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

[Leuchtturmwaerter]

Why is the mempool at 20 sat this day?
https://www.btc-forum.de/mempool

Last days it was around 1-3 sat.

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[n0nce]

Why is the mempool at 20 sat this day?
https://www.btc-forum.de/mempool

Last days it was around 1-3 sat.

What do you mean? The mempool is never at X sat. It's just a pool of unconfirmed transactions. You could say 'it's at X megabytes' maybe.

When a new transaction is received by a node, it will hold it in its memory pool with all the other latest transactions it has received. From here the transaction will be hoping to get selected for inclusion in the candidate block.
So basically, the memory pool is a waiting room for new transactions.

You are probably referring to the currently recommended fee. Everyone can choose how they recommend it, but most sites recommend the minimum fee that is high enough to get a transaction confirmed in the next block. It depends on how 'filled' the mempool is, and this depends on how many transactions were submitted lately.

On average, the number of transactions that can be processed stays constant, so if the number of new tx's is higher than that, the pool fills up and if it drops below, it is cleared block by block. When it's empty or almost empty, you can get a transaction confirmed in the next block for 1 sat. But nobody can tell you or guarantee you when the mempool gets this empty.

If you want to observe it better, I would recommend using https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,8h,weight and https://mempool.space/.

The latter nicely displays the amount of incoming transactions (actually it's not about amount, it's about size - hence the vB) like follows.

[LoyceV]

Why is the mempool at 20 sat this day?

Someone made a lot of transactions, probably consolidating many inputs.
Mempool cleared already, see this graph:

[pooya87]

On average, the number of transactions that can be processed stays constant,

Actually the "number" of transactions that can be included in a block varies because there is no count limit, there is only a size (or more accurately weight) limit for each block. So in an extreme example you could create 10x 4 MB weight transactions and fill 10 blocks (1 tx per block) or you could create 60 byte transactions and fill a block with ~16660 transactions.

[dkbit98]

If you want to observe it better, I would recommend using https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,8h,weight and https://mempool.space/.

The latter nicely displays the amount of incoming transactions (actually it's not about amount, it's about size - hence the vB) like follows.

I would also add this new graphical experimental website bits.monospace.live that is showing bitcoin transaction and mempool state with value or in vbyte mode (change in settings).
This could be interesting tool for any newbies and everyone else to better understand mempool and transactions.
https://bits.monospace.live/

[PawGo]

After 24 hours of increased fees, now we are again back to situation we all love so much. Hash rate is on it's top (level from May '21) so probably we may expect some adaptations soon.

https://www.blockchain.com/charts/hash-rate

[LoyceV]

Hash rate is on it's top (level from May '21) so probably we may expect some adaptations soon.

I like Bitcoin Difficulty Estimator for this: it shows there's 8.3% more new blocks found than expected, which means difficulty will go up soon indeed, which means less blocks will be found after that.

[get2business]

Hi!
is the formula to calculate tx size still this(for legacy addresses):


in*180 + out*34 + 10 plus or minus 'in'


or it has changed into something else?
thanks.

[LoyceV]

is the formula to calculate tx size still this(for legacy addresses):

in*180 + out*34 + 10 plus or minus 'in'

That seems about right. I don't think that can change, unless you use a compressed address, in that case it's a bit less. Coinb.in is convenient to get a quick estimate.

[get2business]

thanks man!
great link to coinbin!

[LoyceV]

Mods: I'm not removing this bump, since it got Merited.

New Years Consolidate Bump!


For several months, mempool has been mostly empty, but does fill up once in a while. This means 1 sat/vbyte is most of the time high enough for a fast confirmation, but sometimes makes you wait a day.

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......).

[pawanjain]

(small bump)

I remember reading this post last year and was waiting for a good time to consolidate all my inputs.
Today, I used all my unspent inputs (12 inputs) and consolidated them into 1 unspent output.
With the fees of 3 sats per byte the total transaction fees was 0.00003248BTC which was around $1.25 for consolidating around $800+ as per current prices.
I guess it was worth it. Better to use this opportunity now than to keep paying large fees when the price increase again.
Thanks @LoyceV for making this post and making us aware of using such tips for our benefits.

[pooya87]

With the fees of 3 sats per byte the total transaction fees was 0.00003248BTC which was around $1.25

You overpaid by a factor of 3
If you are consolidating outputs, almost always you are in no rush to get the transaction confirmed. Nowadays 1 satoshi/vbyte is possible 99% of days so you could have gotten away with paying 0.00001082BTC which is roughly 0.4$ with today's price.

[pawanjain]

With the fees of 3 sats per byte the total transaction fees was 0.00003248BTC which was around $1.25

You overpaid by a factor of 3
If you are consolidating outputs, almost always you are in no rush to get the transaction confirmed. Nowadays 1 satoshi/vbyte is possible 99% of days so you could have gotten away with paying 0.00001082BTC which is roughly 0.4$ with today's price.

You are probably correct but I didn't wanted to risk the amount getting stuck in limbo for the sake of $1 
It happened once when I put a low fee and the transaction was unconfirmed for more than 18 hours.
So I am kinda paranoid when it comes to transaction confirmations and don't mind spending a few dollars extra to get faster confirmations.
But I do get your point and at the same time I feel its okay to spend 2000 satoshis extra while bitcoin is still under $1million per coin   

[LoyceV]

You are probably correct but I didn't wanted to risk the amount getting stuck in limbo for the sake of $1  
It happened once when I put a low fee and the transaction was unconfirmed for more than 18 hours.

I've had transactions that remained unconfirmed for weeks. As long as it's between your own addresses, and as long as you don't need the funds, it doesn't matter. Worst case, you can use RBF or CPFP to raise the fee a bit. Best case (and currently quite likely), it confirms quickly anyway.

[NeuroticFish]

You are probably correct but I didn't wanted to risk the amount getting stuck in limbo for the sake of $1 
It happened once when I put a low fee and the transaction was unconfirmed for more than 18 hours.
So I am kinda paranoid when it comes to transaction confirmations and don't mind spending a few dollars extra to get faster confirmations.
But I do get your point and at the same time I feel its okay to spend 2000 satoshis extra while bitcoin is still under $1million per coin   

1. Your funds don't "get stuck". They return to you after a while.
2. (Since I'm slow, OP already wrote this too) For cases of emergency you may have options like RBF (if the flag is on) or CPFP (when spending the resulted transaction)
3. If you look now and then at sites like mempool.space you'll see that the risk of not getting your transaction confirmed in max 24h is very low lately.

Of course, you didn't pay much for consolidating the funds. But the purpose of this thread is to also teach the newbies do the things correctly, hence these things have to be said over and over again.

[pawanjain]

You are probably correct but I didn't wanted to risk the amount getting stuck in limbo for the sake of $1  
It happened once when I put a low fee and the transaction was unconfirmed for more than 18 hours.

I've had transactions that remained unconfirmed for weeks. As long as it's between your own addresses, and as long as you don't need the funds, it doesn't matter. Worst case, you can use RBF or CPFP to raise the fee a bit. Best case (and currently quite likely), it confirms quickly anyway.

I wonder why didn't I think of that. I will keep this in mind the next time I am consolidating inputs. Thanks for the tip anyway.

1. Your funds don't "get stuck". They return to you after a while.

Do they ? I once read that a user had put a very low amount of fee for his transaction and the transaction remained unconfirmed like forever.
How much time do you mean when you say "after a while" ?

[NeuroticFish]

Do they ? I once read that a user had put a very low amount of fee for his transaction and the transaction remained unconfirmed like forever.
How much time do you mean when you say "after a while" ?

I think that normally the mempools would start dropping the transaction after 2 weeks, but some may have different settings (longer or shorter period).
Also some nodes will drop the transaction if they are getting crowded (too many transactions, too much memory used, only the more expensive are kept)
So unless you use some odd online wallet that would maybe re-broadcast your tx, from what I know, in 2-3 weeks it should be forgotten if not processed.
And when it's forgotten, you can also tell your wallet forget it, hence getting access to those coins.

I don't have my own experience in this, but there were discussions on this when the mempool was full for long (especially in 2017/2018, and back then the period for getting dropped has been even changed). I hope that I've remembered the things correctly.

[LoyceV]

So unless you use some odd online wallet that would maybe re-broadcast your tx, from what I know, in 2-3 weeks it should be forgotten if not processed.

I've had this with Mycelium (on Android) too: it kept broadcasting my transactions, and when I deleted it, it picked it up again. Bitcoin Core also keeps broadcasting a transaction until you manually tell it to drop it. It really depends on the wallet, and that's why CPFP or RBF is much easier.

[NeuroticFish]

So unless you use some odd online wallet that would maybe re-broadcast your tx, from what I know, in 2-3 weeks it should be forgotten if not processed.

I've had this with Mycelium (on Android) too: it kept broadcasting my transactions, and when I deleted it, it picked it up again. Bitcoin Core also keeps broadcasting a transaction until you manually tell it to drop it. It really depends on the wallet, and that's why CPFP or RBF is much easier.

From what I read here, in case of Mycelium you can "reload account" and try to use those funds. This would mean that it's not re-broadcasting by itself...

Clearly RBF/CPFP are easier, but some just don't use the right wallet for that (RBF not available) or simply send to others/services and no longer have the choice for CPFP.
On the other hand, if you have to RBF a consolidation transaction... it kinda lost the purpose, so just waiting it to either confirm, either get dropped can become the better option.