Is electrum a theif?

[jumbojam]

I have UPDATED this question please see below the original content........

My first experience of using bit coin:

I bought £20 worth of bitcoin. It cost me £27 WTF?

I ended up with 0.47 mBTC in an electrum wallet.

I tried sending 0.25 to a company. I was told the fees were too high... like 7000% higher than the amount I was sending?  WTF?

It turns out this has something to do with having a wallet using 2FA ?

Today I tried to send the money again. Today the electrum wallet tells me I do not have enough funds? WTF?

I clearly do have 0.46 mBTC in the wallet.

NEXT....

I created a new wallet NOT using 2FA.

I tried transfering the funds in this first wallet to the new wallet by generating a recieve adress in the new wallet and sending to that adress from the old wallet. The old wallet still just tells me "Not enough funds" WTF?

Is my money now trapped in a thief called electrum?

UPDATE:

OK So I see many replies and many people seem to believe I am either wrong, inexperienced or somehow misguided.
So.... for clarity I am now including screen shots of what I am looking at and the process I am executing.

First consideration... I downloaded the Electrum wallet program from Electrum.org and it is version 4.0.9

Please visit this url to view a series of screenshots that demonstrate what I see and what I am doing:

https://www.basilsimon.com/screenshots/

Any positive assistance to recover my funds would be greatly appreciated.

[1714055788]

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[1714055788]

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[rdluffy]

It doens't make any sense

Electrum is just a wallet and you can set the amount of fees for every transaction.

Where did you bought BTC? You have to check the fees first, and learn how to use before any another transaction and before call anyone a thief

There's nothing related to 2FA, this is just a method to increase security
Didn't know the 2FA uses another service and it's not free - my bad in this phrase above, sorry.

When you check your balance, it shows 0 coins?

Check if you downloaded the correct Electrum, it's: https://electrum.org/

[btc_angela]

We don't know where you buy your bitcoin in the first place.

As far as Electrum goes, it's one of the best wallet, maybe you need to tweak some settings to be able to set "manual fee".

You can go to "Electrum"->"Preferences" and check "Advance preview". And then upon clicking "Pay" a new windows will appear that will let you choose the fee by sliding, just like this image below:

[The Cryptovator]

There's nothing related to 2FA, this is just a method to increase security

Wrong. There is a fee for 2FA. Electrum isn't like any other web wallets where doesn't require extra fees. Electrum use Trusted Coin for 2FA where they require a fees. The fee is like below.

Pay every 20 transactions: 0.000025 BTC/tx (0.0005 BTC total)
Pay every 100 transactions: 0.0000125 BTC/tx        (0.00125 BTC total) 

So, most probably OP facing an issue due to Trusted Coin 2FA. Sorry to see OP's first experience with Bitcoin is bad. But you need to study more before blaming. Electrum has nothing to do with your coin since it's a noncustodial open-source wallet. You just need to learn how to use it. So you would set your transaction fee as you want.

[DarkArrow]

Bitcoin is not friendly for microtransactions because of the fees. Sure, you can try setting the lowest fees you can pay, but that will put your transaction at the bottom of the pool and it can take hours or days before it goes through (or be rejected).

[DannyHamilton]

Electrum is not a thief.  You are just doing things without first taking the time to understand what you are doing.

First of all, you chose to set up 2FA on your Electrum wallet.
When you make that choice, Electrum warns you that you will pay additional fees to a third party providing the 2fa service.

Electrum ALSO explains how to recover your funds into a wallet that does NOT have 2FA enabled.

You were provided with this information and then had to click an "OK" button.  Clearly, you clicked the button without first reading what you were accepting.

Do you still have the recovery seed phrase from the wallet with the 2FA?  If so, you can use "Restore Wallet", don't choose 2FA, and then enter the seed phrase from that wallet.

Again, this was already explained when you chose 2FA in the first place:

https://imgur.com/eZuuRV5

[Smartvirus]

There is no way a wallet, be it Electrum wallet or which ever wallet you choose to use would steal your funds. It doesn't happen except, you've downloaded a fake wallet. That way, your funds might gradually or be completely swept off but, thats about that scenario downloading a cloned wallet and this clearly doesn’t seem like the case.

In your case, I think its basically your in ability to comfortably make use of the electrum wallet. You should be able to send that amount but, you've got to set the fees just about right I  sat/byte. Either you use the ETA/MEMPOOL/STATIC forms of payment and manually adjust till it agrees.
Its got nothing to do with 2FA security system as it's just an extra security and nothing more.

[Josefjix]

Electrum isn't the culprit here, it is actually your bit ignorance of how to use the service. They already told you here; "tried sending 0.25 to a company. I was told the fees were too high... like 7000% higher than the amount I was sending?  WTF?" Why you couldn't send out your coins, they would have to debit transaction fees from the available amount in your wallet. Once your balance can't cover for all these you would not be able to withdraw except you add more bitcoin buy buying few satoshis more.

[carlfebz2]

You do make out some wrong assumptions here.Electrum isnt the problem but the fees that had been set.
Try to look at these sites to have some clear up on your mind.
https://medium.com/@eaie6297/how-to-resolve-the-insanely-high-transaction-fees-in-electrum-wallet-98bc7dc74e64
https://bitcoinelectrum.com/how-to-manually-set-transaction-fees/

You can switch up between ETA,Mempool or Static and you can adjust those sliders basing off on how much fee you do tend to spend on.

[Saint-loup]

My first experience of using bit coin:
~snip

You're not the one to be blamed, the one to blame is the one who advised you to use Electrum for making your first transaction. Electrum is not a wallet intended for beginners.
So when you want to experiment features it's better first to use Electrum in Testnet mode and to use Testnet Bitcoins instead. tBTC are worthless and you can claim some of them on several faucets. Hence you avoid to put your funds at risk. Electrum is not designed for beginners, it can be a little bit tricky to understand and to use, that's why it's a good practice to train yourself with the Testnet mode first.

[yhiaali3]

If you want to transfer Bitcoin from the old wallet to the new wallet, I think you can do that without paying fees by importing, you copy the private key from the old wallet and then create a new wallet, then choose to import a private key and paste the private key, and so your coins will be transferred to the new wallet Without fees.

[ReiMomo]

As they said above, Electrum wallet is not a theft, it's OP to be blamed because of using this wallet without proper research.
OP used a 2FA wallet on Electrum which has a terrible fee when you transfer your bitcoin, why not you did not use a normal wallet like supported with Segwit wallet because they are most common to save the fee.

If you want to transfer Bitcoin from the old wallet to the new wallet, I think you can do that without paying fees by importing, you copy the private key from the old wallet and then create a new wallet, then choose to import a private key and paste the private key, and so your coins will be transferred to the new wallet Without fees.

You can try this suggestion and I guess this will work.
https://medium.com/@lindseymiles/importing-your-private-keys-into-electrum-bitcoin-wallet-14071ab26dfe

[Skieleton]

Electrum? Why aren't you using a hardware wallet? The second thing. The wallet does not specify transaction costs. It's just a place where coins are kept, nothing else.

[AB de Royse777]

Electrum? Why aren't you using a hardware wallet? The second thing. The wallet does not specify transaction costs. It's just a place where coins are kept, nothing else.

The user has no idea how Bitcoin works, how the wallet works - with the hardware wallet he will face the same issue and will think that he is getting scam. He is with the best wallet software than any other wallet except bitcoin core. All he needs to know it to learn how bitcoin transaction works, mempool things and how to set up manual fees to get the desired block.

[DarkDays]

Electrum is not a thief.  You are just doing things without first taking the time to understand what you are doing.

First of all, you chose to set up 2FA on your Electrum wallet.
When you make that choice, Electrum warns you that you will pay additional fees to a third party providing the 2fa service.

Accurate. It is your mistake that you haven't paid attention to what you was doing when setting up electrum. The wallet in itself is very good and trustworthy.

Having said this, dealing with small transactions just doesn't make it suitable, especially when you have 2FA. I'm sorry to have to say this but unfortunately you learnt the hard way.

[Iranus]

Electrum is just a wallet, you can use any wallet to hold your coins, and Electrum never charges any fee from the user, Blockchain will cut off some fees when you transfer your coin from your wallet to others. you can reduce and set this fees manually, you will find a fee estimator option in your performance tab in Electrum.
As you are new to here you have lack of skill, At first try to learn how cryptocurrency and wallets are working then use it. you will get video tutorial on YouTube, search these keywords "how to set fee manually in Electrum wallet"

[sheenshane]

OP, Electrum isn't a thief, you choose this wallet without properly oriented and you should ask for guidance first before using Electrum 2FA wallet.

All you need information regarding all the said above was on the link below, read and understand first because this wallet was held by a third party called "TrustedCoin".

Read and understand this link, https://api.trustedcoin.com/#/electrum-help and I hope you will learn from this mistake and it won't happen again in the future.

[nc50lc]

I tried sending 0.25 to a company. I was told the fees were too high... like 7000% higher than the amount I was sending?  WTF?

Hmm, 7000% of 0.25 mBTC is 17.25 mBTC or 0.01725 BTC, that's impossible to reach even if Electrum suggested you a 100+sat/vB fee rate considering that you've just bought the bitcoins so you should only have 1-2 inputs to spend.

Are you perhaps confused in the unit?
Electrum will default with "mBTC", you'll see it in the balance below, so if you want to send 0.25mBTC, do not type 0.00025 because it's actually 0.00000025 BTC.
If you want to use "BTC" instead, change it the setting: "Tools->Preferences->Base Unit".

Today I tried to send the money again. Today the electrum wallet tells me I do not have enough funds? WTF?

Looks like you don't have enough funds to pay for Trusted Coin's (2FA) service.
FYI, a 2FA Electrum wallet has a third-party service fee for your next few transactions that you'll have to pay in your first transaction: https://api.trustedcoin.com/#/electrum-help
You should've read the info/description when you selected 2FA during wallet creation.

If you want to opt-out: Restore your 12-word seed phrase to a new Electrum wallet (New/Restore->Wallet with two-factor authentication->I already have a seed)
and select "disable" when prompted what to do with the 2FA service.

[The Cryptovator]

Any positive assistance to recover my funds would be greatly appreciated.

Then you have to remove 2FA from the Electrum. But there is no direct way IMO. So you should follow @nc50lc's instructions to remove the wallet from 2FA. Make sure you have stored your seed in a safe place and it's right. Otherwise, you would end up with lost funds. So once removed 2FA then learn how to adjust fees and proceed with your transaction. If still, you aren't getting the point, then search on YouTube to see live examples. Anyway, there is no concern to be worried if your seed is safe.

[Saint-loup]

Hey jumbojam I just read your PM you sent me 2 weeks ago, I'm sorry I thought it was a spam.
I don't know if someone else helped you and if your issue has already been fixed but I don't want to try to help you by PM while you are a beginner and you are accusing people of being thieves. If something goes wrong because you didn't understand what I said or because I haven't been clear enough, I don't want to be accused by you. So I think it's better to continue seeking advice here or in the Beginner section.