Bitcoin transaction fees (in sats/kb). Sunday, Saturday are best to move BTC

[fentanyl08]

My transaction is stuck since last 12 hours even though I sent at 17 sat/byte fee. https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/4fbf4240b65fe6c371a0eaf615aa0caaae95245c1c4e5b35d83d4a66da47c984

Edit: It just got through.

[tranthidung]

It's weekend and today is Sunday that usually gives you opportunities to move your bitcoin at lower fee rate.

There is less than 2.6 MB in mempool and you have probability to get confirmation for your transaction within next 3 to 6 block with fee rate at 1 sat/vbyte. To make sure if you are in hurry, you can choose the fee rate at 2 - 3  sat/vbyte. If you are not in a hurry, there is chances for 1 sat/vbyte.

In the next days till the end of December, you will probably see wild movements of bitcoin so make sure to take advantage of low fee rates today.

[Findingnemo]

It's weekend and today is Sunday that usually gives you opportunities to move your bitcoin at lower fee rate.

For anyone who wants to know the real time recommended fee can use this site : https://mempool.space/

which gets updated in real time and also I am personally using this in the recent times to find exact recommended fee which is mostly inaccurate on lot of reputed fee calculating websites.

[tranthidung]

For anyone who wants to know the real time recommended fee can use this site : https://mempool.space/

which gets updated in real time and also I am personally using this in the recent times to find exact recommended fee which is mostly inaccurate on lot of reputed fee calculating websites.

I would like to recommend jochen-hoenicke.de that I mentioned here many times. With that site, you can have three different chats for Mempool: Unconfirmed transaction counts, Pending transaction fee in BTC, Mempool size in MB.

Honestly, I usually check the third chart at bottom (Mempool size in MB) but there is more convenience if you want to get more details with 2 other charts.

Another plus point of that site compares to mempool.space is the color scheme used for fee rate bands are very well-designed. It ranges from cold colors (represent low fee rates) to hot colors (represent high fee rates). The color schemed for rate bands on mempool.space is weird and I am not like it. It is mixed from hot (at low fee rate), to cold (average fee rate) and back to hot (high fee rate).

[Findingnemo]

For anyone who wants to know the real time recommended fee can use this site : https://mempool.space/

which gets updated in real time and also I am personally using this in the recent times to find exact recommended fee which is mostly inaccurate on lot of reputed fee calculating websites.

I would like to recommend jochen-hoenicke.de that I mentioned here many times. With that site, you can have three different chats for Mempool: Unconfirmed transaction counts, Pending transaction fee in BTC, Mempool size in MB.

Honestly, I usually check the third chart at bottom (Mempool size in MB) but there is more convenience if you want to get more details with 2 other charts.

Another plus point of that site compares to mempool.space is the color scheme used for fee rate bands are very well-designed. It ranges from cold colors (represent low fee rates) to hot colors (represent high fee rates). The color schemed for rate bands on mempool.space is weird and I am not like it. It is mixed from hot (at low fee rate), to cold (average fee rate) and back to hot (high fee rate).

Of course from the site you mentioned we can get clear insight of Mempool however for a normal joe it maybe hard for to understand when they visit from smaller screen devices that is why I mentioned some good alternative which atleast shows up high, medium, low priority required fee with block sizes and fees so it maybe allow us to choose the right fee even when we are not in front of our PC.

[tranthidung]

Of course from the site you mentioned we can get clear insight of Mempool however for a normal joe it maybe hard for to understand when they visit from smaller screen devices that is why I mentioned some good alternative which atleast shows up high, medium, low priority required fee with block sizes and fees so it maybe allow us to choose the right fee even when we are not in front of our PC.

As a crypto investor, a computer is a must equipment with which you will have a better screen than mobile.

If you only use mobile (Android), an alternative is Electrum wallet. You can get the fee rate from mempool with fee estimation (click on Send, tap on the Star icon). There are 3 options for the fee estimation: ETA, Mempool and Static. You have to choose Mempool. Then, scroll the bar to change target from 0.1 MB from tip to 10 MB from tip and which each level, you will see a different fee rate (sat/byte).

From a few times I observe it, it gives correct fee rate (you can double check with jochen-hoenick.de site.
If you are cautious of loss if you store your bitcoin on mobile, simply create a test wallet and don't store any bitcoin inside. Use the test wallet to get fee rates.

[Findingnemo]

As a crypto investor, a computer is a must equipment with which you will have a better screen than mobile.

If you only use mobile (Android), an alternative is Electrum wallet. You can get the fee rate from mempool with fee estimation (click on Send, tap on the Star icon). There are 3 options for the fee estimation: ETA, Mempool and Static. You have to choose Mempool. Then, scroll the bar to change target from 0.1 MB from tip to 10 MB from tip and which each level, you will see a different fee rate (sat/byte).

From a few times I observe it, it gives correct fee rate (you can double check with jochen-hoenick.de site.
If you are cautious of loss if you store your bitcoin on mobile, simply create a test wallet and don't store any bitcoin inside. Use the test wallet to get fee rates.

A pc or laptop is must required equipment for sure when they want to become a crypto investor but we can't expect everyone to hold on such device where every they go. There are people who always in travel so they keep in touch with their smartphone for most of their crypto related works.

Electrum is good wallet to find and set the required fee with many features as you stated but they are not accurate all the times which I experienced it personally. Many times I end up paying more fee than what is actually needed for my transaction to get included in the next block that is why I moved to mempool analyzer even when making transactions from my smartphone as well.

[tranthidung]

A pc or laptop is must required equipment for sure when they want to become a crypto investor but we can't expect everyone to hold on such device where every they go. There are people who always in travel so they keep in touch with their smartphone for most of their crypto related works.

True.

Electrum is good wallet to find and set the required fee with many features as you stated but they are not accurate all the times which I experienced it personally. Many times I end up paying more fee than what is actually needed for my transaction to get included in the next block that is why I moved to mempool analyzer even when making transactions from my smartphone as well.

I don't know what caused your problem with inaccuracy from fee rate estimate in Electrum (wallet for Android). As I emphasized, make sure you choose the Mempool option for your mobile wallet. Default, the wallet is use ETA for fee estimation that often gives you over killing fee. Is it the option you have on your mobile wallet?

[fentanyl08]

My transaction https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/d19e3452d7695d49eaf4aeae3bb65c7412770ee6b1ffdf583d21fb8d541b7da7 is stuck since 2 days even though I sent with 17 sat/byte fee

[tranthidung]

My transaction ...... is stuck since 2 days even though I sent with 17 sat/byte fee

It will be stucked for a while. As of writing, from the tip of mempool to the fee rate you used, total size is about 51 MB. If you are lucky, that transaction will be confirmed in the coming weekend. If you are unlucky, you will have to wait till the next weekend. The second scenario is what I guess you will have.

• Good thing: the fee rate is high enough to help your transaction get confirmation after a while of waiting.
• Bad thing: it is marked as NO Replace-by-Fee so that you can not boost the transaction (if you sudden are hurry).
• Lesson from it: Try to use a non-custodial wallet and turn on the RBF option. It helps you to replace and boost your transaction with higher fee

[Findingnemo]

I don't know what caused your problem with inaccuracy from fee rate estimate in Electrum (wallet for Android). As I emphasized, make sure you choose the Mempool option for your mobile wallet. Default, the wallet is use ETA for fee estimation that often gives you over killing fee. Is it the option you have on your mobile wallet?

Yes I had been using the default one which is ETA, is the only thing giving inaccurate calculation? But I am not sure about it.

Since when I found they are giving over killing fee, I moved to the website which I mentioned and it is easier for me to set the required fee using static feature which is the second one after ETA guess. Mostly I won't make any transaction when the network is congested so static works fine for me.

[tranthidung]

Yes I had been using the default one which is ETA, is the only thing giving inaccurate calculation? But I am not sure about it.

Since when I found they are giving over killing fee, I moved to the website which I mentioned and it is easier for me to set the required fee using static feature which is the second one after ETA guess. Mostly I won't make any transaction when the network is congested so static works fine for me.

It is your problem, as said.

ETA method gives you the estimate fee that your transaction will probably be confirmed within X blocks. Default, X is 5 blocks. You can change the X parameter by slip the bar through 5 values: 25, 10, 5, 2, and 1 block(s).

If you look at the mempool with https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,24h or see screenshot above. When mempool is flat between fee rates, ETA will give you over killing fee. It gives you acceptable fee rate if mempool is stucked.

[Findingnemo]

^Yup, using ETA was the problem I guess so fellas can use Mempool option and move the bar to your desired state. Maybe we can see Mempool size getting decrease a bit so this weekend maybe the best time for anyone to move funds because again the coming monday we can see huge traffic in the mempool again either if there is surge or dump in bitcoin's price

[fentanyl08]

My transaction ...... is stuck since 2 days even though I sent with 17 sat/byte fee

It will be stucked for a while. As of writing, from the tip of mempool to the fee rate you used, total size is about 51 MB. If you are lucky, that transaction will be confirmed in the coming weekend. If you are unlucky, you will have to wait till the next weekend. The second scenario is what I guess you will have.

• Good thing: the fee rate is high enough to help your transaction get confirmation after a while of waiting.
• Bad thing: it is marked as NO Replace-by-Fee so that you can not boost the transaction (if you sudden are hurry).
• Lesson from it: Try to use a non-custodial wallet and turn on the RBF option. It helps you to replace and boost your transaction with higher fee

Thanks for detailed response. Now the size for my fee rate is 24 MB. Is there a chance it would be confirmed this weekend?

[ranochigo]

Thanks for detailed response. Now the size for my fee rate is 24 MB. Is there a chance it would be confirmed this weekend?

It has decreased to about 15MB right now. If the mempool continues to clear at this rate [1], your transaction has a fairly decent chance of confirming within a few days. That is, unless the price of Bitcoin changes drastically and more people starts to sell again.


[1] https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,24h

[fentanyl08]

Thanks for detailed response. Now the size for my fee rate is 24 MB. Is there a chance it would be confirmed this weekend?

It has decreased to about 15MB right now. If the mempool continues to clear at this rate [1], your transaction has a fairly decent chance of confirming within a few days. That is, unless the price of Bitcoin changes drastically and more people starts to sell again.


[1] https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,24h

It was finally confirmed. For future reference, how much size is safe to get transaction confirmed within a few hours?

[tranthidung]

It was finally confirmed. For future reference, how much size is safe to get transaction confirmed within a few hours?

No one can give you an exact answers for all situations. it depends on mempool conditions that changes very fastly.

Check mempool condition there: jochen-hoenicke.de
One hour means about 6 blocks and with that third chart, one block takes 1 MB (maximum from tip of the mempool). So one waiting hour will be roughtly 6 MB from tip of the mempool. It is applied for constant condition of the mempool. In reality, it is changing and what you can get is an estimation only.

As said, because of uncertainty of mempool, you always have to prepare for bad situations by turn on the RBF -- Replace-by-Fee for your transactions.
As of writing, 10:20 PM UTC time, 6 MB from tip of the mempool will be for the rate of 5 sat/ byte but not all waiting transactions at 5 sat/ vbyte will be confirmed all after next 6 blocks (even if mempool stays flat next one hour). Total size of waiting transactions with 5⁺ sat / vbyte is 8.615 MB.

[tranthidung]

Weekend and also holidays. You have chances to enjoy lower fees.

As of writing, you can get a confirmation in next 1 block if you use a fee rate at 3 satoshi/ (v)byte for your transaction. Total size of mempool from the tip to 3 sat/ (v)byte is less than 1 MB.

If you are not in a hurry, wait for a few hours till around next 24 hours (or a bit longer), I think your transactions will get confirmations even at the fee rate of 1 sat/(v)byte. Check the mempool at https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,24h

Happy holidays, everyone!

Edit for this small analysis.

I played with the data set today and I can confirm it.

• Each day, hours from 13 UTC to 22 UTC is the most terrible period to move bitcoin. Because its median of hourly fees are higher than median of all-24-hours each day from 2.4% to 33.9%. The rise begin since 12 UTC time.
• Each day, hours from 23 UTC to 7 UTC time are best to move bitcoin with cheapest fee.

Methodology:

• median_day: the median of transaction fee for all 24 hours every day.
• median_hrdate: the median of specific hour within each day
• diffpc = (median_hrdate - median_day)/median_day*100
  

Raw data

Code:

     +-----------------------+
     | rank   hr      diffpc |
     |-----------------------|
  1. |    1   13    33.91756 |
  2. |    2   14    26.39759 |
  3. |    3   16    24.86809 |
  4. |    4   15    22.69867 |
  5. |    5   18    22.69101 |
  6. |    6   17    20.83675 |
  7. |    7   19     17.3279 |
  8. |    8   20    17.23884 |
  9. |    9   21    3.767935 |
 10. |   10   22     2.36229 |
 11. |   11   12    .7935516 |
 12. |   12   10    -1.17058 |
 13. |   13    2   -2.019091 |
 14. |   14   11   -3.211063 |
 15. |   15    8   -4.933663 |
 16. |   16    9   -5.961604 |
 17. |   17    0   -9.296452 |
 18. |   18   23   -9.901987 |
 19. |   19    6   -10.01764 |
 20. |   20    7   -11.85577 |
 21. |   21    4   -11.99892 |
 22. |   22    3   -12.54986 |
 23. |   23    1   -13.05078 |
 24. |   24    5   -18.52437 |
     +-----------------------+

This part is for hourly fee, but for all days in this year.

Code:

Summary for variables: feeperkb
     by categories of: hr 

      hr |         N      mean        sd       p50       p25       p75       min       max
---------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
       0 |    2140.0   34366.3   35900.9   20389.1   10648.9   47919.9       0.0  257092.0
       1 |    2169.0   31738.9   32021.4   20497.5   11595.8   40873.2       0.0  256272.0
       2 |    2144.0   35262.7   33591.5   23386.6   13155.4   47311.4       0.0  275091.0
       3 |    2218.0   30540.3   30137.1   20669.0   11934.7   37680.5       0.0  280884.0
       4 |    2139.0   30864.3   29414.5   20457.0   11769.6   40051.0       0.0  246312.0
       5 |    2216.0   28780.9   27879.6   18980.7   11589.5   34882.8       0.0  303836.0
       6 |    2097.0   31120.2   31085.3   20046.8   11515.5   39140.0       0.0  246045.0
       7 |    2162.0   31728.8   30206.8   21364.8   12235.8   42497.0       0.0  247493.0
       8 |    2184.0   34858.9   34490.9   21743.5   12173.4   46857.6       0.0  249996.0
       9 |    2139.0   35982.9   34497.9   23887.9   12465.2   49436.6       0.0  232711.0
      10 |    2150.0   36605.6   35136.4   23973.3   12366.2   49729.1       0.0  260038.0
      11 |    2175.0   37262.3   35684.8   24664.1   12595.9   50795.9       0.0  250145.0
      12 |    2146.0   40706.9   37370.8   28833.1   13489.4   56808.6       0.0  266947.0
      13 |    2180.0   52372.6   42798.4   41836.3   19332.3   74290.4       0.0  340589.0
      14 |    2132.0   47275.3   41043.6   34309.0   17192.5   67794.1       0.0  342649.0
      15 |    2192.0   46111.7   39591.8   33790.2   16981.5   65084.8       0.0  279020.0
      16 |    2183.0   48142.2   41745.7   33990.4   16798.3   70057.9       0.0  295485.0
      17 |    2236.0   48759.5   43286.3   35645.0   16962.7   70143.3       0.0  309492.0
      18 |    2170.0   47029.4   42725.5   32838.4   16265.4   67715.8       0.0  289470.0
      19 |    2152.0   47406.2   43053.2   33724.3   15503.6   67292.0       0.0  272109.0
      20 |    2185.0   45984.9   42112.1   31402.0   14616.1   66583.9       0.0  279584.0
      21 |    2270.0   41938.1   39354.7   27447.0   12973.7   62083.4       0.0  307249.0
      22 |    2181.0   41181.6   39385.3   27091.4   12695.9   57919.7       0.0  253167.0
      23 |    2183.0   35448.4   35125.8   22265.8   11282.7   49712.4       0.0  252706.0
---------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Total |   52143.0   39251.6   37543.7   25619.8   13231.9   55277.9       0.0  342649.0
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[tranthidung]

Today, I give you the update for difference between weekly median of transaction fee and the daily median of intraday transactions.

For the daily median, I run it for days of week: Monday - Sunday.

Then, I calculate the difference (in percent). All results below are for difference (%)

This new analytical method excludes the short- or mid-term effects of bitcoin rises / falls that in turn potentially increase bitcoin transaction fees within a few days, few weeks.

Box plot

• The median values are vertical lines inside boxes (for each Days of week)
• Only 3 days have medians below 0: Monday, Saturday, and Sunday.
• It is a confirmation for weekend effects and the appearance of Monday with negative value somewhat shows the market need Monday to warm up for rest days of week
• With working days: Tuesday to Friday, the highest median is on Thursdays.

Bar chart

• Values in bar chart are means.
• Only 2 weekend days have negative values: Saturday (- 3.01%) and Sunday (- 7.9%).
• Monday is slightly above 0, at 0.13 %.
• The peak is still on Thursday at 6.85%

I did not (but I might) censor data set to recent years as I believe results will be almost the same.

You can combine this update with the hourly analysis above and make weekly, hourly plans for your bitcoin transactions.

Raw results

Code:

Summary for variables: diff_pc
     by categories of: dofw 

     dofw |         N      mean        sd       p50       p25       p75       min       max
----------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Sunday |     507.0      -7.9      18.7      -5.4     -15.7      -0.3    -100.0     120.9
   Monday |     507.0       0.1      15.7      -0.7      -5.4       5.1     -98.1     131.4
  Tuesday |     507.0       5.1      21.6       1.6      -3.3       8.5    -100.0     255.9
Wednesday |     508.0       6.5      22.3       2.4      -2.4      10.3     -51.0     231.0
 Thursday |     508.0       6.8      19.1       2.8      -1.6       9.7    -100.0     178.5
   Friday |     507.0       5.1      18.6       1.8      -2.5       9.3    -100.0     162.3
 Saturday |     507.0      -3.0      19.3      -2.1     -10.5       3.2    -100.0     130.3
----------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Total |    3551.0       1.8      20.1       0.2      -5.3       6.4    -100.0     255.9
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[fentanyl08]

Network is so congested right now 80 sat/byte + fees. How long till it gets back to normal???