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

[LoyceV]

I've never seen this: https://btc.com/stats/unconfirmed-tx recommends 0 Sat/byte fee! I haven't found a recent confirmed transaction with 0 fee yet.
https://coinb.in/#fees still recommends 1 Sat/Byte, but several big transactions with less than 1 Sat/Byte fee got confirmed in just minutes. Blocks aren't even full!

I'm not sure what causes this reduction in transactions, it could be people make less transactions since the high fees (I do!), it could spam attacks ended, it could be Bitcoin is less hyped since the price isn't going up fast anymore, it could be caused by less merchants accepting it since fees were this high, or it could also be people refusing to pay very high transaction fees at exchanges (up to 0.002 BTC is still quite common).
Whatever the reason, this is still a great opportunity to consolidate your small inputs! I have no doubt fees will rise again at some point in the future.

[1714805891]

1714805891

[HCP]

I sent a 1225 byte transaction today... (737 "virtual" bytes thanks to SegWit)... I used the "0.00001000 BTC/kB" minimum fee in Bitcoin Core, so it attached a fee of 0.00000737 BTC... 737 sats! That's 7c at current "google" exchange.

I got next block confirmation!!?!

#trueStory

[LoyceV]

I used the "0.00001000 BTC/kB" minimum fee in Bitcoin Core

I wanted to go lower, but I bumped into that minimum fee too! Older versions of Bitcoin Core could send transactions without fee too, so I guess the few transactions with less than 1 Sat/Byte fee are made with those.

[Stedsm]

I used the "0.00001000 BTC/kB" minimum fee in Bitcoin Core

I wanted to go lower, but I bumped into that minimum fee too! Older versions of Bitcoin Core could send transactions without fee too, so I guess the few transactions with less than 1 Sat/Byte fee are made with those.

Missed the next block confirmation, but dang - I've got it confirmed in the second block after the tx created:
Virtual Bytes size was 260 with a rawtx Size of 489 bytes.
Fees 0.00000860 BTC
Fees Rate (BTC / kVB) 0.00003496 BTC
Feeling extremely happy that old days are back when we used to pay fees in cents, but what I wish to know is - as these costs are currently down (this must be on miners' consent, right?), will it continue to be the same for at least a few years just like a new beginning, or mempool may get congested back once again if any spam attacks take place?

EDIT: 1 more transaction made recently with just $0.04 as fee, and guess what!?
I've got it confirmed the next minute.
Details here:
Virtual Bytes size was 110 with a rawtx Size of 191 bytes.
Fees 0.00000384 BTC (Only 2 Sats/byte)
Fees Rate (BTC / kVB) 0.00003491 BTC    

[LoyceV]

what I wish to know is - as these costs are currently down (this must be on miners' consent, right?), will it continue to be the same for at least a few years just like a new beginning, or mempool may get congested back once again if any spam attacks take place?

Miners don't set fees (unless they engage in spamming the network), users set fees. Or in most cases: wallets set fees! Last week, my Android app Mycelium recommended a few Sat/Byte as standard fee. Mycelium is now back to 93 Sat/Byte as a recommendation to be confirmed within 30 minutes. If I set it manually, I can't go lower than 3.
Meanwhile, https://btc.com/stats/unconfirmed-tx recommends 1 Sat/Byte, and https://coinb.in/#fees goes as low as 0 (note: I don't recommend to send zero-fee transactions anymore; they might round 0.49 down to zero).

The best way to stop high fees forever, is awareness. As long as people are willing to pay $20 per transaction, a very small increase in the number of transactions leads to a very strong increase in fees.
Anyone who just accepts the fee recommended by Mycelium (or many other wallets) pays 100 times more than needed!

[TheQuin]

Miners don't set fees (unless they engage in spamming the network)

One other way they attempt to set fees is by not including transactions below a certain level. For example, F2pool is ignoring anything below 5 sat/vbyte.

https://btc.com/00000000000000000038714687ae289db0d6d4a5beaa2f338108e78a37e0133b?page=1&asc=1&order_by=fee

Several other pools including Antpool were doing it recently although they seem to have given up now and excepting low fees are here for a while.

[LoyceV]

One other way they attempt to set fees is by not including transactions below a certain level. For example, F2pool is ignoring anything below 5 sat/vbyte.

I noticed that indeed. As long as only a few mining pool do this, it's just their loss: I give my $0.05 to another miner. It would be a problem if many miners do this, but in the end they too need a working Bitcoin network for it to keep it's value.
Long-term, it's irrational to ignore transactions because it's only a small amount.

[Stedsm]

One other way they attempt to set fees is by not including transactions below a certain level. For example, F2pool is ignoring anything below 5 sat/vbyte.

I noticed that indeed. As long as only a few mining pool do this, it's just their loss: I give my $0.05 to another miner. It would be a problem if many miners do this, but in the end they too need a working Bitcoin network for it to keep it's value.
Long-term, it's irrational to ignore transactions because it's only a small amount.

I used the wrong word "miners" in my said post, but what I meant was similar to TheQuin that if the pools decide to go against the users by refusing to take their low fee transactions and once an end-user goes helpless, he/she will need to keep it as high as they want it to be, right?
If awareness is the only thing that was needed, where were those miners then when the network was filled with such low-fee transactions and these pools manipulated the fees to such ridiculous levels that currently made us regret for our deeds - by transacting at their asked values.

How can you exactly say that every user is now aware of the fact that they can decide not to choose what's recommended by their wallets?

You can still check that there are still some limited number of transactions with as much as 100 sats/byte (ref: https://bitcoinfees.earn.com). Should I consider them those who're currently unaware about this?

[pooya87]

Meanwhile, https://btc.com/stats/unconfirmed-tx recommends 1 Sat/Byte, and https://coinb.in/#fees goes as low as 0 (note: I don't recommend to send zero-fee transactions anymore; they might round 0.49 down to zero).

the problem with fees lower than 1 satoshi/byte is propagation. thanks to one of bitcoin core's recent updates (i think was 0.15) you can no longer set it lower than that because majority of the network will reject your transaction!
otherwise if you can get your transaction to the miners, most of them will mine it 0.684 sat/B

same with 0 (free) transactions. even when this PR was merged, there were miners still mining 0 fee transactions

[aplistir]

No-one has said what is the minimum amount of inputs that would benefit from consolidating inputs?

LoyceV mentioned that he consolidated 3 inputs.

Is it necessary to consolidate 2 inputs? How about 3 or 4?

How much savings would that make, if the fees go back to high levels?

[LoyceV]

No-one has said what is the minimum amount of inputs that would benefit from consolidating inputs?

Any number of inputs larger than 1 can be benefit.

Is it necessary to consolidate 2 inputs? How about 3 or 4?

It depends on how fees develop. Fees have been more than 0.001BTC per input. If you consolidate 3 inputs now, and you need to make a transaction if fees are that high again, you'll safe $10 or more per input you consolidate now.

How much savings would that make, if the fees go back to high levels?

Play around with the sliders on https://coinb.in/#fees , it tells you exactly how many bytes you can safe.

[Thirdspace]

what is going on with the network tx fee?
I checked btc.com and it shows 100 Satoshis/vbyte | 0.001 BTC/KvB as Current best transaction fees
it sometimes suddenly jumped to 1k+ txs and drop back again to 400s txs
is someone trying to drive the tx fee high like last december again?
with not so many transactions queued, tx fee could be set as low as 1s/B and still get confirmed in the next block
 

Code:

Unconfirmed Txs			Count		438
Transaction Accelerator		Size		153,625 - 153.63 KB
24h Tx Rate					2.45 txs/s
Median block size of past 2 weeks		1,055,604 Bytes
Current best transaction fees			0.001 BTC/kVB(virtual)

[pooya87]

what is going on with the network tx fee?
I checked btc.com and it shows 100 Satoshis/vbyte | 0.001 BTC/KvB as Current best transaction fees

that may be a bug in btc.com fee estimation system because everywhere else is suggesting 10-20 satoshi/byte and if you check the memory pool yourself you can see less than 10 S/B is a good amount right now. check my previous comment here to see how i do it.

it sometimes suddenly jumped to 1k+ txs and drop back again to 400s txs

you mean number of unconfirmed transactions? that is normal! it usually is around 2000-4000 ones in the memory pool and when a block is found, it drops down.

[Kakmakr]

I think the main advantage for me is that I am more inclined to make more tx's to mixer services and grouping money together now that the fees are lower. When the miners fees are high, you are more hesitant to do some house cleaning, because you are confronted with the high miner fees and the extra fees that you have to pay the mixer service.

I can now sort money received from different sources at a fraction of the price, before I send it through the mixer service. This hides the end destination of those funds.

Great idea OP, it pushed me to do some house cleaning.  

[pooya87]

It is very encouraging that the fees are low, and they can be used to consolidate small entries, because when I first started my $ 5 on the stock exchange commission was 10 percent.

the withdrawal fees of exchanges have always been high and it has little to do with bitcoin transaction fees. after the fees went up they all increased their already high withdrawal fees and some of them decreased it recently but it is still pretty high. for example there are exchanges charging 0.0015BTC=$12-$13 for a withdrawal.

[HCP]

Fully endorse this... Consolidation of UTXOs and switching to SegWit is a "Good Idea"™

This is how quickly the fees can start to spike when BTC goes on a wee pump... Someone decided they needed to pay 1400+ sats/byte fee!


#theFOMOisReal

[nc50lc]

Last week, I saw recommended fees rise up to 40 sat/byte again when blocks were full. Fees are low again, but it won't last forever.

I can confirm this, I just recently tried to consolidate 3 inputs (SegWit) with 0.5sat/byte tx fee (Electrum approx it as "within the next 25 blocks")
and it got included in a block right after <10minutes, literally the next block after I broadcast the transaction.

I'm seeing blocks with 51 transactions right now (#522030)
With that, even 0sat/byte can be confirmed within hours (but I'm not recommending it).

[LoyceV]

@nc50lc: Your transaction probably had 1 sat/byte, as most nodes don't accept anything lower. That makes it 0.5 sat/WU.
Zero fee transactions are very unlikely to be broadcasted and mined.

I'm happy to see this thread is over 3 months old now, and fees are still low.

[Karartma1]

Consolidate Bump!

About two weeks ago, I saw recommended fees rise up to 40 sat/byte again when blocks were full. Fees are low again, but it won't last forever.

Ok, papa! Now it's your time to take that money and turn those eurocrap coins into bitcoin for your own son! He did his part now it's yours. If you do that I might add some bits if you like  
I'm an eager supporters of youngsters entering the Bitcoin world. PM me if you wish

[Rath_]

as usual bitcoin falls and low fees, bitcoin grows and charges large. You need to go when the fees for transactions are very low and when the growth begins and the fees become record high, this will be the signal for the sale of bitcoin. And so on a circle ...

You forgot to mention that the biggest spikes of transaction fees were at the time when Bitcoin Cash was being over advertised. Coincidence? Maybe, we can't be sure, but it has happened a lot in the past. We have chosen SegWit and Lightning Network to be our scaling solutions for some time. It's still too early to make any conclusions, but it looks like we are on a good way while Bitcoin Cash "developers" are increasing the blocksize. Prepare for the next fee rise.