HELP ! Fee much higher than transaction !

[bitcoinPT]

Hi all

I am new here... asking for help !

I am using Electrum 3 at the moment as my wallet.

I made a transfer to Bittrex of around $8 from Electrum and Electrum charged me with a fee of $100 ?!?!?! I am sure I setup the fee as low as possible

What the hell did I do wrong ? Any way to get the money back ?

Here's the data of the transaction...

https://s7.postimg.org/j2qrfh44b/Screen_Shot_2017-12-09_at_03.34.41.png

Any help would be awesome !

Thanks

[Bitfort]

Your transaction is incredible large... 2998 bytes is way too much. Standard transactions are somewhere between 200 - 500 bytes
I guess the reason is too many small inputs.

What can you do? Not much. The blockchain is currently overloaded (180k uncofirmed transations).
I'll recommend you to wait till there is less than 60k unconf. txs and then try sending with very small fee (20-50 sat. per byte) ... you can be lucky.

I'm not electrum 3 user but ele 2.9.3 allowed you to enter much less fee (you had to go to tools/preferences, untick the "use dynamic fees" and enter your own values) .. try it.

BTW good site to check actual fee size is https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/


EDIT:
I'm using this thread as warning what can happen when you keep collecting small BTC amounts (dust) in your wallet.
This example resulted in loss of 0.008 BTC
txid: 0e37a1dff02569ad62059203f48d54c9c73353ee269045058a94a42c898a11c8
blockchain link

[dothebeats]

That's one hefty transaction in terms of size. Why do you have too many small inputs to begin with? Also, setting the lowest fee possible on Electrum is different on dynamic fees. The former computes the lowest fee that can get your transaction confirm within the next block during those times, so it will again base on the network's minimum fees at the time you made the transaction. Dynamic fees however lets you gain more flexibility on sending your tx. You can even send a tx without a fee in Electrum using that feature.

[bitcoinPT]

Thanks for the replies

I am using Electrum 3, last version.

I had dynamics fees on when I did this transaction and the slider on electrum was on the lowest fee position. I really don't understand how this happen,,, maybe because I did not
turned off dynamic fees ?  What can I do now ? Nothing ?

The receiver got the BTC at the end, the green signal shows on the electrum wallet but blockchain says it is not 100 % confirmed

Trying to understand this RBF stuff

[Lutpin]

Your transaction is confirmed (0e37a1dff02569ad62059203f48d54c9c73353ee269045058a94a42c898a11c8),
opt-in RBF only works with unconfirmed transactions. Further, you replace the transaction with one that has a bigger per kB fee, not a smaller one.

Electrum doesnt charge a fee, the fees are network fees, and you can select them yourself.
As said above, dynamic fees account for the current status of the mempool, and calculate average confirmation times,
thus due to the increased traffic right now, the dynamic fees suggested a pretty high fee, even on the lowest setting.

The "problem" occured from having 10 inputs to your transaction, which increased the transaction size to almost 3kb.
Not sure where you get those tiny outputs from (as low as 0.00009 even),
but you should stop using that service/method, as it causes more costs in fees than money in your wallet.

[bitcoinPT]

So I should have switch off dynamics fees, probably that was the problem !

Crap I just updated to Electrum 3 and forgot to do that shit, my fault

Even so, I don't really understand how the transaction is 3 Kb for a $10 value !!?! Can't you complain to someone about this ?

[Bitfort]

So I should have switch off dynamics fees, probably that was the problem !

Crap I just updated to Electrum 3 and forgot to do that shit, my fault

Even so, I don't really understand how the transaction is 3 Kb for a $10 value !!?! Can't you complain to someone about this ?

No the problem was your transaction had 10 small inputs (some faucet earnings or w/e).
Number of inputs increase the transaction size (complexity) thus making harder to process thus you are charged with higher fee. In addition you were unlucky sending it when blockchain is overloaded (but true is the blockchain is overloaded constantly last few months).

You can try sending with lesser than recommended fee, but risking your transaction will never confirm (and funds will be returned back to sending address)  or it will take long time.

I'll recommend you to bookmark this page https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/ and check actual fee size required for quick tx processing before sending.

[bitcoinPT]

I understand the dynamic fees and the fees being high.. I don't understand why so many inputs for a low transaction !

Your transaction is confirmed (0e37a1dff02569ad62059203f48d54c9c73353ee269045058a94a42c898a11c8),
opt-in RBF only works with unconfirmed transactions. Further, you replace the transaction with one that has a bigger per kB fee, not a smaller one.

Electrum doesnt charge a fee, the fees are network fees, and you can select them yourself.
As said above, dynamic fees account for the current status of the mempool, and calculate average confirmation times,
thus due to the increased traffic right now, the dynamic fees suggested a pretty high fee, even on the lowest setting.

The "problem" occured from having 10 inputs to your transaction, which increased the transaction size to almost 3kb.
Not sure where you get those tiny outputs from (as low as 0.00009 even),
but you should stop using that service/method, as it causes more costs in fees than money in your wallet.

[Lutpin]

I understand the dynamic fees and the fees being high.. I don't understand why so many inputs for a low transaction !

Because you only have tiny outputs in your wallet.
Your wallet can only take what it has to make a transaction,
if it's full of tiny outputs, it will use them to make a transaction, even when that transaction isn't that big itself.

Even so, I don't really understand how the transaction is 3 Kb for a $10 value !!?! Can't you complain to someone about this ?

The value doesnt matter, the size does.
That is, the amount of inputs and the amount of outputs.
Yours has a shitload of inputs, which are bigger than outputs, thus its a gigantic transaction.


Stop doing whatever made you have those inputs in the first place.
May it be faucets, or any other sort of service that sends you tiny amounts of bitcoin again and again, instead of sending them together as one collective, big amount.

[Bitfort]

I'll try it another way.

Transaction inputs  (transactions you have received into your adress) will not "melt together". They stay separated (same as banknotes in your regular physical wallet).
Your balance is sum of all these (unspend) inputs.

Once you want to spend entire balance you need to take every sigle input (banknote) and treat it separately.

Just to add: if you still want to use the service which gave you these small inputs then it's better sending them into wallet which is using "central processing" (I'm not sure if this is correct term)  e.g. coinbase

[bitcoinPT]

Thanks for the explanation, now this makes sense

I always assumed that the sender was the person paying the fees, not the persons receiving the money. Thanks for letting me know about this, indeed I was receiving micro payments from a company.

[Bitfort]

Thanks for the explanation, now this makes sense

I always assumed that the sender was the person paying the fees, not the persons receiving the money. Thanks for letting me know about this, indeed I was receiving micro payments from a company.

I think you still misunderstood something ... the above thought is correct. It's always the sender who pays the fee.

[bitcoinPT]

So this does not make any sense whatsoever since I have not made micro payments, only receive them and I transfered like 5 times money from my wallet the last 3 weeks

I have been receiving small payments but not really making transfers outside my wallet

[Bitfort]

So this does not make any sense whatsoever since I have not made micro payments, only receive them and I transfered like 5 times money from my wallet the last 3 weeks

I have been receiving small payments but not really making transfers outside my wallet

And the transaction we were talking about was what? It was transfers outside your wallet.
I think we made it complicated by using words like outputs/inputs and recommend you to search what these means.

Hope this pic helps to understand.

[bitcoinPT]

Thanks !

I understand the concept now but paying 13x times more is incredible ! I switch off the dynamic fees to make this safer.

Either if it was my fault or not, this stuff should not be allowed to happen, I do think I am not the only person that this has happen and it is not good for the Bitcoin reputation

[Bitfort]

Ufff, I'm so glad 

Understand. Lot of people face the same issue. Thats reason why we (older members) do not recommend using faucets ... but newbies never listen  (I was very same)... faucets were useful in past but since BTC price increased this issue appeared.
FYI: there are already some proposals which should solve it ... lighting network.

But true is the BTC (at current state) is not suitable for small amount transfer. LTC is much better for this (question is for how long as it's price grows as well)

[bitcoinPT]

Thanks got it... maybe just using an exchange house to avoid all this crap

[Boseda]

So I should have switch off dynamics fees, probably that was the problem !

Crap I just updated to Electrum 3 and forgot to do that shit, my fault

Even so, I don't really understand how the transaction is 3 Kb for a $10 value !!?! Can't you complain to someone about this ?

Yes, switching to dinamic fees is recommended to have more control on fees. But keep in mind Bitcoin is currently not viable to make cheap transactions of that small amount. Also your transaction was very large. Unfortunately it's not convenient to spend money which has so many inputs and it's usual to spend more in fees than in transaction. the best way is to just keep that money in your wallet and wait until (hopefully) scaling problems will be solved. For a better comprehension of fees, you can read this guide: http://bitcoinfees.com/