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

[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! )

[1713575465]

1713575465

[1713575465]

1713575465

[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)

[DaveF]

Minor change for the subject line, it's the end of Feb not Jan. And I put in the time now. Lets face it 90 minutes from now it can all change.

Also, in addition to not just trusting your wallet to determine the fees or 1 mempool viewer take a look at another one just to be sure.

I like https://mempool.space
others like
https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,24h
and there are others.

But always at least glance at a 2nd one.
Because if one stalled, had an issue with it's local node, or something else, and you use the wrong fee, you may be waiting for a while.

-Dave

[tranthidung]

But always at least glance at a 2nd one.
Because if one stalled, had an issue with it's local node, or something else, and you use the wrong fee, you may be waiting for a while.

You are right when bookmark alternatives to use in case one website is down or has technical inaccuracy.

Personally, I also use Electrum for mobile with fee estimator binds with the option Mempool when I am on mobile. On mobile devices, it is not comfortable to use https://jochen-hoenicke.de/ than on desktop or laptop. This alternative works for me on mobile devices as a tool for pre-checking.

I use an empty wallet to check fees and see is it time to move my bitcoin before I go to desktop or laptop

[bakasabo]

Hello LoyceV,

You have mentioned, that on Sunday users were able to get their transaction confirmed fast with 7sat/byte fee, but what about transactions with lower fees? I have a transaction with 5sat/byte stuck since February 11. It is not dropped from mempool, it is not being resend. Is there a chance it will be confirmed during next "low fees Sunday" ?

p.s. It was made in online wallet, that dont allow CPFP and RBF.

[LoyceV]

what about transactions with lower fees? I have a transaction with 5sat/byte stuck since February 11. It is not dropped from mempool, it is not being resend. Is there a chance it will be confirmed during next "low fees Sunday" ?

Only if fees drop low enough, miners include transactions that earn them most money first.

It was made in online wallet, that dont allow CPFP and RBF.

As long as they keep broadcasting the transaction, it won't drop from mempool. But if fees keep rising, and given a maximum 300 MB mempool size, the transactions with lowest fees will be dropped eventually, and in that case won't be accepted again as as long as mempool stays full.
If that happens, it's up to the service that sent the transaction to re-send it with a higher fee.

If it's a "wallet" (by my definition), it should give you access to private keys. If you have private keys, you can try CPFP. If it's an exchange or other website that doesn't give you private keys, and you sent it to a similar service that doesn't allow you to do RBF, then indeed all you can do is wait.

[Pmalek]

@bakasabo
There are currently almost 84 vMB of transactions stuck in the mempool with fees of 5 sat/vByte. Between 10-11 AM this morning, transactions that paid 8-10 sat/vByte were confirmed. There were probably a few that paid 7 sat/vByte as well. But even the range of 7 sats has over 30 vMB of transactions waiting to get confirmed, and there are almost 60 vMB where users are paying 6 sats. Considering that each new block removes only about 1 MB from the tip of the mempool as shown on the jochen-hoenicke site, you will have to show plenty of patience before you see the 1st confirmation.   

[LoyceV]

In the past hours, 10 sat/byte was enough for a fast confirmation. In the past weeks, I've seen fees rise a lot. Last Sunday, it reached as low as 7 sat/byte. My expectation for tomorrow is around the same.

I noticed Johoe's site got updated:

Instead of the number of transactions, it now shows the transaction weight by default. The graph looks totally different because many low-fee transactions are very large (consolidating many inputs), and the high-fee transactions are a lot smaller.

[Poker Player]

... In the past weeks, I've seen fees rise a lot. Last Sunday, it reached as low as 7 sat/byte. My expectation for tomorrow is around the same.

...
Electrum's recommendation is currently 159.3 sat/byte for a next-block confirmation and 55.8 sat/byte to confirm with 25 blocks. That's rediculous, there's no need to waste this much money on fees.

Hi LoyceV, thank you very much for this post. Today I wanted to send a small transaction and I was on the verge of not sending it because if I sent the high fee, the commission would be more expensive than the transaction itself. If I sent the standard fee, the transaction cost me the same as the commission, i.e. twice as much. If I put the low fee a little less but almost the same. I searched the forum and found this post, I tried with 10 sat/vb, which was about 2% of fees, that is much cheaper, and in about 12 minutes I had three confirmations. I will keep this thread in my whatchlist and reread it because I am a noob in this transaction stuff.

Edit: I've just tried now 5 sat/vb with the address I had with the lowest amount, like 5/6$, I think this thread is going to be useful for me.

[LoyceV]

Hi LoyceV, thank you very much for this post.

You're welcome

I (once again) noticed a flaw in this system: when creating an online transaction in a watch-only wallet, I set a fee of 7.5 sat/byte. When I signed it offline, the transaction increased in size and my fee turned out to be only 6.2 sat/byte. So while I expected it to confirm quickly, it's now 50 MB from the top and might take weeks or months to confirm. The last time fees were this low was 6 weeks ago (Feb .
Luckily, I'm not in any rush

[DaveF]

I (once again) noticed a flaw in this system: when creating an online transaction in a watch-only wallet, I set a fee of 7.5 sat/byte. When I signed it offline, the transaction increased in size and my fee turned out to be only 6.2 sat/byte....

Slightly OT, but what were you using to do this? I have at times noticed a slight difference in size when signing but never anything that would change more then a fraction of a sat/byte. Not the 1.3 sat/byte that you have. Might be worth some testing.

-Dave