Coin Control now available in Ledger Live

[Pmalek]

Ledger Live's newest 2.11.1 version has introduced coin control features for Bitcoin.

With the older versions of Ledger Live, users didn't have the freedom to select which UTXOs to spend. All this time, Ledger followed a "First-In-First-Out" spending strategy. The oldest UTXO you have would be spend first, followed by the second oldest, third, etc.

Now, when users send coins, they can change their spending habits by clicking on "Advanced Options" and switching to one out of two new strategies:

Minimize fees (optimize size): the strategy spends the lowest number of coins to reduce the byte size of the transaction. This strategy results in a low network fee.

Minimize future fees (merge coins): the strategy spends the maximum number of inputs so that a potential price rise does not make smaller coins economically unspendable. Indeed, if the price of a crypto asset increases too much, smaller coins may worth less than the cost of the network fees to spend them.

Ledger hinted they will introduce a Replace-By-Fee features as well. But there is no information when.
Source and more info about coin control: https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015996580/

[1715382022]

1715382022

[1715382022]

1715382022

[1715382022]

1715382022

[1715382022]

1715382022

[dkbit98]

Sure it is nice they added this as it may increase privacy and help with reducing fees, but Ledger Live still sucks for me and I will continue to use Electrum with my Ledger hardware wallet.

[HCP]

I was playing with it and managed to "break" it... I "accidentally on purpose" unselected all the coins, then clicked done (ignoring the red warning box)... and then it told me that I had insufficient balance to send... While that is correct, the problem is that you cannot click the "coin control" button unless a valid amount has been entered in the amount to send box!!?!




Solution is to close the send dialog and start from scratch again... still, nice to see coin control and RBF included (finally!)

[o_e_l_e_o]

Now, when users send coins, they can change their spending habits by clicking on "Advanced Options" and switching to one out of two new strategies:

I am not able to install Ledger Live to play around with it myself at the moment (and I don't really have any desire to), but is this it? You can pick from two options? Can you actually pick individual UTXOs to spend, or can you only pick one of these options and the wallet still picks for you? Because that is not coin control.

Minimize fees (optimize size): the strategy spends the lowest number of coins to reduce the byte size of the transaction. This strategy results in a low network fee.

This strategy only results in a low network fee if the network fees are low at the time. A one-input-two-output transaction, although small, will still be expensive at 200 sats/vbyte.

Minimize future fees (merge coins): the strategy spends the maximum number of inputs so that a potential price rise does not make smaller coins economically unspendable. Indeed, if the price of a crypto asset increases too much, smaller coins may worth less than the cost of the network fees to spend them.

I don't follow this at all. If the price of bitcoin increases too much, smaller UTXOs may be worth less than the fee to spend them? Forgive me if I'm missing something obvious here, but that is true at any price, no? If I have a 600 sat UTXO and it is going to cost me 1000 sats to send it, then it makes no difference what the USD value of those sats are.

They also make no mention whatsoever of the privacy implications of Ledger Live picking and choosing a bunch of otherwise unconnected UTXOs to include in a transaction.

As dkbit98 has said, this is far too little too late. Not nearly enough for me to even consider giving Ledger Live another shot.

[Rath_]

You can pick from two options? Can you actually pick individual UTXOs to spend, or can you only pick one of these options and the wallet still picks for you? Because that is not coin control.

There's also a third strategy called "Oldest coins first (FIFO)". You can pick individual UTXOs to use for the selected strategy. Here's how it looks like with all UTXOs selected. You can unselect an UTXO by clicking on it.



Selecting individual UTXOs and "Minimize future fees" as a strategy should give a similar result to Electrum's coin control.

Forgive me if I'm missing something obvious here, but that is true at any price, no?

You're right. They could have just used "potential fees rise" instead of "potential price rise".

[Pmalek]

Ledger Live still sucks for me and I will continue to use Electrum with my Ledger hardware wallet.

I use Electrum when sending coins as well, but use Ledger Live as an overview of my portfolio of important crypto assets.

I was playing with it and managed to "break" it...

That didn't take long

still, nice to see coin control and RBF included (finally!)

RBF is automatically enabled, but you can't actually use it though Ledger Live YET. They eve suggest that users should use a different wallet if you need to increase the fees on an unconfirmed transaction.

There's also a third strategy called "Oldest coins first (FIFO)".

The FIFO strategy was there before. That's how Ledger Live spent coins in the past until their most recent update that introduced 2 new coin control features.

@o_e_l_e_o
I haven't tested the new features either. I would assume that the app makes a list and puts the most suitable UTXO at the top based on the coin control strategy that you selected. You still have the freedom to select whichever you want.

[dkbit98]

There's also a third strategy called "Oldest coins first (FIFO)". You can pick individual UTXOs to use for the selected strategy. Here's how it looks like with all UTXOs selected. You can unselect an UTXO by clicking on it.

How did you get to this dialog for Coin control?
I am not 100% familiar with Ledger Live but I wanted to test and see how this new update looks like, but I can't see Coin Control anywhere.

EDIT:
I found it and it is not very intuitive to find at all.
I need to hover with mouse over words coin control and only then I see it is really a button (btw I am using dark theme)

[Rath_]

How did you get to this dialog for Coin control?

Make sure you are running the latest version of Ledger Live (2.11.1) and select "Send". Enter a Bitcoin address, type in any amount that you can cover from your balance, click on "Advanced options" and you should see "Coin control" on the right side of the window.

[HCP]

RBF is automatically enabled, but you can't actually use it though Ledger Live YET. They eve suggest that users should use a different wallet if you need to increase the fees on an unconfirmed transaction.

Wait... so they just mark the transaction as "RBF=true", but there is not way to actually increase the fee in Ledger Live?

*sigh*... it's like 2 steps forward, 1 step back with Ledger...

[joniboini]

That's really weird. Maybe RBF is not a priority for them but they just enabled it just in case somebody got stuck?

Not really a good idea, might as well go all the way to enable it. Looks like firmware update is the only function where Ledger Live stand out.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Can you turn it off, though? Or is RBF enabled for all transactions? Because enabling RBF but not allowing users to actually use it is worse than just not enabling it all. There are a few services I use which will accept zero-confirmation transactions below a certain limit if RBF is disabled, but will not if RBF is enabled.

By enabling it but then forcing users to use a different piece of software to actually use it, along with this semi-implemented "coin control", Ledger really seem to be trying their hardest to push people away from their crappy software.

I don't understand how FOSS wallets have had these features for literally years, and Ledger with their profits in the hundreds of millions of dollars still can't manage.

[Rath_]

Can you turn it off, though? Or is RBF enabled for all transactions? Because enabling RBF but not allowing users to actually use it is worse than just not enabling it all.

You can turn it off under "Advanced Options" while making a payment. It seems to be enabled by default which is weird because it was disabled in the v2.7.0 update. I have no idea what a "regular Send" is.

[dkbit98]

When I checked this few days ago after updating, option RBF replace by fee was also enabled by default in latest update, and I also think it was disabled before.
Oh I guess it is just one more of hidden 'surprises' from Ledger, so I expect a lot of newbie customer complains soon.
How long are they going to make this rookie mistakes....silly amateurs

That is why I am waiting for some new and serious open source hardware wallet competition to show up (excluding Trezor)

[Pmalek]

bumpy