[Jan 2021] Fees are low, use this opportunity to Consolidate your small inputs!

[LoyceV]

I don't want to remove this bump because it was Merited.

Consolidate Bump.


At the moment, even just 2 sat/byte is enough for a fast confirmation. In the past days, I've seen fees drop to the minimum several times. I expect you can consolidate at 1 sat/byte this weekend.

Consolidate your small inputs while you can, low fees won't last forever!
When you are in a rush, it saves a lot in fees if you can use only one input address (and ideally use native SegWit: bc1q......).

[1611546153]

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[1611546153]

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[Pmalek]

Yep, the mempool has been looking really good since last night. It cleared nicely just before I needed to make a few transactions. Right now, fees of 1-2 Sat/vByte are enough for relatively quick confirmations.

This is the state of the mempool from a few minutes ago.

 

[LoyceV]

just before I needed to make a few transactions

If you made several transactions, you could probably have saved more on fees by adding paying all addresses within one transaction. Unless you have a reason (such as privacy and coin control) to make separate payments, you can reduce the total transaction size and thus the total fee by making one transaction.
Remember: each input adds a lot more to the transaction size than each output.

[Pmalek]

@LoyceV
It was actually both incoming and outgoing transactions from different wallets and websites so I couldn't use that option this time. A little bit of betting and withdrawing from the casino, followed by a consolidation at the end as an icing on the cake.   

[tranthidung]

@LoyceV
It was actually both incoming and outgoing transactions from different wallets and websites so I couldn't use that option this time. A little bit of betting and withdrawing from the casino, followed by a consolidation at the end as an icing on the cake.   

If you withdraw your bitcoin from casinos, exchanges then the situation will be different. It depends on specific casino/ exchange and their policies

• They charge withdrawal fee on user: charge fee or not
• If charge fee, the fee is dynamic or static.

If no fee for withdrawal (like Fortune Jack after the day they turned back to waiving the fee for users), when you receive withdrawals on your non-custodial wallet, you can consolidate your inputs with coin control features.

If fee is charged, let's see 2 situations:

• Fee is static: it means the fee is fixed by exchange or casino, no matter how low or high fee on the network is and how mempool space is. Simply make withdrawals when you win. Then wait for good period to consolidate your inputs.
• Fee is dynamic: you need to wait till the right time, observe mempool space and make withdrawals when mempool is clear, fee is cheaper. You will save fee for withdrawals. Next, consolidate your inputs after 30 to 60 minutes.

[LoyceV]

Bump: fees are low again. It dipped to 3 sat/byte on Saturday and reached 1 sat/byte yesterday (as expected on a Sunday).

(I don't want to remove my Merited bump)

[Royse777]

It spiked again and now it's over 100 sat/B


https://archive.vn/wip/slQQ5

I had a tx with 1 sat/Byte for the last more than a week and it got confirmed yesterday LOL

[Timelord2067]

It spiked again and now it's over 100 sat/B


https://archive.vn/wip/slQQ5

I had a tx with 1 sat/Byte for the last more than a week and it got confirmed yesterday LOL

I had a TX with one sat that only took a couple of hours today to get confirmed https://live.blockcypher.com/btc/tx/f327299146eea5bdde80f2ce310ff6cf8a16525bfdf020d9314bc5ac8be2851f/ (of course I was sendrawtransaction a few times )

(now if only this TX would get confirmed as well I'd be a happy chappy! )

[Stedsm]

--snip--

(now if only this TX would get confirmed as well I'd be a happy chappy! )

Even though you broadcast it to the network again through many different sites, I believe that it's still about the miners' preference to choose the transaction of your fee size. I've got a magic to share (as it's still working for me and I don't know how).

https://www.antpool.com/user/prioritiseTransaction.htm?m=savePrioritiseTx

Got an account there? Use this and see the magic. Yeah, I know it's an old trick but still works for me (maybe not work in extremely low fees but at least the average fee and definitely less than what's needed to get taken in next block).

[LoyceV]

Fees are low while Bitcoin's price is close to ATH. That's new

[arulbero]

Fees are low while Bitcoin's price is close to ATH. That's new

What do you mean by "low"?

Looking at https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/, the fees seem to me pretty high.

[LoyceV]

What do you mean by "low"?

I mean 1 sat/byte should be enough to get a confirmation today.

Looking at https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/, the fees seem to me pretty high.

I've seen opposing opinions on that site:

so far bitcoinfees.earn.com is inaccurate and leads to higher fees.

I'd say the bitcoinfees.earn.com site is fairly accurate in estimating.

I was looking at jochen-hoenicke.de:

(source: screenshot of jochen-hoenicke.de taken by Loycev)

[philipma1957]

jochen-hoenicke.de

is pretty much the gold standard to use.

[Dabs]

I'll have to remember that. I'm still looking at bitcoinfees all the time as it lays out the numbers in a clean manner (and you can view just the api page to get raw numbers.)

https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/api/v1/fees/recommended

But yeah, while it's graphical, it would not hurt to also look at Johoe's site.

https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,2d

[jackg]

I'd double check on the fees before sending now as they're quite volatile.

I paid 93 sats per byte nlyesterday to end up 47mb from the tip of the mempool (at the time of sending that was considered enough to get confirmed in the next block and then there was a spike). 

[LoyceV]

I paid 93 sats per byte nlyesterday to end up 47mb from the tip of the mempool

I guess that wasn't meant to consolidate small inputs Fees can always spike any moment, but if I look at Johoe's current graph, I see many people pay 50 times more than needed:

The graph shows what happens when it takes more than an hour to find a block (around 03:00). Wallets keep competing for the highest fee, but none of that matters until a block gets mined.

Yesterday I paid 1.2 sat/byte instead of 1. That was enough to get on top of the large majority of waiting transactions, while my wallet was recommending to pay 80 times more. Even now, Mycelium recommends 82 sat/byte for a "Normal" 30 minutes transaction. For 2 hours, it recommends 59 sat/byte, and only for 3 hours it drops down to 8 sat/byte. It's such a waste of precious satoshis to follow the default fee, and on top of that it forces others to do the same.

[TopTort777]

Confirm if I get this correct.

I have about 100 small incoming transactions into my wallet. Lets say they worth 0.1 BTC.

If in future I would like to send my entire balance, then doing following: "send 0.05 BTC + 0.05 BTC to my other wallet with 1-2 sat per byte fee  (it might take days to receive them back)", will decrease transaction fee and increase transaction speed?

"Received 0.05 BTC + 0.05 BTC" > "received 0.002 BTC + 0.000234 BTC + 0.0009761 BTC + 0.0000037271 +..."

[LoyceV]

If in future I would like to send my entire balance, then doing following: "send 0.05 BTC + 0.05 BTC to my other wallet with 1-2 sat per byte fee  (it might take days to receive them back)", will decrease transaction fee and increase transaction speed?

Yes.

Or in pictures:
You have this, which is slow and annoying to use:

(image source)

You want this for quick easy payments:

(image source)

[LoyceV]

Consolidate Bump.


At the moment, 5.something sat/byte is enough for a fast confirmation. In the past weeks, I've seen fees rise a lot. This is probably as low as it's going to get given that it's Sunday today.

Consolidate your small inputs while you can, low fees won't last forever!
When you are in a rush, it saves a lot in fees if you can use only one input address (and ideally use native SegWit: bc1q......).

Today I made a transaction from Electrum. It recommends 50.7 sat/byte to be confirmed within the next 25 blocks.
Based on Johoe's Bitcoin Mempool Statistics, I paid 5.4 sat/byte. This transaction was 0.96 MB from the top, and confirmed within half a minute. I was lucky a block was found shortly after I made the transaction, but on a Sunday, it would have been mined soon anyway.

Electrum's recommendation for a next-block confirmation was 143.7 sat/byte. That's 26 times more than I paid.

At the moment, there are 26300 transactions with a size of 218 MB waiting in mempool. That's over 8000 bytes per transaction on average, nicely consolidating at a low fee.