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

[logfiles]

I was surprised how quickly it cleared, as if there's one spammer behind it who just passed pause for 2 days.

Honestly, it's been a while since I last so 2 sat/vByte transaction getting confirmed and the mempool down to just around 40K unconfirmed transactions. 300K unconfirmed transactions had become the new normal 

Are the ordinal chaps finally getting bored?

And I was surprised how quickly the fee increased again.

You mean this moment?

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[Little Mouse]

Honestly, it's been a while since I last so 2 sat/vByte transaction getting confirmed and the mempool down to just around 40K unconfirmed transactions. 300K unconfirmed transactions had become the new normal 

Mempool is getting clear, it has only 30k pending txs. I can't remember when I last time see such low pending txs.

You mean this moment?

Yeah, that was the sudden bump I saw yesterday.

[NotATether]

You mean this moment?

Yeah, that was the sudden bump I saw yesterday.

I'm pretty sure it's gotta be some exchange which has software running that got triggered when fees were this low, because it kept dumping its transactions for a very short period of time.

I have to say though, I am quite surprised the miners ate those transactions very quickly. Normally something like this would bog the mempool down for a whole day.

[stompix]

And I was surprised how quickly the fee increased again.

It's not just dumps of TX, we had two weird lock times yesterday:

Block 810326 was mined 1 hour and 9 minutes after the previous
https://mempool.space/block/00000000000000000001e6e02dcc15eaf643c126bc50d9f76320ebd9e8104c99
fees jumped from 7 to 40.

Previously block 810307 had a 50 minute delay:
https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000027d7f4259586a846e9c0608901fff17ca036709d5efb4
fees jumped from 2 to 26

You can actually see them even in the 24-hour graph in the mempool buildup when there is a continuous climb with no drops

[LoyceV]

Block 810326 was mined 1 hour and 9 minutes after the previous

I must say this is a very annoying "feature" of Bitcoin when you're waiting for a confirmation. It took many hours after this to find consecutive blocks fast enough to confirm my transaction.

[logfiles]

It's not just dumps of TX, we had two weird lock times yesterday:

Block 810326 was mined 1 hour and 9 minutes after the previous
https://mempool.space/block/00000000000000000001e6e02dcc15eaf643c126bc50d9f76320ebd9e8104c99
fees jumped from 7 to 40.

Previously block 810307 had a 50 minute delay:
https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000027d7f4259586a846e9c0608901fff17ca036709d5efb4
fees jumped from 2 to 26

You can actually see them even in the 24-hour graph in the mempool buildup when there is a continuous climb with no drops

I guess this was shortly before the difficulty adjustment, right?

Right after the difficulty adjustment... Blocks are getting confirmed much faster. We are already seeing mined blocks having 1 sat/vByte transactions. In fact, we are already 8 blocks ahead of the expected 34 as of now.

I think we shall soon see a close to complete mempool clean up

[philipma1957]

It's not just dumps of TX, we had two weird lock times yesterday:

Block 810326 was mined 1 hour and 9 minutes after the previous
https://mempool.space/block/00000000000000000001e6e02dcc15eaf643c126bc50d9f76320ebd9e8104c99
fees jumped from 7 to 40.

Previously block 810307 had a 50 minute delay:
https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000027d7f4259586a846e9c0608901fff17ca036709d5efb4
fees jumped from 2 to 26

You can actually see them even in the 24-hour graph in the mempool buildup when there is a continuous climb with no drops

I guess this was shortly before the difficulty adjustment, right?

Right after the difficulty adjustment... Blocks are getting confirmed much faster. We are already seeing mined blocks having 1 sat/vByte transactions. In fact, we are already 8 blocks ahead of the expected 34 as of now.

I think we shall soon see a close to complete mempool clean up

and since you said that we went in the wrong direction. Still if you do 9 sats you should be okay. But 2-4 not so much. It is way better than doing 25 or 35 sats.

[LoyceV]

and since you said that we went in the wrong direction. Still if you do 9 sats you should be okay. But 2-4 not so much. It is way better than doing 25 or 35 sats.

I guess many people have been waiting to consolidate their inputs. In just 2 hours, 30 vMB was added at 1 sat/vbyte. Or maybe 1.1 sat, I can't see that. Since then, fees go up once in a while, but drop back into the minimum all the time. I think 1.1 (or 1.9?) sat/vbyte is quite likely to get confirmed today.

[Pmalek]

The mempools are looking much better indeed. I have been waiting for the perfect opportunity to consolidate many old inputs that are scattered around everywhere. I missed the 1-2 sat/vByte train today and won't be around to keep an eye on the mempools a lot until the weekend. Hopefully it will get even better by then, like in the good old days when the weekends symbolized a calm before the storm.

[philipma1957]

Yeah it leveled up ⬆️ today. Will I got my stuff all tightened up 🆙.

I will be looking for them to drop this weekend.

[LoyceV]

Bitcoin Core is still as pessimistic as always. In the past 24 hours, transactions under 2 sat/vbyte got confirmed several times. Meanwhile, Bitcoin Core recommends more than 15 sat/vbyte for a confirmation within 24 hours! For 2 hours they recommend more than 23 sat/vbyte, and only for a 3 day target they recommend slightly less than 2 sat/vbyte.
Since Bitcoin Core is the basis of many wallets, it's no surprise fees quickly went up "into the green" many times in the past 24 hours.

Electrum gives similarly high recommendations when selecting "ETA", but when you choose "Mempool", it's the opposite: it shows 1 sat/vbyte is enough to be "5.0 MB from tip". That looks like a bug, there's 60 MB waiting at 1-2 sat/vbyte, and 5 MB from the tip will only throw you in that large pool. 1.1 sat might be enough, but it's hard to tell.

Either way, be smart about fees

[albert0bsd]

There is a big problem with all those fee estimators. Also we aren't talking of all those transactions that do RFB each 10 or 30 seconds of difference, they bump the fee +50 or +100 sat/vB.

Can you believe that? I write a post about it.
Some business/developers misunderstand how bitcoin fees works

[philipma1957]

Bitcoin Core is still as pessimistic as always. In the past 24 hours, transactions under 2 sat/vbyte got confirmed several times. Meanwhile, Bitcoin Core recommends more than 15 sat/vbyte for a confirmation within 24 hours! For 2 hours they recommend more than 23 sat/vbyte, and only for a 3 day target they recommend slightly less than 2 sat/vbyte.
Since Bitcoin Core is the basis of many wallets, it's no surprise fees quickly went up "into the green" many times in the past 24 hours.

Electrum gives similarly high recommendations when selecting "ETA", but when you choose "Mempool", it's the opposite: it shows 1 sat/vbyte is enough to be "5.0 MB from tip". That looks like a bug, there's 60 MB waiting at 1-2 sat/vbyte, and 5 MB from the tip will only throw you in that large pool. 1.1 sat might be enough, but it's hard to tell.

Either way, be smart about fees

one of the problems is viabtc.com altered the free boost it used to be if you paid at least 11 sats a byte  it would do any size transaction.

now no matter what you pay per byte the limit size trans action is 500 bytes.  these are very small size so there are now always a lot of free accelerations available from them but very few people have a tiny enough tx to use the free one.

I was able this weekend to consolidate all my ex's I had a lot if I used trezor's economic number it would have been 13 sats a byte cost would have been 20 bucks

normal cost they wanted 18 sats a byte about 35 usd in fees

high number they wanted 24 sats a byte about 50 usd in fees

I did 6 to 9 sats custom and paid about 11 bucks.


Since I know I can't uses viabtc for free due to size of the tx I went under 10 sats and did the 6-9 sat range.  Trezor allows fee boost if needed so going to 6-9 was enough savings for me.

Now all my accounts are only 1 per tx if I do a send.  So if we go nuts and reach 100 sats I could do an 11 sat send and use the free viabtc due to the tx being 227 bytes.  So all in all it was a good weekend .  all thanks to

https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,2w,fee.     I should toss him a small donation as he saved me money

he has a donation address on the link above.

[LoyceV]

Now's the time

[Poker Player]

I guess this will have come up in the thread sometime, but I don't know on which page if at all. How would you define "small input"? I mean in my particular case I was thinking about consolidating now that I see the fees going down but what I have are mostly inputs of about $100 or higher amounts, which in the next cycle can easily be worth $500. On the other hand I rarely spend Bitcoin to pay for something worth more than $100, and if in the next cycle I hypothetically wanted to pay for something worth $2,000 I guess there won't be much difference between 1 and 4 inputs as far as fees are concerned either, no? How do you see it?

[NeuroticFish]

How do you see it?

Imho it's about how much you would usually spend at once, because you want to have such tx with one input. If you have big enough inputs to choose from, you are fine.
On the other hand, you can consolidate anyway to be on the safe side, to avoid getting too easy small inputs later as change from the 100$ inputs when you spend 95$ of them. (and you spend before they become 500$)
I hope I was clear enough, not sure now how to say it better.

[Poker Player]

Surely you know more about this than I do, but I'm not so sure. Let's imagine I have 50 inputs of $100. If I merge them all into one input I lose privacy, which is one thing that is said in the OP.

Imho it's about how much you would usually spend at once, because you want to have such tx with one input.

So, if I don't usually spend more than $100, I shouldn't worry about it. What I don't know in the future if I could make a larger expenditure all at once.

On the other hand, you can consolidate anyway to be on the safe side, to avoid getting too easy small inputs later as change from the 100$ inputs when you spend 95$ of them. (and you spend before they become 500$)
I hope I was clear enough, not sure now how to say it better.

Well, with coin control and if I had many small change inputs (like $5) I would be more sure to consolidate them, but consolidate preventively is what I am not clear about, see if someone else helps.

[LoyceV]

if in the next cycle I hypothetically wanted to pay for something worth $2,000 I guess there won't be much difference between 1 and 4 inputs as far as fees are concerned either, no? How do you see it?

I wouldn't count in dollars, but in Bitcoins. And I remember the days in 2017 when each (legacy) input added about 1 mBTC to the total fee. No matter what the Bitcoin price is, that's a lot, and 1 or 4 inputs would make a huge difference.

My take: It's a lot like cash money: $5 is convenient to buy a coffee, but it gets annoying already to pay for groceries for the week. Paying with a $10,000 bill would raise questions, and I wouldn't want the barista to know I own those ancient bills. So a bit of everything works for me.

Disclaimer: I've never seen a $10,000 bill. I do own a $10 bill though.

[stompix]

My take: It's a lot like cash money: $5 is convenient to buy a coffee, but it gets annoying already to pay for groceries for the week. Paying with a $10,000 bill would raise questions, and I wouldn't want the barista to know I own those ancient bills. So a bit of everything works for me.

Try getting to Aldi or AH early in a weekend and buy something worth 1Euro with a 500 bill  That's going to be fun!

How would you define "small input"? I mean in my particular case I was thinking about consolidating now that I see the fees going down but what I have are mostly inputs of about $100 or higher amounts, which in the next cycle can easily be worth $500.

It depends a lot on what you're actually doing with your coins!
Are you just hoarding them, then it makes no sense, are you depositing randomly around in batches of $100-200, it makes a tiny bit of sense, are you in my position a week ago with ~20 inputs all in total worth ~$120, what do you think? 
The privacy was probably already blown as I don't have a clue to what most of those transfers have actually been for so, who cares? Just packed them together for cheap and sent them through a mixer to a cold destination as I'm retiring the old one that turned into a mess of tx over the last year.

Seeing LoyceV response above I would think of this in a matter a small shop works, are you selling food and drinks, then change is a must, are you a mid-high tier restaurant, then hoarding 20c and 10c coins is almost useless at today's usual bill so at the end of the day you just throw them in change machine.

[philipma1957]

I guess this will have come up in the thread sometime, but I don't know on which page if at all. How would you define "small input"? I mean in my particular case I was thinking about consolidating now that I see the fees going down but what I have are mostly inputs of about $100 or higher amounts, which in the next cycle can easily be worth $500. On the other hand I rarely spend Bitcoin to pay for something worth more than $100, and if in the next cycle I hypothetically wanted to pay for something worth $2,000 I guess there won't be much difference between 1 and 4 inputs as far as fees are concerned either, no? How do you see it?

right now  2 hodl wallets are at say 0.5 btc each and they are fulling consolidated. Ie their tx size is 227 bytes as they are legacy

So they can be moved to coin base for a sale at 1 sat x 227 bytes. = 0.00000227 btc which is nothing  about 6.3 cents even at 11 sats it is nothing about 70 cents  ... So I hodl them and in 2029 they are worth same .5 btc each but btc is at 1,000,000 and a send at 11 sats a byte is 2497 sats or

$24.97 usd  and the fee is 110 sats a byte which means you need to pay $249.70 to send it

but you could do 11 sats and use viabtc's free service you save 200 plus dollars.  but who cares as the long hodl made you good money.

every example above I consolidated to 227 bytes on a legacy.

Now take my signature address I have not consolidated it and it has 4 tx which is 4 x 110 bytes 440 bytes.and I hodl all my deposits to 2029 that signature address would have 52 a year for

2024
2025
2026
2027
2028
2029 and some of 2023.

easily 300 tx so 300 x 110 = 33000 bytes at 110 a byte = 3630000 sats or a fee over .3 btc

that is a worst case example.