Strategies to save off Bitcoin fees?

[Abiky]

Most recently, Bitcoin's network fees have increased to a point where it's unfeasible to send small payments on a daily basis. SegWit is a solution to save from high fees, but not everyone supports it. Exchanging Bitcoin to an altcoin could be an option, but you'd still have to pay the network fee for the transaction to get processed on the Blockchain.

If there was a working strategy to save as much Bitcoin fees as possible, it would certainly prevent me a lot of "headaches". Do you happen to know of effective strategy to save off Bitcoin fees right now? Any suggestions or recommendations will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[swogerino]

Most recently, Bitcoin's network fees have increased to a point where it's unfeasible to send small payments on a daily basis. SegWit is a solution to save from high fees, but not everyone supports it. Exchanging Bitcoin to an altcoin could be an option, but you'd still have to pay the network fee for the transaction to get processed on the Blockchain.

If there was a working strategy to save as much Bitcoin fees as possible, it would certainly prevent me a lot of "headaches". Do you happen to know of effective strategy to save off Bitcoin fees right now? Any suggestions or recommendations will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

For big transcations I just deposit my bitcoin to an exchange and then I trade it for Litecoin.At the moment this is the strategy which saves me 10-15 dollars in fees.Bitcoin fees if you want fast confirmations are really high during this time and I found litecoin has some really low fees which I like.

For small transactions I don’t know but you can use the above strategy once and send the small amounts many times in Litecoin.

[casperBGD]

~snip

For small transactions I don’t know but you can use the above strategy once and send the small amounts many times in Litecoin.

interesting strategy, but this could be used for fast payments only, since BTC/LTC pair fluctuates as well, and could provoke much more expense than $10-15 on high value transactions in case of BTC/LTC spike
of course, this spike could go on both sides, but risk is involved and could influence the final outcome

one strategy that could be seen as well is transferring BTC to USDT on Tron, and transfer USDT with low fees on Tron network (actually USDT on Tron almost reached 10 billion), but I am not using it, it is better to send BTC in the first place, and swallow fees than risk to lose value in the process

[thecryptogandalf]

Every exchange has their own policy and procedure for withdrawals. Some exchanges, they charge a fixed fee for a withdrawal. Others charge the fee based on current estimates. If the exchange supports SegWit and they have replace-by-fee enabled, that's ideal, as they then can charge a lower fee and bump the fee if needed. Some are better than others. For instance, Paxful supports SegWit, but they do not have replace-by-fee enabled. So if they paid an insufficient fee for your withdrawal, they can't do anything about it, really. And because they batch transactions, you can't do a child-pays-for-parent (CPFP) fee bump either on the incoming zeroconf (0-conf) transaction.

For the best control, use a non-custodial exchange that also permits you to both set the fee(s) paid, but also to perform a replace-by-fee (RBF) fee bump. This would be P2P exchanges like LocalCryptos, LocalCoinSwap, and HodlHodl. Then,  you'll want to be using a wallet that supports replace-by-fee (RBF) as well.

[thesmallgod]

My strategy only works if you intend to sell your token for fiat in your country provided that other ecurrencies such as perfect money is also available for exchange in your country. If your bitcoin is in your personal wallet, you will have to pay the block chain fee to get it send to an exchange. Once it is on exchange, trade it for TRX. Currently it very cheap to send TRX just 1TRX for withdrawal. Once you have done this, you will need to make use of p2p services that allow exchange of TRX to perfect money. Bestchange.com offer relay of trusted exchanger that offer such service. Some of them provide instant exchange of TRX to PM

[mersal]

There is no strategy involved in it because the transaction fee costs as per the weight of your transaction so if you really want  to decrease the transaction then it should be having
1 input ==> 1 output

How to reduce the actual weight is by combining all your small inputs into a larger big input at the time when the bitcoin network is free. Normally in weekends you can find lesser transactions on mempool so it is the right time to do it.

Bookmark this site mempool.space and keep watching for less transaction fee from time to time.


Another trick to save fees a bit more by using a native segwit wallet "bc1....", I can see it saved 36% transaction fee when watching the Txid on blockchain explorers.

[dothebeats]

Align your transactions with the time of the day wherein fees are at a lower rate? I have been doing that for months now since the start of bitcoin's rise and so far it has been working to lessen the fees that I have been paying per transaction. Usually, 3am PST is the best time in my area to do some small transactions, as there are fewer transactions in queue thus making the average fee lower than what it used to on peak hours. This is not a guaranteed strategy but it will save you some pennies, still.

[Kelvinid]

At this time where fees are so high, I don't move my BTC in a small amount but in bulk. Sometimes I use XRP as it was the lowest fee in crypto (maybe) but the problem is that many exchanges are delisting XRP and ban from trading which makes me decide not to use it now. That is why moving my BTC in bulk number helps me to save some sats, that only be the last option I take considering that the gas fee for ETH is also high (even higher than in BTC).

[tranthidung]

Most recently, Bitcoin's network fees have increased to a point where it's unfeasible to send small payments on a daily basis. SegWit is a solution to save from high fees, but not everyone supports it. Exchanging Bitcoin to an altcoin could be an option, but you'd still have to pay the network fee for the transaction to get processed on the Blockchain.

If there was a working strategy to save as much Bitcoin fees as possible, it would certainly prevent me a lot of "headaches". Do you happen to know of effective strategy to save off Bitcoin fees right now? Any suggestions or recommendations will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

In order to save transaction fees, you need to have a good strategies and solid plans.

Strategies

• Consolidate your small inputs when fee rate is cheap, as a preparation for your bitcoin transaction later (with a single or less inputs) when fee rate is higher. See the guide from LoyceV
• Try to use Segwit address (Bech32 address - bc1): it helps you to reduce transaction size that in turn help you to reduce transaction fee (at same fee rate)
• Have clear plans to move your bitcoin (when - hours, days, bi-weekly). See that topic on weekend effects

Plans

• Weekends are best days to move bitcoin: Sundays usually give cheaper fee rates than Saturday. See details
• Hour frames from 0 to 12 UTC are best to move bitcoin. See details
• Within a day, avoid hours of funding rate on BitMEX. The daily BitMEX broadcast at 13:08 UTC

I will make a summary table and edit this post. Stay tuned!

I hope these tables give you better data presentation.

• You can see weekend and working-hour effects
• Important note: % of difference here is between median. For your interest, if you use non-custodial wallet, and customize your fee rate, you can get much bigger fee-discount.
• My own findings match with The daily BitMEX broadcast at 13:08 UTC. In my table how the % suddenly increases to 33% at 13 UTC hour frame

Methodology

• Intra-week
  
  • Weekly median: median transaction fees for all transaction within specific week
  • Daily median: median transaction fees for all transactions of each days in a specific week
  • Difference (in %): [ daily median - weekly median ] / weekly median *100.
  • Stats in the table is mean of difference (all observed weeks)
• Intra-day
  
  • Daily median: median transaction fees for all transaction within specific day
  • Hourly median: Median transaction fees for all transactions of each hour in a specific day
  • Difference (in %): [ Hourly median - daily median] / daily median *100
  • Stats in the table is mean of difference (all observed weeks)

[Congyang]

i changed it to altcoins, but altcoins still have a fee, but that is the most effective way to change to altcoins say we have to spend $ 10 it's very small instead of having to pay transactions via bitcoin directly

[huff87]

Given that fees vary over time, one method that can reduce overall fees is input consolidation — combining a set of smaller inputs into a single larger input by spending them from yourself to yourself during a period of time when fees are lower than normal.

[franky1]

how to save.

easy.
stop being fooled.
get the devs to remove the 2 policies of fee's
put bitcoin back to treating full data as full data.
stop them making legacy transactions 4x more just because the devs decided.

the devs can easily remove this multiplier. but they chose not to.
dont blame bitcoin. blame the devs.
the fee policies about treating legacy and segwit differently didnt pop up by magic.. devs wrote it
..
also as separate methods of saving on fees
devs could easily decide to make 10byte=1sat in the underlying fee policy. thus making transactions cheaper.
it wont break bitcoin.
EG if a TX is 458bytes. the fee policy can round it to 460. and then suggest 46sat fee.. easy

.. now watch how all the devs will refrain from doing that because it then doesnt help them push people to use the wishy washy code of segwit

[Ultegra134]

Most recently, Bitcoin's network fees have increased to a point where it's unfeasible to send small payments on a daily basis. SegWit is a solution to save from high fees, but not everyone supports it. Exchanging Bitcoin to an altcoin could be an option, but you'd still have to pay the network fee for the transaction to get processed on the Blockchain.

If there was a working strategy to save as much Bitcoin fees as possible, it would certainly prevent me a lot of "headaches". Do you happen to know of effective strategy to save off Bitcoin fees right now? Any suggestions or recommendations will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

For big transcations I just deposit my bitcoin to an exchange and then I trade it for Litecoin.At the moment this is the strategy which saves me 10-15 dollars in fees.Bitcoin fees if you want fast confirmations are really high during this time and I found litecoin has some really low fees which I like.

For small transactions I don’t know but you can use the above strategy once and send the small amounts many times in Litecoin.

Definitely an interesting approach, have never thought about it. However, unfortunately for me, I am not dealing with large Bitcoin transactions (lol). Most times I've sent Bitcoin,  I wasn't in a hurry and used a lower transaction fee. Recently, when using the online BitGo wallet, the high priority would cost me $15 for a transaction worth of $300-350. Used medium priority ($2) and got confirmed in 3 and 12 hours respectively. (2 Transactions).

[hatshepsut93]

The best strategy is to not make transactions when fees are high. If you need to deposit to some account, maybe an exchange or gambling site, do it when fees are low. They are actually low most of the time, spikes only happen when there's a lot of trading activity.

Other than that, try to convince the people you deal with to use Lightning Network, after all it's the future.

[Oilacris]

Align your transactions with the time of the day wherein fees are at a lower rate? I have been doing that for months now since the start of bitcoin's rise and so far it has been working to lessen the fees that I have been paying per transaction. Usually, 3am PST is the best time in my area to do some small transactions, as there are fewer transactions in queue thus making the average fee lower than what it used to on peak hours. This is not a guaranteed strategy but it will save you some pennies, still.

This is what im doing but the time wont really be precise because it wont really be just similar that you had tried on other day and the other ones will be on another time.

So the key here is to wait up for the right time where  the network isnt really heavily clogged up and you would definitely save up some fees since sat/byte thing would be much lesser.

but if you can wait up  and isnt on the rush then you can always set out below the minimum priority but be sure  that you wont really be going much lower if you dont like for your
transactions to get stuck for days.

Ive been having this kind of behavior for me to save up some fees specially on microtransactions.

[CarnagexD]

This have become a dilemma ever since bitcoin hit high prices, you can't send small transactions without spending more on the transaction fees, if there's only a way we can get around this like the Lightning Network which up until now isn't even released despite being years in the making. Hopefully though they do something about it, we need affordable transactions now more than ever especially if we are all for the global adoption of bitcoin.

[dubst4r]

I paid a transaction fee of 0.00019908 BTC almost 24 hours ago and still hasn't confirmed

[pooya87]

SegWit is a solution to save from high fees, but not everyone supports it.

This is not 4 years ago, every service now accepts SegWit addresses. The only remaining ones that don't are very poor services with no security and shouldn't have been used for a lot of other reasons.

Exchanging Bitcoin to an altcoin could be an option, but you'd still have to pay the network fee for the transaction to get processed on the Blockchain.

You should also pay 2 exchange fees for swapping bitcoin for that altcoin and back to bitcoin again. These fees are also calculated based on the size of the trade (a percentage based fee) so if you do it with higher amounts you'll pay a much higher fee.
You should also take the risk of using a weaker and less secure altcoin, in some cases centralized and mutable.
You should also end up waiting a much longer time for the altcoin transaction to be confirmed in most cases because majority of their networks are insecure and services demand a much higher number of confirmation.

If there was a working strategy to save as much Bitcoin fees as possible, it would certainly prevent me a lot of "headaches". Do you happen to know of effective strategy to save off Bitcoin fees right now? Any suggestions or recommendations will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

This is already answered. 2 points that are usually forgotten are: reduce the input count and batch your payments if possible.
For example if you are getting paid, making a withdrawal from an exchange, ... try to let it accumulate more before you receive it in your wallet. For instance if you buy $10 worth of bitcoin every week, don't withdraw $10 every week, let it accumulate a little then withdraw. That way your wallet isn't filled with a lot of small inputs to spend later that increases the tx size.

[Wind_FURY]

how to save.

easy.
stop being fooled.
get the devs to remove the 2 policies of fee's
put bitcoin back to treating full data as full data.
stop them making legacy transactions 4x more just because the devs decided.

the devs can easily remove this multiplier. but they chose not to.
dont blame bitcoin. blame the devs.
the fee policies about treating legacy and segwit differently didnt pop up by magic.. devs wrote it
..
also as separate methods of saving on fees
devs could easily decide to make 10byte=1sat in the underlying fee policy. thus making transactions cheaper.
it wont break bitcoin.
EG if a TX is 458bytes. the fee policy can round it to 460. and then suggest 46sat fee.. easy

.. now watch how all the devs will refrain from doing that because it then doesnt help them push people to use the wishy washy code of segwit

Stop making suggestions without covering the pros and cons on the network/protocol. You post them as if they are going to make Bitcoin better without affecting the network negatively. There are externality costs. Change one parameter, some other parameter changes.

[Abiky]

In order to save transaction fees, you need to have a good strategies and solid plans.

Strategies

• Consolidate your small inputs when fee rate is cheap, as a preparation for your bitcoin transaction later (with a single or less inputs) when fee rate is higher. See the guide from LoyceV
• Try to use Segwit address (Bech32 address - bc1): it helps you to reduce transaction size that in turn help you to reduce transaction fee (at same fee rate)
• Have clear plans to move your bitcoin (when - hours, days, bi-weekly). See that topic on weekend effects

Plans

• Weekends are best days to move bitcoin: Sundays usually give cheaper fee rates than Saturday. See details
• Hour frames from 0 to 12 UTC are best to move bitcoin. See details
• Within a day, avoid hours of funding rate on BitMEX. The daily BitMEX broadcast at 13:08 UTC

...

A very nice observation. Thank you so much for this. Your strategy will be very useful for saving Bitcoin fees at a time when crypto adoption is soaring like crazy. After all, many people are joining the Bitcoin bandwagon at a fast pace (which results in higher network congestion). It's a good thing developers pushed the SegWit upgrade on 2017, or fees would've been a lot higher than what they are right now. I usually try to batch transactions and use SegWit in order to save as much fees as possible. The Lightning Network is good, but not many people support it.

All in all, it's good to know that Bitcoin's mempool won't remain bloated for long. I've noticed that very early in the morning, a transaction I've sent with a low fee was automatically accepted by miners on the Blockchain. It took a day to receive 1 confirmation, but it was worth it. Despite the high fees, Bitcoin is still cheaper than a wire/bank transfer. It's extremely convenient for transferring large amounts of money across borders without "breaking the bank". With native SegWit transactions, you can enjoy a slight discount in network fees. Hopefully, developers will come up with new solutions to prevent fees from going any higher in the future.