Network fee is killing my small profit

[minersday]

Transaction fees have always been the problem for small scale traders like us. Personally, I stopped due to this huge transaction fees. I realized that almost 50% of my profits were being used for transaction fees. The nature of transaction fees for smaller transactions is one disadvantage making it difficult for some people to adopt to crypto business transactions. 

[tranthidung]

Fee is high for now but as confirmed weekend effects (from institutional effects) the mempool has decreased recent hours ^{check it with the Joehoe site}and I expect to see lower fees and smaller size in mempool tomorrow, about 28 hours from now. Maybe you won't be able to move your bitcoin at 1 satoshi/ byte this Sunday (as previous weekends) but fee will be cheaper tomorrow.

You see, as I expected yesterday:

The mempool is clearer now and as of writing, if you are in hurry, 5 satoshis/ byte to move your bitcoin is enough. I also expect to see the mempool clearer a little more next hours and the cheaper fees around 3 satoshis/byte.

With the network status, I think it takes days to clear up all transactions at 1 sat/ byte so I won't expect to see the cheapest fee soon. Anyway, as always, you have cheaper fees in the weekend, especially on Sunday.

Additionally, to have better overview on the effects, please view the 1-week charts

Source of charts: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,24h

[Little Mouse]

• Where is the place you use to trade? BTC is in your non-custodial wallet or in your account on third-party platform?
• When you moved your btc in your trades?

1. I am from Bangladesh if you mean that. I have BTC in custodial wallet, non custodial wallet both.
2. When I need to move BTC.

^[1] I guess you trade with your trade partners on a third-party platform so that you are not allowed to choose your prefered fees for transactions (most of platforms don't allow customers do so).

Does not matter even if I can choose the fee, for example I have fund in my electrum wallet but now, the fee is so high that if I use my preferred fee, tx will not be confirmed instantly.

^[2]I guess it is yesterday or days before yesterday so you chose wrong days to move your BTC. Fee is high for now but as confirmed weekend effects (from institutional effects) the mempool has decreased recent hours ^{check it with the Joehoe site}and I expect to see lower fees and smaller size in mempool tomorrow, about 28 hours from now. Maybe you won't be able to move your bitcoin at 1 satoshi/ byte this Sunday (as previous weekends) but fee will be cheaper tomorrow.

It does not depend which day it is. When I have buyer, I sell and when someone wants to sell BTC, I have to buy. Most of the times, I buy and sell instantly ad I have community who are in need of BTC always.

[LimLims]

Mate, BDT is the fiat currency of Bangladesh. I used to buy sell BTC locally to make some profit since I have both some buyers and sellers. And there's no way you can get rid of the high fee now. Coinbase is better since they use batch payment now and fee is proportionally low but it's very risky to use coinbase for such trades because source of BTC can be illegal too.

The best way to deal with the current situation is right now to avoid frequent transactions.
I mean you can just hold your money for a longer period of time and gather all your profits together.
When you have a decent amount of BTC stored then only sell it.
Moreover you can also convert the BTC into a stable altcoin and can sell it, the fees i am sure will be comparatively less than that of Bitcoin.
And as far Coinbase is considered i would rather advice to stay away from it. If you can't provide them a Legit way of earning the BTC, they will liquidate your BTC for no reason.

[tranthidung]

I am from Bangladesh if you mean that.

No, I meant you moved your bitcoin from non-custodial wallet or from exchange wallet because it decides whether you will have control on fees.

I have BTC in custodial wallet, non custodial wallet both.

Now, you can move your bitcoin at cheaper fees (see above). Of course, fee will be higher if you use custodial wallet (you mostly are not allowed to customize fee), and cheaper if you can choose your fees in non-custodial wallets (with some delay obviously).

Does not matter even if I can choose the fee, for example I have fund in my electrum wallet but now, the fee is so high that if I use my preferred fee, tx will not be confirmed instantly.

Instantly means your transactions should be confirmed in next one block that in turn put you into a fee race. The race always charges you as highest fees as possible, not cheap for sure.

It does not depend which day it is. When I have buyer, I sell and when someone wants to sell BTC, I have to buy. Most of the times, I buy and sell instantly ad I have community who are in need of BTC always.

See above, instant transactions mean both sellers and buyers have to accept highest fees. Cheaper fees mean a bit of delays. Cheapest fees mean your transactions have probability that won't be confirmed and will be dropped out of mempool. It is safe if you move your bitcoins for yourself (from wallet to wallet, from wallet to exchange, all belong to you).

BUT it is risky for bitcoin tradings: If transaction won't be confirmed and dropped out of mempool, you won't receive bitcoin but the trade partner already receive Bangladesh fiat, example. You won't be able to call him / her back to resend those bitcoin to you. It is kind of unofficial scam or you scam yourself by requiring cheapest fees on tradings.

From my experience, with such tradings, you should deal with partner who is responsible for fees. And fee should be taken into calculation of final income (both BTC and fiat).

[Little Mouse]

Now, you can move your bitcoin at cheaper fees (see above). Of course, fee will be higher if you use custodial wallet (you mostly are not allowed to customize fee), and cheaper if you can choose your fees in non-custodial wallets (with some delay obviously).

Never mind, I would like to share you a secret. When fee is high enough for getting confirmed within 1st block, I think custodial wallets like Coinbase offers the cheapest fee. Because they now do batch payments which give them the chance of saving a lot of fees. As a result, they charge same fee from everyone.
If you simply use 1 input and 2 output in non custodial wallets, I think you will pay much higher than what coinbase charges, the case is true when cheapest and fastest fee is 100 sat+.
I do not accept no confirmation tx and same my clients also does. As a result, we have to use the maximum required fee.

[Yogee]

........
The best way to deal with the current situation is right now to avoid frequent transactions.
I mean you can just hold your money for a longer period of time and gather all your profits together.
When you have a decent amount of BTC stored then only sell it.
Moreover you can also convert the BTC into a stable altcoin and can sell it, the fees i am sure will be comparatively less than that of Bitcoin.
And as far Coinbase is considered i would rather advice to stay away from it. If you can't provide them a Legit way of earning the BTC, they will liquidate your BTC for no reason.

Avoiding frequent transactions is not an option for Little Mouse I believe. He just said in his recent comment that he trades instantly. If someone's selling, he buys and if someone's buying, he sells. In short, he competes with other traders in their local p2p community.

.......
It does not depend which day it is. When I have buyer, I sell and when someone wants to sell BTC, I have to buy. Most of the times, I buy and sell instantly ad I have community who are in need of BTC always.

Is the rate that competitive in your community that you cannot increase your mark up to compensate for the fees?

Since network fee is variable, you can also adjust your rate.
If fees are high, sell higher.
If fees are low, you can choose your normal rate.

[Little Mouse]

Avoiding frequent transactions is not an option for Little Mouse I believe. He just said in his recent comment that he trades instantly. If someone's selling, he buys and if someone's buying, he sells. In short, he competes with other traders in their local p2p community.

Exactly, I am in such a trade system that I can not avoid frequent transactions because the more transactions I can do a day, the more profit I can earn a day. May be LimLims did not get my point.

Is the rate that competitive in your community that you cannot increase your mark up to compensate for the fees?

Since network fee is variable, you can also adjust your rate.
If fees are high, sell higher.
If fees are low, you can choose your normal rate.

I am paying seller the highest rate I think. No other buyer will pay 86 BDT per USD at the moment as far as I know because BTC price has increased. I can decrease buy rate and increase sell rate but that may hamper my community. I want to build strong relationship with all of them so that we can have long term dealings.

[tranthidung]

Never mind, I would like to share you a secret. When fee is high enough for getting confirmed within 1st block, I think custodial wallets like Coinbase offers the cheapest fee. Because they now do batch payments which give them the chance of saving a lot of fees. As a result, they charge same fee from everyone.
If you simply use 1 input and 2 output in non custodial wallets, I think you will pay much higher than what coinbase charges, the case is true when cheapest and fastest fee is 100 sat+.

There is no secret that platforms, not only Coinbase always do batch payments for their customers - that is one of reasons we have waiting time for withdrawals on platforms to get txid - but I don't mind that because fees on platforms are higher (I could be wrong), except if they waive the fees (some casinos do waive the fee, Fortune Jack for now AFAIK).

I don't use Coinbase so that I can not confirm what you said. Honestly I don't know the fee they save from batch payments will be for themselves or will be shared to customers. Yes, it is a secret I've not yet known.

The key point is: choose the day to move your bitcoin, you will have cheapest fees no matter what from where you move them (from Coinbase or from your Electrum wallet).

Bonus:
How do they (platforms) save fee from batch payment?

Doing batch payment, they will save fees from lower size of payments. Let's see the different size of transaction, from 1 input and different output (all are P2PKH), calculations are from the https://coinb.in/#fees

|

No of Outputs

|

Size (bytes)

|

% save in fee

|

|

1

|

192

|

0

|

|

2

|

226

|

41.1

|

|

3

|

260

|

54.9

|

|

4

|

294

|

61.7

|

|

5

|

328

|

65.8

|

|

6

|

362

|

68.6

|

|

7

|

396

|

70.5

|

|

8

|

430

|

72.0

|

|

9

|

464

|

73.1

|

|

10

|

498

|

74.1

|

|

15

|

668

|

76.8

|

|

20

|

838

|

78.2

|

You see: instead of the size at 1920 bytes for 10 differerent payments, with batch payment (10 ouputs) they save about 74% of transaction size that means save ~ 74% of fees.

Code:

. di (1920-498)/1920*100
74.0625

[Oneandpure]

I have started to buy BTC and sell them in a higher price (in BDT). For example, imagine I have purchased $100 worth  of BTC @86BDT per USD and sold them instantly @87BDT per USD. This is a good business even if you take 1BDT per USD profit. I was having some good profits each day.
But now after the fee has increased, it has been impossible to get profit. There's a transaction cost which I can not avoid and it is very high. I trade small amount like $50 even (To make a strong hub). In such cases, I have no profit almost unless I'm dealing $300 or over. That's a pain to pay such fee but I have no way because I do not make a bad relation with buyers and sellers.

Bad thing with your payment fees, I think is not fair when buying 100$ and you got only $86 and how come its possible using as good for trading or investing, maybe you got wrong exchange with your investing and looking other exchange with lower fees payment when trading and withdrawing your assets.

[fiulpro]

I have started to buy BTC and sell them in a higher price (in BDT). For example, imagine I have purchased $100 worth  of BTC @86BDT per USD and sold them instantly @87BDT per USD. This is a good business even if you take 1BDT per USD profit. I was having some good profits each day.
But now after the fee has increased, it has been impossible to get profit. There's a transaction cost which I can not avoid and it is very high. I trade small amount like $50 even (To make a strong hub). In such cases, I have no profit almost unless I'm dealing $300 or over. That's a pain to pay such fee but I have no way because I do not make a bad relation with buyers and sellers.

Are you using any third party site ?
-because even there you have to pay them some amount.

Or Do you have your own network?
-I made a local community of the Bitcoin holders near my area whom I know , this way whenever someone had to sell/buy we would just message on the group and take the nearest approximate value or whatever the person thinks is right .
This way :
- No controlling body
- Trust , since you already know them
- No fee
- Can directly send the BTC in the wallet straight therefore don't have to juggle it between many.

I do think this issue might now be resolved sooner , you can start charging a little more but that would only bring you less Investors.
(You can change the amount manually in most platforms)
Well I do think you should first look around for a good trading platform they all have different rates .

Because this way you are loosing a lot of money .

[Shimmiry]

But now after the fee has increased, it has been impossible to get profit. There's a transaction cost which I can not avoid and it is very high.

Too much fees will really kill small trader's profit.
You can try trading on other exchanges if you want.
Well that's probably the best thing to do. Find some exchanges that has a lower fees compared to where you came from.
You'll feel your profit if you became successful there.
Less fees, less worries.

[hisuka]

But now after the fee has increased, it has been impossible to get profit. There's a transaction cost which I can not avoid and it is very high.

Too much fees will really kill small trader's profit.
You can try trading on other exchanges if you want.
Well that's probably the best thing to do. Find some exchanges that has a lower fees compared to where you came from.
You'll feel your profit if you became successful there.
Less fees, less worries.

The other day when I'm planning to do a cash out because I have done some trading coin and to take profit. To my surprise the fees is really high which killing most traders now. When btc becomes high it's value the fees it does increase. Well for that if there's any exchange could offer small fees it is good for us who can enjoy better profit.

[Finestream]

Are you using a local exchange? if so, I guess you will not be getting a price like a price you will see in Binance and other popular big exchanges.
We have a local exchange also, if I buy bitcoin, the rate is higher like 2% to 3%, and there's always a transaction charge buying bitcoin, so that transaction alone would already cost you an amount which is considered expense, when selling, you are get lesser on the percentage mentioned so you can't maximize your profit.

Bitcoin trading is not really good for micro amount especially if you withdraw and use the blockchain as currently the fee is really expensive.

Try to increase the amount you are trading so you will not feel the fee. 

[Axelseseclevz]

Transaction fees have always been the problem for small scale traders like us. Personally, I stopped due to this huge transaction fees. I realized that almost 50% of my profits were being used for transaction fees. The nature of transaction fees for smaller transactions is one disadvantage making it difficult for some people to adopt to crypto business transactions. 

That was the sad reality in cryptocurrency, if the value of some coins increase the network fee also increase.  It is good only for those high capital to invest but those with those the money is limited and just small amount , it will turns to nothing instead of making profit.

[Latviand]

Transaction fees have always been the problem for small scale traders like us. Personally, I stopped due to this huge transaction fees. I realized that almost 50% of my profits were being used for transaction fees. The nature of transaction fees for smaller transactions is one disadvantage making it difficult for some people to adopt to crypto business transactions. 

This is really a hindrance to success if this fees are really high.

Some people are only earning small profits and they are having a hard time to save their money and these fees really make them lose their profits.

But we can't really have a third party if we are living in a state that allows cryptocurrency.

Always expect to have a transaction fees because that's where the government or the platform can benefit your crypto. That's the reason why some people who are earning small profits with crypto are making other businesses so that they can somehow have support for those transaction fees.

[serjent05]

Mate, BDT is the fiat currency of Bangladesh. I used to buy sell BTC locally to make some profit since I have both some buyers and sellers. And there's no way you can get rid of the high fee now. Coinbase is better since they use batch payment now and fee is proportionally low but it's very risky to use coinbase for such trades because source of BTC can be illegal too.

Indeed, and I wasn't surprised that the BCT transaction fee will start skyrocketing again.  It always happens when the BTC price is going up.  I just scratch my head when I have a tx fee of around $4 equivalent from a $60 BTC transaction.

[gentlemand]

I would've thought you could charge far more in a place where Bitcoin isn't legal. Even in places where it is fully legal P2P trades can often be way above the market rate especially when the market is heating up.

If I ran a business where a fundamental part of its cost was completely out my control I would either carefully plan how to handle an explosion in that cost, or find another business where I did have complete control. The obvious one is to pass on the cost to the buyer. The cost is right there in public for them to see if they moan about it.

[n0ne]

I would've thought you could charge far more in a place where Bitcoin isn't legal. Even in places where it is fully legal P2P trades can often be way above the market rate especially when the market is heating up.

If I ran a business where a fundamental part of its cost was completely out my control I would either carefully plan how to handle an explosion in that cost, or find another business where I did have complete control. The obvious one is to pass on the cost to the buyer. The cost is right there in public for them to see if they moan about it.

Agreed, even in the countries where there isn't any opposition for buying/selling of bitcoin has got an added margin as profit. This is apart from the network fee and the third party charges, in simple this can be understood comparing the price with the current market on localbitcoins. Here the buyer will be charged for the fee. Doing the business in a country where it is illegal is high risk involved, and you should get the right reward for the same.

[Metazen]

It is right unfortunately. You can pay a $10 fee to make a single transfer. This makes it unfeasible to use Bitcoin to pay for purchases of small amounts.