Transaction "stuck" for 5 days..ended up losing 35$ usd to send roughly 2$?

[Cymatixone]

Hello and thank you for your support / interest in helping me resolve and understand this issue.

So I place an order through my btc wallet for around 40$ USD, I had to turn the fees way down as it was costing more than I had in my wallet. So about 5 days later, after bumping the fee, and inspecting the transaction more closely, I was surprised to find out that about 2.20$ usd or .00005946 btc was sent to the recipient, and the transaction fee turned out to be .00094187 btc, which seems backwards to me.

I am by no means well versed in btc transactions, but this is the first time I've encountered this specific issue after having it held up for 5 days only to see that my transaction fee to send 2$ was around 35$. If anyone can explain to me what I did wrong, so that I can avoid it in the future it would be extremely helpful. Also, I'm inferring that the transaction fee is not recoverable? Sigh, I guess there's no customer service to call for Bitcoin huh..

Any response is greatly appreciated, sorry if this is a newb question.

[lugrugzo]

Which wallet did you use? Some wallets allow you to customize the fee when sending a transaction. $35 fee for a $2 transaction seems absurd (but also unfortunately its a known scalability/miner greedy problem in bitcoin). But still I wouldn't think it to get stuck with that fee.

[Cymatixone]

Hey, thanks for your response..

I use Electrum, and yes I did change the transaction fee to "mempool" instead of static which is default I believe, and turned the sat.byte down a bit, but I had no idea it'd have this effect.

Here is the transaction iD:  12d92f8f0ab008a5bfbe3be9f3f8d391fb52c0858b848776fb864d8f7202f7e8

[Findingnemo]

Hey, thanks for your response..

I use Electrum, and yes I did change the transaction fee to "mempool" instead of static which is default I believe, and turned the sat.byte down a bit, but I had no idea it'd have this effect.

Here is the transaction iD:  12d92f8f0ab008a5bfbe3be9f3f8d391fb52c0858b848776fb864d8f7202f7e8

Its simply because you used 195 sat/byte for your transaction.

Your transaction contains 3 inputs and one output which increases the actual size of your transaction than one input and one put so you ended up paying huge fee for your transaction.Next time better use any Mempool analyzer to choose the fee for cheaper and faster transaction like this one https://mempool.space/

Next time wait for the Mempool gets clear which normally happens at week ends before making any transaction if you want to make a transaction with cheap price.

[nc50lc]

I use Electrum, and yes I did change the transaction fee to "mempool" instead of static which is default I believe, and turned the sat.byte down a bit, but I had no idea it'd have this effect.

The default is 'ETA' which usually has higher suggested fee rate than 'mempool'.

However, you've used bump fee or "increase fee" and that will add an additional fee, at least 483satoshi (for +1sat/B) to your original fee rate,
if you've set it in the middle of the slider (mempool) of the bump fee window, it shouldn't reach 195sat/B at that time,
maybe you've slide it near the highest fee rate for it to reach that high?

BTW, there'll be an "advanced preview" if you use "increase fee" whether it's enabled or not, so please pay attention to the info like the 'total fee' and 'to-be-sent' amount next time.

Read this topic for more info about the slider options: The Electrum Payment Slider

[BASE16]

This issue needs to be addressed.
It's not the first time i see someone complain about this.
It should be possible to order a $1 cup of coffee or a $2 sandwich without having to pay a $35 transaction fee.
In that respect Bitcoin is far from usable and if it want's to become really useful at some point in the future, this issue will have to be dealt with.

[Findingnemo]

This issue needs to be addressed.
It's not the first time i see someone complain about this.
It should be possible to order a $1 cup of coffee or a $2 sandwich without having to pay a $35 transaction fee.
In that respect Bitcoin is far from usable and if it want's to become really useful at some point in the future, this issue will have to be dealt with.

Its a known fact that there will be a problem arise when we consider bitcoin as currency and wants to use it for micro payments but lightning network can be the solution for scalability issues on bitcoin.

If you are going to make a bitcoin transaction on lightning network channel then it is almost instant and free, the smallest amount we can transact using LN is  0.00000001 BTC

Bitcoin’s Lightning Network Complete Guide: How Can it Solve Bitcoin’s Biggest Problem?

[math09183]

Transaction costs become irrational... Similar like in 2018, before the crash.
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html

[LoyceV]

Its simply because you used 195 sat/byte for your transaction.

It's also a problem of Electrum: it shouldn't use inputs that cost more in fees than they're worth. Adding dust only increases the transaction size while it decreases the output amount. And it should give a warning when users are paying 20 times more in fee than the amount they're sending.
It's quite common for people to make this mistake, and it shouldn't be that difficult for a wallet to prevent this from happening.

[bob123]

This issue needs to be addressed.
It's not the first time i see someone complain about this.

The only issue is that people don't check the transaction they are signing and broadcasting.

While the UX of electrum isn't the best, it's not an issue of the software. A small warning would be nice, but in the end if people don't care about what they sign and broadcast even a warning won't help.

It should be possible to order a $1 cup of coffee or a $2 sandwich without having to pay a $35 transaction fee.

And it is.

In that respect Bitcoin is far from usable and if it want's to become really useful at some point in the future, this issue will have to be dealt with.

Which issue? That people don't check the transaction fee when signing the transaction?

[Bitcoin Smith]

It's also a problem of Electrum: it shouldn't use inputs that cost more in fees than they're worth.

Electrum, the most preferred and suggested wallet for Bitcoin by the bitcoin community itself got very shitty fee estimation, initially they sucks with the ETA feature only but now I can see difference in the value provided in the Mempool option from the actual Memepool size.

Giving a warning can save beginners from losing their money but wallet providers actually don't care about it.

[HCP]

So about 5 days later, after bumping the fee, and inspecting the transaction more closely, I was surprised to find out that about 2.20$ usd or .00005946 btc was sent to the recipient, and the transaction fee turned out to be .00094187 btc, which seems backwards to me.

If you have a look at mempool stats for the last 2 weeks, we can see that since Jan 8/9, there was a huge uptick in the number of unconfirmed transactions and fee rates being used... with several instances of large fee rate spikes in the last week.

Using "bump fee" will result in Electrum using estimate fee rates based on the network conditions at the time that "bump fee" is used. If you happen to do it when the network is extremely busy, then the fee suggested will be very high.


Unfortunately, it seems that you have learned a somewhat expensive lesson in always double checking the details of the transaction before hitting send

[BASE16]

Which issue? That people don't check the transaction fee when signing the transaction?

Not really it's more like people that agree on a payment in BTC and who are then coming back complaining about the fee and asking if it's possible to use a different payment provider to pay for their purchase.
Now i believe these individuals are sometimes trying to do a payment from an exchange or from some sort of trading platform but it is a persistent problem, it is by no means an isolated case this happens quite a lot and that tells me that there is a problem now you can of course blatantly point to the people but i can assure you that there is an issue with the technology that they are using and that it needs to be solved if Bitcoin ever want's to reach it's full potential.
It could of course be possible that they are using the wrong service with the highest spreads, because the service providers also want a piece of the cake, but that just shows that there is a lack of a standard and as you know standardized things flourish because they are widely compatible. Bitcoin in it's current state is more like a jungle full of screaming wild animals.