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

[n0nce]

This has been a while:

(source)

Bitcoin's price drop may have triggered some panic selling: that was about 100 vMB in transactions at 10 sat/vbyte.

I'm not completely sold on the theory that large Bitcoin sells / buys affect the mempool, since a large portion of people still hold their funds on exchanges so they're just buying and selling 'paper Bitcoin'.

But statistics do suggest such a correlation exists and I'm very happy to see that, especially if we start seeing it more and more over time, since it would suggest higher percentage of users (or maybe just investors?) taking custody seriously and stopping to put their trust in paper Bitcoin.

[1714771283]

1714771283

[PrimeNumber7]

I'm not completely sold on the theory that large Bitcoin sells / buys affect the mempool, since a large portion of people still hold their funds on exchanges so they're just buying and selling 'paper Bitcoin'.

But statistics do suggest such a correlation exists and I'm very happy to see that, especially if we start seeing it more and more over time, since it would suggest higher percentage of users (or maybe just investors?) taking custody seriously and stopping to put their trust in paper Bitcoin.

If large swings in bitcoin are causing people to move coin to their exchange (and causing the mempool to get more congested), so they can sell, it would mean that people are holding their coin in their own wallets, only to entrust the exchange when they are ready to sell.

I don't think this is quite the same as holding their coin in their own wallet, and trading directly with whoever they want to trade with.

[pooya87]

If large swings in bitcoin are causing people to move coin to their exchange (and causing the mempool to get more congested), so they can sell, it would mean that people are holding their coin in their own wallets, only to entrust the exchange when they are ready to sell.

Every sell has an equal size buy. One of the reasons why the mempool size starts growing is because whenever there is a big move a lot of people go to exchanges with fiat to buy bitcoin and then withdraw it to their own wallets

[LoyceV]

Fees dropped again, there's now 70 MB left at 1 sat/vbyte (maybe including 1.x sat/vbyte too). If you want to consolidate this weekend: set a fee slightly above 1.

[LoyceV]

Consolidate Bump!


For several months, mempool has been mostly empty, but does fill up once in a while. This has happened a few timse in the past week.
Most of the time, 1 sat/vbyte is 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......).

Pro tip: instead of paying 1 sat/vbyte, pay a tiny bit more (say 1.1 sat/vbyte or even less):

Fucking Lightning channel waiting to open for almost 3 days now at 1sat/vb.

That's why I usually pay a fraction more than 1 sat/vbyte. 1.1 would have been enough to confirm a day and a half ago.

I don't know why I didn't think of this. Feeling kinda more retarded than usual ATM. Thanks for the great tip, brother.

This gives your transaction higher priority than all the 1 sat/vbyte transactions, which helps when someone dumps 70 MB at 1 sat/vbyte into mempool.

[NotATether]

Bump! Fees are low again

I'm pretty sure these periods of low fees immediately follow a couple blocks of fairly high (think of a local maximum on a graph) fees, no? It makes sense if you factor in the panic selling that happened a few weeks ago.

[bitmover]

I saw something interesting today that made me remember this topic

Ledger live implemented coin control, which is an amazing feature btw.

They added a button to minimize future fees,  merging coins. Which is exactly what LoyceV is proposing here:

Minimize future fees (merge coins): the strategy spends the maximum number of inputs so that a potential price rise does not make smaller coins economically unspendable. Indeed, if the price of a crypto asset increases too much, smaller coins may be worth less than the cost of the network fees to spend them.

https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015996580-Using-Coin-control?docs=true

Ledger live is the native Ledger wallet software

[LoyceV]

Ledger live implemented coin control, which is an amazing feature btw.

It took them long enough

They added a button to minimize future fees

What if a clueless user clicks "minimize future fees" when fees are high? They'll pay much more in fees than necessary, and in the future fees could very well be lower again. If the only logic they apply is "spends the maximum number of inputs", you'll end up with only one input (and less privacy).

https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015996580-Using-Coin-control?docs=true

I'd say their "optional" unticking of inputs is crucial when your wallet selects all inputs at once:

7. (optional) Untick the checkboxes of the coins you don't want to include in the selection.

[P2PECS]

I saw something interesting today that made me remember this topic

Ledger live implemented coin control, which is an amazing feature btw.

I'm glad for your excitement but Ledger Live implemented coin control two years ago.

Coin Control, Now Available in Ledger Live.

[bitmover]

They added a button to minimize future fees

What if a clueless user clicks "minimize future fees" when fees are high? They'll pay much more in fees than necessary, and in the future fees could very well be lower again. If the only logic they apply is "spends the maximum number of inputs", you'll end up with only one input (and less privacy).

The idea to minimize future fees is only good if he can dow ith 1 sat/vbyte..

Certainly that is a design problem if the only objective is to reduce future fees.

[Ledger Live implemented coin control two years ago.

Coin Control, Now Available in Ledger Live.

Two years and they still have a problem that took just a few minutes to identify

If the fees are high and the user clicks "miniseries fees in future" he will end up paying more than spending over time.

[Poker Player]

Lol.

Pretty crazy what's happening this weekend, no?

I guess you guys are more used to it but to go to send a transaction and see that it is confirmed in the next block with the minimum fee is awesome. It's the same all weekend, the mempool is empty. I don't know if this has any counterpart but I certainly prefer this than to send transactions with an average fee and see that it remains stuck in the mempool for days because it is overcongested.

[LoyceV]

I guess you guys are more used to it

It's been like this for quite a while, not only during the weekend but also on week days. Check Johoe's site per week, month, quarter or year: except for the occasional peak in transaction fees, it always drop back to the minimum. Much better than late 2017, early 2018, when fees reached 1000 sat/byte for weeks in a row (and which was the reason for me to create this topic).

to go to send a transaction and see that it is confirmed in the next block with the minimum fee is awesome

Agreed

[NeuroticFish]

Pretty crazy what's happening this weekend, no?

Actually it happens early in the (European) mornings too, during the week, and rather often.
For now all is nice. The "madness" will start when the price will jump fast again.

[LoyceV]

Someone dumped 150 vMB into the mempool. So far, it's not really getting less, so 1 sat/vbyte confirmations may very well be gone until (after) the weekend.

(source)

[Poker Player]

I have a question because yesterday I sent a transaction with the minimum fee, when the mempool was almost empty, with about 1,500 pending transactions. The next block took more than half an hour to confirm and by then there were more than 5,000 transactions almost all with a higher fee than the minimum, but what was my surprise when my transaction was confirmed in the next block. In other words, mine was confirmed at the minimum rate and there were about two thousand at a higher rate that were not confirmed.

Does anyone know why this happened? As far as I know, miners give priority to transactions with higher fees, but sometimes they may be interested in confirming transactions with lower fees, for example if the miner himself has sent a lot of transactions with the minimum fee to consolidate.

But in my case I can't explain why it happened. Was it by mistake?

[nc50lc]

Does anyone know why this happened? As far as I know, miners give priority to transactions with higher fees, but sometimes they may be interested in confirming transactions with lower fees, for example if the miner himself has sent a lot of transactions with the minimum fee to consolidate.

Most pools query for getblocktemplate RPC every few seconds/minutes to get the transactions with highest fee rate.
The gap of each RPC call depends on the pool/solo miner's set-up.
Maybe the miner of that block still haven't refreshed their block template at that time and still had your transaction in the block that they're currently mining.

The second part "they also have low txfee txns" isn't probable since they can easily manually add their own low-fee transactions if they want to.
They don't have to globally accept low fee transactions to include theirs.

[LoyceV]

there were more than 5,000 transactions almost all with a higher fee than the minimum, but what was my surprise when my transaction was confirmed in the next block. In other words, mine was confirmed at the minimum rate and there were about two thousand at a higher rate that were not confirmed.

It can be anyting: inaccuracies in the mempool explorer you're using (I noticed Electrum is usually too pessimistic in it's estimate how far you are from the top), or maybe the mining pool didn't think the difference is worth updating their block.

[LoyceV]

Earlier today, I was looking at a wall of transactions:

(source)

This wall used 3 sat/vbyte, so I used 3.1 sat/vbyte to get my transaction confirmed in the next block.
Soon, fees should be lower again, and 1 sat/vbyte should be enough to consolidate small inputs again this weekend.

[NeuroticFish]

The mempool is already empty again.

There may be some delays since the last blocks were a bit fast (8 in an hour instead of the expected 6), but if one is not in a big hurry it's clearly a good moment for consolidating the inputs at 1 sat/vByte; as it's week-end, such transactions should be confirmed before tomorrow morning.

[hopenotlate]

Soon, fees should be lower again, and 1 sat/vbyte should be enough to consolidate small inputs again this weekend.

Sorry for noobish question but I have limited technical knowledge :
how can one knows if Btc they hold are splitted into many small inputs?
I mean I use to pay attention at the balance of my wallets but cannot see further.
Also, in case my Btc holdings are fractioned in thousands of inputs and I send my whole wallet balance to another addy of mine am I not consolidating it into one?