want lower fee then your transaction confirmation will be lower due to higher number of blocks. however i suggest you use online wallet like blockchain. transaction fee is a bit lower than the desktop wallet i have used before (electrum wallet)

[ranggawulung]

commission for transactions in purses is always changing. It seems to me that this depends on the workload of the bitcoin network. But this crypto currency is always developing and these are temporary problems.

[Bruru]

however i suggest you use online wallet like blockchain. transaction fee is a bit lower than the desktop wallet i have used before (electrum wallet)

I would never suggest to use an online wallet like blockchain :-) its beter to use a wallet where you can create custum fees, and if you need an easy to use wallet bread and samourai seems to have way lower preset fees.

[namjar]

We all know that the fees are pretty high right, i sent a payment yesterday and it costed me more than eight dollars for every transaction that i sent.
And i have to make more than 3 payments a day to different people all during the day, it means that i am always going to be paying more tha twenty bucks a day in order to be able to proccess those payments.
I will start to re-considerate about paying in ethereum, it is not over $0,40 for the total fees for a transaction, itis very cheap compared to bitcoin fees.

[Bruru]

We all know that the fees are pretty high right, i sent a payment yesterday and it costed me more than eight dollars for every transaction that i sent.
And i have to make more than 3 payments a day to different people all during the day, it means that i am always going to be paying more tha twenty bucks a day in order to be able to proccess those payments.
I will start to re-considerate about paying in ethereum, it is not over $0,40 for the total fees for a transaction, itis very cheap compared to bitcoin fees.

That's not what we are saying at all. The fees are just set wrong. If you use the correct fees in bitcoin you pay no more than 11-25 satoshi's per transaction.
Use the correct fee.

[Proxii inc]

When the network is stacked... it is hard

[parobber]

thx for the clear responses.

I'm not a scalling problem denier, I just never noticed any problems what so ever. Today I'm deliberate trying to create a stuck transaction to test CPFP.
No succes what so ever :-)

I do not know why some places suggest such high fees, they probably use some algorithm to determine the success of being entered in to the first block. Perhaps you have just been fortunate being unable to get a transaction stuck, it is undeniable there are issues with transactions getting stuck as we can all go and see them for ourselves. Hopefully one day we can have fees of 5 satoshis for everyone as you have said!

[mackstuart]

I have never had problems with the fees, and i have never paid more than six dollars for a single transaction because it is not worth it.
I just try to not withdraw my coins, i prefer to hold them for a long term and this might be one of the first reasons of why i dont spend money on those ridiculous fees.
But 33 dollars for a single transaction? what kind of wallet are you using? because the trezor wallet is not even charging more than $6 at the moment (and that is pretty high too)

[bitbunnny]

The fees are higher than before but that is the cost of the network. And if you want your transactions to go through smoothly you should set the recommended fees. But not all wallets, exchangers and services have the same fees and some are fair but some are exaggerated. So 33$ is way too exaggerated but this is up to your wallet. Anyway, fees are one of the bigest concerns of users so some solution should be found.

[grumpy619]

Hey, I had the same problem last week, the bitcoin network was overloaded and blockchain.info wallet offered me a commission of $ 50 absolutely crazy for transfer of 0.001 bitcoin.

[illinest]

Last week I was introducing friend of mine into BTC,  tried to send him 5 dollar in BTC using Mycelium, just for fun.
33 dollars was the suggested transaction cost. I'm doing non-segwit transactions on my Ledger for 5 satoshi's with confirmations in the first block.

I know that people are drastically overpaying, but that sounds like a bit of an overstatement. I was comfortably making 5 satoshi/byte transactions (non-Segwit) a month ago, but the spam has gotten considerably worse. That said, wallets like Mycelium are definitely estimating fees too high.

Why are wallets setting such high fees ? Am I just getting lucky that my transaction aren't getting stuck (all the time) ?
Is this also the reason were having this transaction debate, bad fee management ?

Bad fee estimation algorithms, mostly. Mycelium is bad, Electrum is bad, Core isn't great either. Users are usually best off manually setting fees based on current congestion and urgency/priority.

The biggest problem is that there is an assumption made by most wallet software (and their devs) that you need urgent confirmation. Even when I've used Electrum's "within 25 blocks" setting, I paid way too much and got confirmed in the next few blocks.