lowest possible transaction fee for transaction

[leibnizster]

I'm trying to consolidate ~90 outputs from an old old Multibit wallet into a new SegWit wallet I've created. I basically want to move those over with the lowest possible fees. The total fee for doing that with a 2sat/byte fee is 0.27mBTC (15USD), which is acceptable. I've created a transaction with a 2 sat/byte fee (took a while to find a server that didn't reject because it was too low), but didn't go through in over 1 week. I then increased it to 3 sat/byte, but it still doesn't seem to be closer and it's always more than 100MB from the tip. Any idea how low of a value I could use that would go through eventually with a good probability? I'm in no hurry at all with this. Thanks!

[1715084273]

1715084273

[ranochigo]

Unfortunately I didn't really make a graph of minmempool fees but from my experience, the minimum fees tends to fluctuate at about 5 to 6 sat/vbyte.

The lowest transaction which I have confirmed so far is about 8sat/vbyte. On weekends, I use 10sat/vbyte for a fairly high probability. Would it be better to use mempool.space and see if you can find a suitable compromise?

** I don't exactly recommend people to switch servers for the sole purpose of getting lower transactions broadcasted. Reason being, even if you're able to push the TX through, it doesn't guarantee good propagation.

[leibnizster]

Unfortunately I didn't really make a graph of minmempool fees but from my experience, the minimum fees tends to fluctuate at about 5 to 6 sat/vbyte.

The lowest transaction which I have confirmed so far is about 8sat/vbyte. On weekends, I use 10sat/vbyte for a fairly high probability. Would it be better to use mempool.space and see if you can find a suitable compromise?

** I don't exactly recommend people to switch servers for the sole purpose of getting lower transactions broadcasted. Reason being, even if you're able to push the TX through, it doesn't guarantee good propagation.

I've created a transaction at the end of January with 5.3 sat/byte and it went through in something like 30 minutes. The fees seem to have increased since then.

Since your goal is consolidate outputs and you're not in hurry, i would recommend you to do it later when it's possible to broadcast transaction with 1 sat/vbyte.

The trouble is I have no idea when (even if) that will be possible

[ranochigo]

I've created a transaction at the end of January with 5.3 sat/byte and it went through in something like 30 minutes. The fees seem to have increased since then.

Sure did.

The trouble is I have no idea when (even if) that will be possible

Even if Schnorr and Taproot, that would be fairly far in the future. Activation logic hasn't even been integrated yet.
I don't expect 1sat/vbyte to be viable in the near future. Electrum does automatically rebroadcast transactions if it isn't included in the server and if it doesn't violate the min fee (someone please CMIIW). Just creating a transaction with a fee that you're willing to pay would be sufficient. Don't worry about mempool min fee, if your transaction can't meet that criteria, it would almost certainly not get confirmed anytime soon anyways; there's 100vMB worth of transaction before you.

[Charles-Tim]

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For over a month now, even 5 sat/vbyte transactions are not getting confirmed by miners, the lowest getting confirmed recently are 10 sat/vbyte and above. Because the address used is segwit, sat/vbyte will be used, you can use mempool.space for the tracking of the lowest possible fee. Tomorrow is Sunday, fee are most often lowest on Sunday, but likely may not drop more than 10 sat/vbyte. If you think paying such amount is too huge, you can try and wait for you are not in a hurry, but the mempool for now can not confirm such low transactions that are less than 10 sat/vbyte for now.

Me either. However, upcoming Bitcoin improvement (Schnorr signature and Taproot) will reduce transaction size on some cases, so i expect the condition will be better.

You can check out the input and output vbyte from this open source vsize calculator, also upcoming taproot transaction vbyte are included.

Segwit, 1 input and 1 output: the vsize= 109.5 vbyte
Pay-to-taproot (P2TR), 1 input, 1 output: the vsize= 111 vbyte

The transaction fee for both are almost the same with segwit being slightly lower than P2TR. So, I do not think it will be the solution. I will still prefer to make use of segwit addresses for making non-multisig payments for still having slightly lower fee. But, what makes P2TR beneficial is that multisig transactions will be indistinguishable from normal single payment wallet transactions, in this case, the fee for multisig transactions will be reduced like that of single payment wallets.

[Lucius]

Any idea how low of a value I could use that would go through eventually with a good probability? I'm in no hurry at all with this. Thanks!

If you have time to play with fees, I recommend that you learn how to read mempool and pay special attention to the time of the weekend when fees are usually the lowest.  However, as others have already said, you should not expect anything less than 5 sat/byte to pass, because at the moment even 7sat/ byte puts you in a position of almost 20 MB from the top.

Let's say that 8 or 9 sat has a very good chance for the weekend, and that with 10 sat you currently can get confirmation in the next block - and even if such a transaction gets stuck, you can push it with ViaBTC accelerator for free.

https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,24h,weight

[LoyceV]

My educated guess: go for 7 sat/byte if you want it confirmed by tomorrow.
My advice: use the Coins tab in Electrum, select (hold CTRL) only the largest inputs, right-click to Spend them. Consolidate those at 7 sat/byte, and use a lower fee for the smallest inputs.
Considering you own old funds, you may want to have a look at Forkcoin claiming.

[leibnizster]

Thank you for the replies. I've already consolidated the largest inputs, so I'm OK from that point of view. The idea of paying almost $100 in BTC to consolidate the remaining inputs is a bit crazy to me, so I'll just wait until the fees go down. I know pretty much nothing of these new improvements, would Schnoor and Taproot have any affect on transactions done with a legacy address (so not SegWit)?

[ranochigo]

I know pretty much nothing of these new improvements, would Schnoor and Taproot have any affect on transactions done with a legacy address (so not SegWit)?

No. Taproot is a new format and this entails that users have to move their funds to a new address, if they want to take advantage of it. The transactions are smaller when it's a multisig (n-of-m) but in terms of size, it won't benefit others that significantly. The assumption is that by optimizing them, the size per transaction goes down and thus other transaction types can pay less fees and fit into a block. Since you have to first transfer it into another TR address, I doubt it'll help much.

Also, Multisig transactions shouldn't form a significant portion of the network.