Does transaction size lower mining fee?

[Terry99]

First, I understand that I’m asking a noobie question at a time of reduced mining where fees are unusually high.  Yesterday I accepted Electrum’s prompted fee default of 36.56%, paying an $8.23 fee on a $22.52 test transaction (actually 0.146 mBTC mining fee on a 0.4 mBTC transfer).  Regarding the recommended 36.56%, does size matter?  In other words, does the size of a transaction change the recommended mining cost as a percentage?  For example, at that day/time and those Electrum defaults, if the transfer was for 1 BTC, would it likely be a $20,000 fee recommended for reasonable processing speed?

(Aside: I’m having trouble reconciling a 5-digit fee cost of transferring a single bitcoin with a recent Coindesk story reporting “Per multiple sources, the average fee is roughly $59.”)

https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-transaction-fees-more-expensive-than-ever

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[mocacinno]

yes, the size (or virtual size) matters... This has nothing to do with the value that's being transferred.

Size is determined by the #of unspent outputs being used as an input, # of new unspent outputs being generated and the type of wallet you used... And a very little bit by the type of the receiving address.

[bitmover]

 Regarding the recommended 36.56%, does size matter?  In other words, does the size of a transaction change the recommended mining cost as a percentage?  For example, at that day/time and those Electrum defaults, if the transfer was for 1 BTC, would it likely be a $20,000 fee recommended for reasonable processing speed?

No. Transaction fee depends on transaction size, which is measured in virtual bytes (vbytes)

The size of the transaction is calculated based on the address format (legacy occupy more vbytes than segwit) and the number of inputs and outputs.

The outputs are the number of destination addresses, and they are often 2 (one destination and one change address, back to your wallet).

THe inputs is a little more complicated, but they are basically the number of times you received bitcoin. If you received a lot of times, you will pay more in taxes than if you received only once, even if it is in the same address.


I made this tool where you can play around with transaction size X number of input/outputs  and address format
https://bitcoindata.science/plot-your-transaction-in-mempool.html

  For example, at that day/time and those Electrum defaults, if the transfer was for 1 BTC, would it likely be a $20,000 fee recommended for reasonable processing speed?

(Aside: I’m having trouble reconciling a 5-digit fee cost of transferring a single bitcoin with a recent Coindesk story reporting “Per multiple sources, the average fee is roughly $59.”)

https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-transaction-fees-more-expensive-than-ever

You can go to https://mempool.space and see what is the recommened fee per vbyte there.

What is important when you are trying to set the fee is the "sat/vbyte" option. This is basically the only thing you will have control when making a transaction, and this is how much you are paying per byte in your transaction.

The more you pay per byte, the faster it will be confirmed. As you cannot change the transaction size anymore (you already choose your address format and how many inputs you have) you will ahve to pay for its "space" in the blockchain.

Which wallet you are using?  You should use no more than 50 sat/byte now, which won't cost you a lot.

[Terry99]

mocacinno and bitmover,

Thanks for disabusing me of some grave misunderstanding about how miner fees work.  I switched my Electrum to Mempool, looked in at an early hour, and put in my numbers just to see, and wow, that’s an amazing cost swing compared to height of the business day yesterday.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-transaction-fees-more-expensive-than-ever

That article spreads bad information. How they can write that the Bitcoin transaction fee is in the all time high?

Jochen-hoenicke's mempool chart with 1Y shows the fee rate for Bitcoin transactions is very cheap. The most recent time you see the mempool is clear like this is in January 2021, 3 moths ago.

In February and April, there are days Bitcoin transaction fees are very expensive (check the chart). I doubt about the intention of OP. Why did the OP create this topic recently, not in April? Is it just a release to make FUD?

That article was published in April, not in May.