How on earth did I incur such high transaction fees?

[pawanjain]

That's really a sad thing that you have paid more amount of fees than the actual transaction amount itself. There is only one reason which I think of about the insanely high fees you just paid.
It can be the outdated version of Electrum which caused a wrong estimation of fees and made you pay high fees. It's better to keep the wallet up to date so that it is secure from bugs and well maintained. You could also use the manual fees option in Electrum but be sure to check the mem pool and provide an optimum fees  before making any transactions.

[stevegee58]

Thanks for the above info. It seems that you use the terms "block" and "confirmation" interchangeably. Am I right to assume that the first confirmation is the first block (whatever that means)?

Miners mine blocks.  Blocks contain the transaction records.  To include your transaction in a block you have to include a fee that will "bribe" the miners to include *your* transaction instead of someone else's.  So block and confirmation are different things.  Confirmation is when your transaction is included in at least 1 block.

As I do not know how to interpret the chart in bitcoinfees.earn.com, I would like to ask a little bit of help from you.

Suppose I wish to send 0.004 BTC which consists of 258 bytes. There is only one input and 2 outputs.

Based on today's market rates, what is the minimum sat/byte that will see my transaction go through within 10 minutes?

I wish I could attach a screenshot to make this easier to explain.  But anyway look at the first 2 lines in the table.  The first line says "1-10" on the left.  On the right it shows a corresponding delay of 0-2 blocks.  So time-wise that's 0-about 20 minutes.  So if you pay a fee in the range of 1-10 sat/byte you'll be included in the next block.

Using 4 sat/byte like I did:
258 bytes * 4 sat = 1032 sat = 0.00001032 BTC

If you use replace-by-fee transaction and you don't get into the next block you can goose up the fee for the transaction to get it unstuck.  Electrum will let you do replace by fee.  Also, you don't have to let Electrum set the fee for you.  You can override it and fill in your own fee based on the analysis I just showed you.

[tUnes3]

Miners mine blocks.  Blocks contain the transaction records.  To include your transaction in a block you have to include a fee that will "bribe" the miners to include *your* transaction instead of someone else's.  So block and confirmation are different things.  Confirmation is when your transaction is included in at least 1 block.

Thanks for your explanation. It is all clear to me now.

I wish I could attach a screenshot to make this easier to explain.  But anyway look at the first 2 lines in the table.  The first line says "1-10" on the left.  On the right it shows a corresponding delay of 0-2 blocks.  So time-wise that's 0-about 20 minutes.  So if you pay a fee in the range of 1-10 sat/byte you'll be included in the next block.

Using 4 sat/byte like I did:
258 bytes * 4 sat = 1032 sat = 0.00001032 BTC

If you use replace-by-fee transaction and you don't get into the next block you can goose up the fee for the transaction to get it unstuck.  Electrum will let you do replace by fee.  Also, you don't have to let Electrum set the fee for you.  You can override it and fill in your own fee based on the analysis I just showed you.

I attach two screenshots of the page from bitcoinfees.earn.com:

http://i64.tinypic.com/24nhfyc.png

http://i65.tinypic.com/208yxdd.png

Let us have a look at the first screenshot and please point out to me if my interpretations are wrong:

1. If my transaction fee is 0 sat/byte, I can expect a delay of 58 blocks (or about 420 minutes). What does "Inf" (the word in brown colour) mean?
2. If my transaction fee is 25 sat/byte, the first block is expected to be confirmed within 30 minutes.

Let us have a look at the second screenshot:

It states: "The fastest and cheapest transaction is currently 40 satoshis/byte, shown in green at the top."

But if you look at the first screenshot closely, a transaction fee of between 21 and 30 sat/byte produces the same result as a transaction fee of 40 sat/byte. Am I right?

[moejoejay]

it a little bit old thread

but may this calculator site is good for beginners which dont want to get deeper in.

https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/fee-calculator/

best regards