[Apr 2024] Fees are HIGH, wait for opportunity to Consolidate your small inputs

[LoyceV]

But as soon as the bear market comes, the fees will most likely get lower again. And the bear market will come in the next months/year, we all should be prepared for it.

why do you say the bear comes in 2024 or 2025

it should come in 2026

Based on historic data, I don't expect a bear market within the first year (up to 18 months) after the halving. But after the last halving I felt like: "it is too round, it needs to be pointy" (kuddos if you know the quote), so what do I know. If too many people expect something, it's going to influence the outcome anyway.

fees will suck for the next 18-20 months

At the moment, it's "not great, not terrible" (again: kuddos if you know the quote). But I don't feel like consolidating my 63 uncompressed Legacy inputs yet.

[1714603606]

1714603606

[1714603606]

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[bitmover]

why do you say the bear comes in 2024 or 2025

it should come in 2026

fees will suck for the next 18-20 months

Nobody knows. It should,  but what if we have some new war around the globe?
What if a new virus comes in? What if binance fails like FTX?

Nobody knows... all this optimism about BTC price and cycles makes me affraid some times, especially in bull markets. I just made a small sell today...

Anyway, we are a bit off topic here. Sorry LoyceV

Fees are getting lower, I made a 15 sat VB tx today

[LoyceV]

Fees are getting lower, I made a 15 sat VB tx today

I did 14 And at the moment that should still be possible.

[dkbit98]

Watching Mempool.space's Mempool Goggles is mesmerizing

Goggles are really cool and I really like Mempool.space website for checking bitcoin fees, they are accurate with predictions most of the times.
I don't know if you noticed goggles button with many filters, you can only pick coinjoins, taproot, consolidation, etc.

Recently there was a new alternative tool released called NextBlock Fee Estimator, but it's still basic for now:
https://nextblock.is/

[AB de Royse777]

https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,2h,weight

The site, do they still provide correct data? Sometimes I find their graph gives wrong information and then I had to bump the tx or find out I paid too much fees.

[philipma1957]

https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,2h,weight

The site, do they still provide correct data? Sometimes I find their graph gives wrong information and then I had to bump the tx or find out I paid too much fees.

I have not found them to be wrong but shifts can happen in under 10 minutes.  3 quick blocks and you look likely over paid.

or 2 slow blocks and it looks like you underpaid.

[LoyceV]

https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,2h,weight

The site, do they still provide correct data?

It's correct, although I prefer the 24h view. But you have to realize what you're looking at: you're looking at the past, which you use to predict the future.

Sometimes I find their graph gives wrong information and then I had to bump the tx or find out I paid too much fees.

Was it wrong, or did something unexpected happen? Like: mempool suddenly grows, or the block time is far from 10 minutes?

How cool is this:

Those consolidations are transactions made in the past 1-2 weeks, that are now very likely to be confirmed.

[stompix]

Sometimes I find their graph gives wrong information and then I had to bump the tx or find out I paid too much fees.

Was it wrong, or did something unexpected happen? Like: mempool suddenly grows, or the block time is far from 10 minutes?

For a moment I thought Royse hit exactly the one bump yesterday like I did, we had a few hours of next blocks not being below 30sat/b but his message is a few hours older that that, it could be the March 5h bump, 6AM would have shown you a few blocks over 60sat adn your tx at 30 being buried under 25 blocks, but at 10AM you could get confirmation for the same 30sat/b.

How cool is this:

Late February, I don't remember the date, but at least 24th:

[Cricktor]

But as soon as the bear market comes, the fees will most likely get lower again. ...

In the bear market, ordinals will disappear, ...

Fees would probably be lower in a bear market if there wasn't this blockchain spamming. Unfortunately I'm not so confident that ordinals spam will disappear with a bear market. Blockchain spammers are likely to produce a lot of noise for nothing (translate it to overly filled mempools) to rip off gullible victims.

I got pessimistic as long as this massive blockchain spam isn't prevented by technical and/or protocol means. Some bubbles will burst over time, but spammers are creative as long as there's enough "loose" money to collect.

[philipma1957]

But as soon as the bear market comes, the fees will most likely get lower again. ...

In the bear market, ordinals will disappear, ...

Fees would probably be lower in a bear market if there wasn't this blockchain spamming. Unfortunately I'm not so confident that ordinals spam will disappear with a bear market. Blockchain spammers are likely to produce a lot of noise for nothing (translate it to overly filled mempools) to rip off gullible victims.

I got pessimistic as long as this massive blockchain spam isn't prevented by technical and/or protocol means. Some bubbles will burst over time, but spammers are creative as long as there's enough "loose" money to collect.

I do not think on chain fees under 10 sats will happen very much anymore.

This 2024 1/2 ing will be more like a 35-40% ing. not a 1/2 ing.

as there are unstoppable methods large farms can do to make their profits higher.

you can not stop a 30% pool from down clocking and slowing blocks to clog the mempool then once the mempool is clogged bump hash up to grab high fee blocks... We should see real evidence of this happening after this 1/2 ing

[bitmover]

I do not think on chain fees under 10 sats will happen very much anymore.

This 2024 1/2 ing will be more like a 35-40% ing. not a 1/2 ing.

as there are unstoppable methods large farms can do to make their profits higher.

you can not stop a 30% pool from down clocking and slowing blocks to clog the mempool then once the mempool is clogged bump hash up to grab high fee blocks... We should see real evidence of this happening after this 1/2 ing

We just saw 8 sat vB about 2 weeks ago.

I do not think miner will refuse low fee rate transactions and mine empty blocks.
If some pools decide to do so, there will always be pools That will clear the mempool and mine full blocks,  no matter the fee rate.

For now, there are 130000 transactions in the mempool. But that is quite unusual and ordinals and the bull market won't last forever..

[AB de Royse777]

Sometimes I find their graph gives wrong information and then I had to bump the tx or find out I paid too much fees.

Was it wrong, or did something unexpected happen? Like: mempool suddenly grows, or the block time is far from 10 minutes?

I don't know what sorts of unexpected things can happen. Usually when the mempool is congested too much, fees require too high then sometimes it gives wrong calculation for vMB. 

[stompix]

I do not think on chain fees under 10 sats will happen very much anymore.

There is simply no demand to keep them afloat once all the consolidation for 6 months of pain and the ordinals are gone!
Look right now at the blocks, it's 1/3 consolidations and 1/3 ordinals, actual demand for transactions outside those two is minimal, and consolidations can't keep it up since you need first the tx splitting the inputs first!

as there are unstoppable methods large farms can do to make their profits higher.
you can not stop a 30% pool from down clocking and slowing blocks to clog the mempool then once the mempool is clogged bump hash up to grab high fee blocks...

And you can't force people to make transactions either!
It's pretty simple, they can reduce the chain capacity to 10blocks a day, if there is no demand for space as ordinals hype dies and most action happens anyhow on CEX and even off blockchain completely like ETFs there is nobody who will pay you three times the fees. Of  course here I ignore the misconfigured bots that pay even now 450sat/vb.

Think of it as a toll tax, once you make it worth 10 gallons of gas people will just drive around it!

We just saw 8 sat vB about 2 weeks ago.

We're in a middle of a bullrun and we're still at 12sat/vb, I don't see where any extra traffic going to come from, I think feebudy is going to need counselling soon.

[bitmover]

I do not think on chain fees under 10 sats will happen very much anymore.

There is simply no demand to keep them afloat once all the consolidation for 6 months of pain and the ordinals are gone!
Look right now at the blocks, it's 1/3 consolidations and 1/3 ordinals, actual demand for transactions outside those two is minimal, and consolidations can't keep it up since you need first the tx splitting the inputs first!

Thats correct.

Take a look here. Next block in mempool.space

https://mempool.space/mempool-block/0


Transactions are basically half the block?
Once consolidations are over, and all this inscription speculation is over, fees must go down. (and 12 is already a good price)

[LoyceV]

Once consolidations are over, and all this inscription speculation is over, fees must go down. (and 12 is already a good price)

Once fees drop more, I expect many more consolidations.

Transactions are basically half the block?

I'm avoiding small transactions, and I'm probably not the only one. I don't like paying more than a dollar to buy a coffee. So if fees get low enough again, I expect the transaction volume to increase.

[LoyceV]

Let's zoom in on two consolidations:

One dot: 13.0 sat/vbyte, paying $323.60
Two dots: 36.3 sat/vbyte, paying $997.36
According to mempool.space, they were both first seen at the same time, and both confirmed in the same block after 7 minutes. Someone could easily have saved $650.

This guy paid 444 sat/vbyte, but included many inputs with 3183 sats. Looking at his address, he's been doing that for a very long time. He's wasting massive amounts of money on transaction fees. I don't get it.

Meanwhile, the (Ordinal) blockchain spam still continues:

[stompix]

Looking at his address, he's been doing that for a very long time. He's wasting massive amounts of money on transaction fees. I don't get it.

Deja-vu? Seems like the output wallet is labeled as Bitfinex, no surprise if they are behind it, I remember them from a year ago when they did it exactly when I was seding a tx:

And just when you thought everything is fine..
https://mempool.space/address/bc1quhruqrghgcca950rvhtrg7cpd7u8k6svpzgzmrjy8xyukacl5lkq0r8l2d

Bitfinex comes and tries to consolidate its dust with 20 blocks worth of tx paying even 50-60sat/b, because obviously, their script is detecting their own transactions in the mempool so they were trying to compete with their own so from 2sat/b in just a few hours we're at 40. When you think that there are still a ton of other exchanges waiting for this then probably it will take more than three weekends for everything to normalize.

And guess what, they are still doing it:
https://mempool.space/tx/7470af51e25700b7053781fc72ed6cffb5b4996aea4d1dcb91072d3b29820717

81sat/vb when the last block had 11sat/vb transactions included.

They just don't care, Okex is also paying twice as much:
https://mempool.space/tx/ec529afad640fbfb757e833b57bf50683bf3c29dee0bacc0485894ffc57b6339
when you change the clients 10 times the fees you pay for withdrawals maybe that difference is peanuts.

[cryptosize]

he's been doing that for a very long time. He's wasting massive amounts of money on transaction fees. I don't get it.

BTC whales don't give a shit, they're frivolous spenders.

Not much difference compared to fiat whales TBH...

[LoyceV]

And guess what, they are still doing it:
https://mempool.space/tx/7470af51e25700b7053781fc72ed6cffb5b4996aea4d1dcb91072d3b29820717

At least those transactions are sending payments, not consolidating.
They're still doing it: this transaction takes 9 dust inputs and one large legacy input. It sends a small amount to a new address, and the majority back to the original large legacy address. If they would have forgotten about the dust, they could have made the same transaction, saved $300, and would have had more money in their large legacy address than they do now. If this is a failed algorithm I'd like to apply for a job to do this manually. I only charge 50% of all the money I save in fees. It will take me just a few months before I can retire.

BTC whales don't give a shit, they're frivolous spenders.

Not much difference compared to fiat whales TBH...

You didn't check the link I posted, now did you? Usually, fiat billionaires don't get rich by wasting money. It's like spending $100 to get rid of $5 from your wallet. It doesn't make sense.

[cryptosize]

You didn't check the link I posted, now did you? Usually, fiat billionaires don't get rich by wasting money. It's like spending $100 to get rid of $5 from your wallet. It doesn't make sense.

I did, but don't assume that's his only wallet. Whales have multiple wallets, they mix funds... did you perform chain analysis or what?

Only a whale would waste that much money on a regular basis (as you said), not a shrimp.