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

[LFC_Bitcoin]

I just had a transaction with a 2 sat/byte fee confirmed. Took just over an hour.

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/b696e4e691731ab19f7cc94b7f5bce0ed13e16452eb02d3db5625308f544322e

[1715228284]

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[1715228284]

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[LoyceV]

I just had a transaction with a 2 sat/byte fee confirmed. Took just over an hour.

My 1 sat/byte transaction just now took 9 minutes. Sunday is the time to consolidate, and even if it doesn't get confirmed, chances are it will be confirmed next weekend. Just conslidate funds you don't need for a while.

[AB de Royse777]

~snip~

A few sat/byte is still possible!

I have few 1 sat/byte tx are waiting to confirm from yesterday. Some of them got confirmed few days ago and it was not taking more than few hours.

People are just in too hurry to see their tx to get confirmed. In the past few months I can remember only two tx to use 10sat/byte because those were kind of urgent tx for me.

[jackg]

I sent from my phone yesterday and had to send at 40sat/byte.

It was quick to confirm being the 25 blocks option so wallets seem to be suggesting higher fees than they should. Blocks don't seem full on block explorers, blockchain is quoting blocks of 1.1 to 1.5 mb and 1.1 certainly seems low. Maybe there's a chance some pools are getting greedy while they can...

[pooya87]

I sent from my phone yesterday and had to send at 40sat/byte.

It was quick to confirm being the 25 blocks option so wallets seem to be suggesting higher fees than they should. Blocks don't seem full on block explorers, blockchain is quoting blocks of 1.1 to 1.5 mb and 1.1 certainly seems low. Maybe there's a chance some pools are getting greedy while they can...

you can't say blocks are not full just because they are smaller than 1.5 MB. anything north of 990 kbyte can be considered full block depending on what percentage of it is SegWit transactions. so a 1.1 MB block can be full if it had little SegWit transactions in it.
and it doesn't have anything to do with pools, it is just users sending more legacy transactions.

[buwaytress]

Might be useful, I did a non-critical spend on June 3rd, it needed to be confirmed before 15th so, an excellent time to test out 1 sat/byte fees. And consolidate at the same time.

I remember 22k in the mempool as I broadcast, it even reached as high as 40k in the next few hours, but it still got confirmed in just 56 hours. So this was done on Monday peak and still cleared up by Wednesday.

Don't know about you guys but I'm loving it =p

[gentlemand]

I got myself a wonderful confirmation within the second block with 9 satoshis per byte yesterday. Even when fees were much higher in recent days my lowballing has gone through within 24 hours or so.

[naska21]

Well. Right now I have bunch of inputs on legacy addresses. Can they be consolidated on one or two  "bc1" addresses? Or I have to use the "1"-type- addresses as the destination  to consolidate them?

[LoyceV]

Well. Right now I have bunch of inputs on legacy addresses. Can they be consolidated on one or two  "bc1" addresses? Or I have to use the "1"-type- addresses as the destination  to consolidate them?

As long as your wallet supports it, you can send funds to bc1 addresses.

[jackg]

Well. Right now I have bunch of inputs on legacy addresses. Can they be consolidated on one or two  "bc1" addresses? Or I have to use the "1"-type- addresses as the destination  to consolidate them?

As long as your wallet supports it, you can send funds to bc1 addresses.

If it doesn't support it, you'll get a message saying it doesn't so you may as well try it.

If it doesn't, consolidating onto one legacy address is still a good idea (or nested segwit is accepted by all - the "3" type).

[UnitedNot]

All my bitcoins are currently on my Ledger hardware wallet. I have many different amounts ranging from 0.01 - 0.3 per address. Probably about 50 different transactions. Is it advisable and necessary to consolidate these amounts?
All addresses are segwit - starting with 3.

I have used some desktop wallets in the past and from there I have moved my bitcoins to Ledger. Other transactions came straight to my Ledger from exchanges.
I have never used Electrum or Bitcoin Core so I have no experience with those.
From reading the topic it was suggested that I use Electrum for the consolidation.

From what I can see the Fees now are pretty high so using 1-2 Byte/Sat would not work right now?

Do I need to move my bitcoins from Ledger to a new address on Electrum or can I sync those two together and do the consolidation on Electrum?
I have no experience calculating size, inputs, outputs, can someone please tell me how to do this properly as I have never done that before?
 

[gentlemand]

All my bitcoins are currently on my Ledger hardware wallet. I have many different amounts ranging from 0.01 - 0.3 per address. Probably about 50 different transactions. Is it advisable and necessary to consolidate these amounts?

Advisable indeed. You never know what fees will get to but you might wind up with an outrageous bill further down the line that's relative peanuts now and you have a lot of stuff to gather up. I've done it in the past and I do it periodically if coins need consolidating.

I haven't used my Ledger in absolutely ages but I'm pretty sure there's a custom fee you can set so no need to use Electrum. I could be totally wrong.

Dunno about 1-2 satoshis but I did an 8 sat/byte transaction yesterday and it took about 7-8 hours to be fully confirmed.

[o_e_l_e_o]

All my bitcoins are currently on my Ledger hardware wallet. I have many different amounts ranging from 0.01 - 0.3 per address. Probably about 50 different transactions. Is it advisable and necessary to consolidate these amounts?

Yes. The reason being if you need to make a transaction that uses lots of different coins from your Ledger, and fees are high at the time, you will end up paying a lot. If you consolidate them all in to one when fees are cheap, it will save you on fees down the line.

All addresses are segwit - starting with 3.

You can move from all these addresses to any other kind of address you like. I would probably stick with another nested SegWit "3" address since that's what you are currently using anyway.

From reading the topic it was suggested that I use Electrum for the consolidation.

Lots of people use Electrum with their Ledger because it is easy to do so, and Electrum has more functionality than Ledger Live. You don't have to, however, and can still consolidate all your coins with Ledger Live if you wish.

From what I can see the Fees now are pretty high so using 1-2 Byte/Sat would not work right now?

Not immediately. But the whole point of consolidating is to pay a small fee when you are not in hurry. I would always consolidate with a low fee of around 1-2 sat/vbyte, and just be prepared to wait a couple of days for it to confirm.

Do I need to move my bitcoins from Ledger to a new address on Electrum or can I sync those two together and do the consolidation on Electrum?

You don't need to move coins from Ledger to Electrum. If you wish to use Electrum, first download it from electrum.org (make sure not to download from any other site, there are a lot of fake electrum sites out there). To be extra safe, you can verify your download following the instructions here: https://bitcoinelectrum.com/how-to-verify-your-electrum-download/. Once Electrum is installed, it is very easy to open your Ledger wallet in Electrum by following the instructions here: https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005161925-Set-up-and-use-Electrum/. By following these steps, you essentially use Electrum to open your Ledger, in the same way you currently use Ledger Live (I assume) to open your Ledger. The coins never need to move to do this.

I have no experience calculating size, inputs, outputs, can someone please tell me how to do this properly as I have never done that before?

Essentially, all you need to do is send all the coins in your wallet to a new address in your wallet, and make sure you set very low fees. Ledger Live or Electrum will do everything else for you.

[UnitedNot]

o_e_l_e_o Thank you for the explanation.
I will defiantly make sure to verify the signatures, yes.

If I understood everything clearly nowhere during the process of using Electrum will I need to enter my seed, so the seed never leaves my hardware wallet correct? I dont need to consider my security compromised since I used my hardware wallet in connection with a desktop wallet?

I have heard about options such as coin control and RBF (I think it is called that way). Basically I would be able to select which transactions to consolidate and have an option to increase the fee in case it is needed. Can you tell me a bit more about that?   

[o_e_l_e_o]

If I understood everything clearly nowhere during the process of using Electrum will I need to enter my seed, so the seed never leaves my hardware wallet correct? I dont need to consider my security compromised since I used my hardware wallet in connection with a desktop wallet?

Correct. All you need to do is unlock your Ledger with your PIN like you would usually, navigate to the bitcoin app, open Electrum on your computer, and then Electrum can create a new wallet using your unlocked Ledger. You do not need to enter your seed, and if it prompts you do so, you've chosen the wrong option. You are correct in saying that as long as you do not enter your seed, your security is not compromised. Many users use their hardware device to unlock a variety of desktop wallets every day.

When creating your new wallet with Electrum, you will reach a screen which asks you to choose your address type. You should choose "p2sh-segwit" (which will give you a derivation path of m/49'/0'/0') to reach your "3" type addresses.

I have heard about options such as coin control and RBF (I think it is called that way). Basically I would be able to select which transactions to consolidate and have an option to increase the fee in case it is needed. Can you tell me a bit more about that?

In Electrum, you can see all the coins you have received and which addresses they were received to. Choosing which ones to spend is a simple as highlighting these addresses, right clicking, and clicking on "Spend from this address".

In terms of opting in to RBF, you can click on Tools -> Preferences and check the box which says "Use Replace-By-Fee". This will allow you to boost your transactions' fees after they have been made if you are getting impatient and want it to confirm faster. Doing so is again as simple as right clicking on your unconfirmed transaction, selecting "Replace-By-Fee", inputting a new fee, and broadcasting it.

I am aware we are going slightly off topic here. If you have further questions, you could open a topic in the Electrum sub-board here for more help.

[UnitedNot]

Ohh I am sorry, I wasnt trying to derail the conversation in an unwanted direction.

Looking at https://coinb.in/#fees it seems that the perfect time to consolidate some inputs could come soon. The suggested fee is now 7 Sat/Byte.
This site is however confusing me https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,1w
Which of these should I use to send my transaction during the best time?

[gentlemand]

This site is however confusing me https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,1w
Which of these should I use to send my transaction during the best time?

At the risk of blowing my cool, I don't get that site in the slightest.

At present and as long as you're not in a hurry any fee above truly piddling amounts will get you there in the end. Like I said 7-9 have worked within a few hours for me recently.

I wouldn't be 100% about 1-2.

[bob123]

Personally, i prefer https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,24h.

The first and the third graph can help you determining which fee you should choose to get a transaction confirmed in a reasonable amount of time (given that there is no spike coming the moment after you broadcasted your transaction).

However, it honestly doesn't matter which site you are using.
Choose the one which feels informative and clear to you.

[LoyceV]

Looking at https://coinb.in/#fees it seems that the perfect time to consolidate some inputs could come soon. The suggested fee is now 7 Sat/Byte.
This site is however confusing me https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,1w
Which of these should I use to send my transaction during the best time?

Unless you're in a rush, it doesn't matter if it's "the best time" or not. My Bitcoin Core estimates that 1.18 satoshi/byte is enough to confirm within 24 hours. If fees go up and it doesn't confirm, it'll probably confirm on Sunday.
So as long as you're not in a hurry, just set a low fee, broadcast the transaction, and you'll see it confirmed eventually.

[UnitedNot]

Guys, thanks again for trying to help!

I was thinking of doing it this way.
Generate a new address in Ledger Live, copy this address to Electrum making sure it is the correct address and consolidate all my transactions using Electrum. Is there any downside in doing it this way?