Inputs and Outputs?

[DOGE12321]

I have recently heard from one of my friends that Bitcoin transaction fees can vary due to the number of inputs and outputs...? This is the first time that I am hearing such a thing. My friends attempted to explain the concept behind this, but I am still confused.

I would highly appreciate if one can explain everything about these inputs and outputs in a transaction and how they affect the price.

[1715496848]

1715496848

[1715496848]

1715496848

[1715496848]

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[radjie]

I have recently heard from one of my friends that Bitcoin transaction fees can vary due to the number of inputs and outputs...? This is the first time that I am hearing such a thing. My friends attempted to explain the concept behind this, but I am still confused.

I would highly appreciate if one can explain everything about these inputs and outputs in a transaction and how they affect the price.

Yah it is true it often happens probably with a large price exchange so that the transaction costs come in naikan but when we swap in a small amount of transaction costs it will be the standard thing that I ever experienced.

[d5000]

It's simple and complicated at the same time.

Everytime you receive a transaction, money is added to your balance. Stop, incorrect (or imprecise). What is added is a called "output" with a certain Bitcoin value. This "unspent output" (or UTXO) is the part of the transaction you receive that can be spent by you if you confirm that you have the private key corresponding to your address.

Now: If you receive more than one transaction (what normally should be the case if you are an active user) then you will have several unspent outputs in your wallet.

An example: You received transactions for 0.2, 0.3 and 0.5 BTC. These are the outputs residing in your wallet now.

What happens now if you want to send money to other people?

In the (rare) case the value of your payment is exactly the same one like one of your outputs (in our example, 0.2, 0.3 or 0.5 BTC), your transaction can simply "move" the output to the address you are paying to. It then gets called an "input" of the transaction.

This is the "ideal" case for transactions because then the transaction does not carry that much information (every output has a certain size) and so its size is smaller. You will have to pay only a small transaction fee for it.

But in most cases, one of these two things will happen:

- the payment is larger than one of your outputs. In this case, more than one output will be moved and the transaction will be larger, so you have to pay more fees to get included in a block.
- the payment is smaller than one of your outputs. Then you will move coins from only one output to the address you are paying to, but another input is generated that returns money to your own address. This is called "change". In this case you also must pay more fees because the transaction is bigger.

Conclusion: If you can, you should try to move as less outputs as possible, so you don't have to pay a too large fee.

[Amph]

imputs is how many transaction went in to that address outputs how many went out, the first tell you about the recent transaction, the latter tell you instruction for sending the coins

anyway if this number is high the transaction fee will be higher, in fact if you load a brand new wallet and try to send a transaction after you received only one, you get the lowest fee possible

[Kakmakr]

This is also the reason why people will advise newbies not to collect "dust" from faucets in their main address. These are all those micro payments that will go to one address and this will increase the miners fees, once you try to spend it. The smaller transactions should rather go through off-chain services like Xapo, where they will add up and then be transferred on-chain when enough Satoshi's were collected. ^smile^ < The withdrawal from these services will cancel out all these micro transactions and only 1 on-chain transaction is added to your Bitcoin address. > 

[d5000]

This is also the reason why people will advise newbies not to collect "dust" from faucets in their main address.

Exactly. Now: What to do if you already have the shi.. dust in your wallet, or even a couple of "smaller" inputs that would rise your fee significantly if you use them?

What you can try is:

1) Wait until Friday night (to avoid your transaction getting "forgotten").
2) Move all the dust coins to another (own) address, with a small fee (30-60 satoshi/Byte will almost sure go through, but you can try with less, according to bitcoinfees.21.co today almost all transactions with a fee eventually went through). It is advisable to move all inputs at once and leave no change money left (see my explanation above). So all inputs transform into one output. On Saturday and Sunday, there is a possibility that it will go through because the backlog is much smaller than on weekdays.
3) Wait. If you want, you can play with the ViaBTC Transaction Accelerator, in this case you must pay a fee of at least 0.0001 BTC.