Why do BTC fees vary so much?

[swimyfish]

If I transfer .002 BTC from Coinbase to Ledger the fee is around $2.20. If I transfer the exact same amount of BTC .002 back to Coinbase from Ledger at the same time the fee is $16.50.... Why are the fees so drastically different? Why is Ledger "charging" so much more... I found the fees similar and high for Trezor wallet too.

Thank you.

[bL4nkcode]

If I transfer .002 BTC from Coinbase to Ledger the fee is around $2.20. If I transfer the exact same amount of BTC .002 back to Coinbase from Ledger at the same time the fee is $16.50.... Why are the fees so drastically different? Why is Ledger "charging" so much more... I found the fees similar and high for Trezor wallet too.

Thank you.

That's coz fees may vary to your wallet inputs, wallet/app/software you're using esp. for ledger, when you say sending btc from ledger, do you mean using the ledger live app? I don't usually use ledger live but afaik you can choose their dynamic fees which range from 1 sat to higher value and can be manually edited for whatever you want. Same thing if you use your ledger with mycelium and electrum you can adjust your fees depending on your reference.

But to be frank, if you're just basing its fee to USD then you will be always disturbed depending on the current value of btc esp. at this time of writing btc is $57,063 so expect it will be a higher value for the fee as well. Than basing the fee on btc, mbtc or sat which probably just 0.0001 btc or lower.

[mk4]

1. How congested the mempool is vary from time to time.
2. Ledger Live and pretty much most wallet software(including Trezor's) almost always provide really bad fee estimations; ending up with their users paying an unnecessarily transaction high fee.
3. You can set your own custom fees on most wallet software. If you're not in a rush, you can just set a 30-40 sats/b fee and just wait a while til the transaction confirms.

[JeromeTash]

If I transfer .002 BTC from Coinbase to Ledger the fee is around $2.20. If I transfer the exact same amount of BTC .002 back to Coinbase from Ledger at the same time the fee is $16.50.... Why are the fees so drastically different? Why is Ledger "charging" so much more... I found the fees similar and high for Trezor wallet too.

Thank you.

It's because the Bitcoin Network fees are actually high right now. For a high priority transaction, the recommended fee rate is at least 113 sats/vbyte.
If you use this tool, you will notice that the $16.50 is within range

In fact, I think either coinbase did you a favor by partially paying your transaction fees (they have been doing it in the past) or you were going to send out a low priority transaction with low fee rate which would take ages to get confirmed

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

If I transfer .002 BTC from Coinbase to Ledger the fee is around $2.20. If I transfer the exact same amount of BTC .002 back to Coinbase from Ledger at the same time the fee is $16.50....

When did you transferred 0.002 BTC from Coinbase to Ledger?
When did you transferred 0.002 BTC from Ledger to Coinbase?
How long between two  transactions? If it is long, mempool can be changed and fee will be higher or lower.

Maybe you only post an example but if you transfer 0.002 BTC from Coinbase, you will be charged fee and you will not receive 0.002 BTC in Ledger.

Why are the fees so drastically different? Why is Ledger "charging" so much more... I found the fees similar and high for Trezor wallet too.

Depends on their fee esitmator that can be correct or inaccurate.

You can check the mempool: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC%20(default%20mempool),24h
Today you can move your transactions with fee from 25 to 30 sats/vbyte or can try with 17 or 20 sats/vbyte.

[Oshosondy]

How long between two  transactions? If it is long, mempool can be changed and fee will be higher or lower.

Mempool is not constant at all, it is always changing every seconds to minutes. Maybe you are using some fee estimators that are not well designed, mempool can be 50 sat/vbyte now and changed to 70 sat/vbytes in just 10 seconds and increase or decrease in just next 5 seconds. What I am trying to tell you is that it is not that mempool is changing for long time but congestion that makes it not to decrease to the feerate set by low fee payers but yet still always changing and fluctuating with certain range when congested but not decrease below certain range that can get low fee transactions confirmed.

[slaman29]

I've now not started to care so much for bitcoin mempool. I always go for the lowest possible fee now and then just leave it, eventually it settles, sometimes faster, sometimes longer than expected but if it's just for administration (moving to wallet or consolidating) then you can rest assured at some point it gets confirmed. If it's urgent only though then you're forced to take the route of paying like everyone else!

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

How long between two  transactions? If it is long, mempool can be changed and fee will be higher or lower.

Mempool is not constant at all, it is always changing every seconds to minutes. Maybe you are using some fee estimators that are not well designed, mempool can be 50 sat/vbyte now and changed to 70 sat/vbytes in just 10 seconds and increase or decrease in just next 5 seconds. What I am trying to tell you is that it is not that mempool is changing for long time but congestion that makes it not to decrease to the feerate set by low fee payers but yet still always changing and fluctuating with certain range when congested but not decrease below certain range that can get low fee transactions confirmed.

If mempool is static, transaction fee on bitcoin network in satoshi/vbyte unit will be static.

Good fee estimators are able to give estimated fee that have less higher or lower fees than the best and cheapest fee to use with same waiting time. All estimators are not accurate 100%.

I don't understand why do you need to explain my post. 

[crwth]

With Ledger, you could read their information on choosing network fees.

https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/360006535873-Choose-network-fees

You can use High, Standard, or Low. I did use Low most of the time but it still significant in price. I would rather use the Custom Fee and set it to how much I would be willing to pay. Usually, if I'm not in a rush to get it confirmed, I use 10 satoshis/byte. I wouldn't recommend this if you are in a hurry lol. My worst transaction that I got is 1-2 weeks to just get confirmed, IIRC.

[Yaunfitda]

If I transfer .002 BTC from Coinbase to Ledger the fee is around $2.20. If I transfer the exact same amount of BTC .002 back to Coinbase from Ledger at the same time the fee is $16.50.... Why are the fees so drastically different? Why is Ledger "charging" so much more... I found the fees similar and high for Trezor wallet too.

Thank you.

As the price of bitcoin goes high, and so does the fees incurred when transferring between wallets and bitcoin addresses. I myself was stuck now for about a week, wrong estimation, ended up paying 5 sat/byte, about $1.00 fee. But I can't do anything but to wait and hopefully it went it otherwise in two weeks time it will be drop. Lesson here is always check first the fee and adjust if you can.

[joniboini]

ledger wallet is control by the blockchain which fees are randomly set by miners and at this period transactions fees are extremely high.

Miners don't set the fees, users do that. If everyone is patient and keeps using 1 sats/vbyte for the fees then we won't get volatility like today. Things got worse because some wallets are overestimating the fees and make you spend nearly twice or thrice as much to get confirmed on the next block, which will increase the overall fees for the next one and so on.

[Oshosondy]

How long between two  transactions? If it is long, mempool can be changed and fee will be higher or lower.

Mempool is not constant at all, it is always changing every seconds to minutes. Maybe you are using some fee estimators that are not well designed, mempool can be 50 sat/vbyte now and changed to 70 sat/vbytes in just 10 seconds and increase or decrease in just next 5 seconds. What I am trying to tell you is that it is not that mempool is changing for long time but congestion that makes it not to decrease to the feerate set by low fee payers but yet still always changing and fluctuating with certain range when congested but not decrease below certain range that can get low fee transactions confirmed.

If mempool is static, transaction fee on bitcoin network in satoshi/vbyte unit will be static.

Good fee estimators are able to give estimated fee that have less higher or lower fees than the best and cheapest fee to use with same waiting time. All estimators are not accurate 100%.

I don't understand why do you need to explain my post. 

You still did not get my point, in every second, mempool can be changing feerates, not if it is long as you mentioned above. You are right that mempool is not static, but also not fluctuating over long time only but everytime.

[pawanjain]

If I transfer .002 BTC from Coinbase to Ledger the fee is around $2.20. If I transfer the exact same amount of BTC .002 back to Coinbase from Ledger at the same time the fee is $16.50.... Why are the fees so drastically different? Why is Ledger "charging" so much more... I found the fees similar and high for Trezor wallet too.

Thank you.

It depends on multiple factors such as the size of mempool at that particular time, the amount of network congestion, the number of UTXOs the wallet is using etc...
This is why it is recommended to use wallets which has the option to customize transaction fees and to select particular UTXOs to be used for the output transaction.
This saves us from high transaction fees when we can wait a little longer for the transaction to be confirmed.

[batang_bitcoin]

I've transacted and transferred bitcoin from my Ledger wallet but it didn't charge me a lot. I even appreciated it because it's setting the fee at the moderate fee and acceptable for me which I consider fair and low.

weakness of hardware wallet devices is like that. I am a nano ledger user for 2 years and the difference of at least 2 $ for outgoing transfers is definitely bigger for the nano ledger. So that's normal and for early hardware wallet users it may seem a surprise but it's been happening for years

Not in my experience, I didn't pay or even charged that much.

[judaspriest]

If I transfer .002 BTC from Coinbase to Ledger the fee is around $2.20. If I transfer the exact same amount of BTC .002 back to Coinbase from Ledger at the same time the fee is $16.50.... Why are the fees so drastically different? Why is Ledger "charging" so much more... I found the fees similar and high for Trezor wallet too.

Thank you.

Bitcoin fees are still within reasonable limits, in contrast to Ethereum fees, they are unnatural! and very disappointing, the fees from bitcoin have risen because the dense network makes transactions slow, and it must cost a fortune for miners to work fast, this is what the problem must be solved for bitcoin, because if not then bitcoin will not be a means of payment, it's just an asset.

[tippytoes]

If I transfer .002 BTC from Coinbase to Ledger the fee is around $2.20. If I transfer the exact same amount of BTC .002 back to Coinbase from Ledger at the same time the fee is $16.50.... Why are the fees so drastically different? Why is Ledger "charging" so much more... I found the fees similar and high for Trezor wallet too.

Thank you.

Bitcoin fees are still within reasonable limits, in contrast to Ethereum fees, they are unnatural! and very disappointing, the fees from bitcoin have risen because the dense network makes transactions slow, and it must cost a fortune for miners to work fast, this is what the problem must be solved for bitcoin, because if not then bitcoin will not be a means of payment, it's just an asset.

It can still be a means of payment if there will be a lot of merchants that will utilize the Lightning Network. It is not yet popular, but if this will go mainstream, a lot of people will like to use bitcoin LN because of its very minimal fees. And right now, a lot of crypto users are still familiar with the bitcoin on-chain, in which, the fees are dependent on the mempool activity. So if you want to avoid high fees, you can also check the mempool activity before you send your bitcoin, that is, if the time is not important for you.

[stomachgrowls]

If I transfer .002 BTC from Coinbase to Ledger the fee is around $2.20. If I transfer the exact same amount of BTC .002 back to Coinbase from Ledger at the same time the fee is $16.50.... Why are the fees so drastically different? Why is Ledger "charging" so much more... I found the fees similar and high for Trezor wallet too.

Thank you.

Bitcoin fees are still within reasonable limits, in contrast to Ethereum fees, they are unnatural! and very disappointing, the fees from bitcoin have risen because the dense network makes transactions slow, and it must cost a fortune for miners to work fast, this is what the problem must be solved for bitcoin, because if not then bitcoin will not be a means of payment, it's just an asset.

It can still be a means of payment if there will be a lot of merchants that will utilize the Lightning Network. It is not yet popular, but if this will go mainstream, a lot of people will like to use bitcoin LN because of its very minimal fees. And right now, a lot of crypto users are still familiar with the bitcoin on-chain, in which, the fees are dependent on the mempool activity. So if you want to avoid high fees, you can also check the mempool activity before you send your bitcoin, that is, if the time is not important for you.

LN is still on that testing or development stage where it cant really be just used to be as main driver but actually there are already sites or services that do make use LN but it isnt really still recognized
nor suggested to be going on main.

Bitcoin fees now are way too high even with the lowest priority having almost 10 bucks for you to pay but if you arent on a hurry then its better to wait for the entire network to calm or does have minimal transactions.

Or simply you can opt in to make use other payment methods on using altcoins which is way more cheaper and faster.