Should I create a new segwit wallet?

[electruminium]

I have some btc in a legacy electrum wallet (when I go to receive and select new address they all begin with 1).

I think I should store my btc in a segwit wallet.

Should I create a new segwit wallet and simply send my btc there?
Is there a way to upgrade my wallet without incurring a fee?
Is there a way to retain the history (not a major issue if not) from the old wallet?

Thanks for any advice.

[jackg]

You can't upgrade a wallet you'll have to make a new one and send the old funds there.

You can, however, set the funds to have a low fee when being transfered. Or, if you're holding a few btc (not looking to spend everything) you can just send the largest addressed balance or largest inputs to the new wallet (this can be done via the addresses tab, I think the coins tab also shows inputs - found among the menus at the top of the wallet main screen).

I'd also wait for Sunday to try to do this because you'll benefit a lot more from the fees being lower.

[Charles-Tim]

I think I should store my btc in a segwit wallet.

Yes, for low fee. If you use segwit, the fee will be reduced by 42% for 1 input and 2 output transactions, the amount you can save increases as the input increases, the fee will be reduced by 50% for 10 inputs and 2 output transactions. So, segwit reduces transaction fee.

Should I create a new segwit wallet and simply send my btc there?

This is the best option. Make sure you are using the latest version of electrum, check https://electrum.org to check the latest version, version 4.1.1 and up will create a segwit wallet by default. You can just create a new wallet (or second wallet on the same updated version of the electrum wallet app), send the bitcoin on the old wallet to the new wallet. Then, delete the old wallet after the Bitcoin has been successfully sent and confirmed.

Is there a way to upgrade my wallet without incurring a fee?

No in this case. You can import the seed phrase to the new wallet without fee needed, but this will still be your old legacy wallet.

Is there a way to retain the history (not a major issue if not) from the old wallet?

No. You are transferring to new wallet entirely which will begin its own new history.
Edit:
Do not forget to make a proper offline seed phrase backup of your newly created segwit wallet, having like three offline seed phrase backups which should be stored in different safe locations.

[hosseinimr93]

version 4.1.1 and up will create a segwit wallet by default.

Electrum 4.1.0 create a segwit wallet by default too.

Then, delete the old wallet after the Bitcoin has been successfully sent and confirmed.

You should never delete a wallet.

Sigh... why delete a wallet instead of moving it aside and keeping the old copy just in case?  You should never delete a wallet.

[nc50lc]

-snip-
Is there a way to upgrade my wallet without incurring a fee?

There is a workaround that incur a fee but in a sense that the transfer to the SegWit wallet is "free".

In your next transaction, send the change to your new bc1 Electrum wallet instead of letting Electrum select a change address,
To do that, follow this:

• Let's say you're paying someone, open Electrum and enable "pay to many" using the menu: "Tools->Pay to many".
• Paste the receiver's address in the "Pay to" field followed by a comma ',' and the amount, for example:
  

  1bitcoineateraddressDONTSENDf59kue,0.05

• Then to the next line (Hit Enter), paste a receiving address from your new SegWit Electrum wallet followed by a comma and an exclamation point '!'
  (that means to send all of the remainng balance to that address), for example:
  

  1bitcoineateraddressDONTSENDf59kue,0.05
  bc1bitcoineateraddressDONTsegQDaya,!

• Lastly, click "Pay" and finish sending the transaction as usual.

That's good enough if you're sure that the addresses you've copied are correct.
But if you want to make sure that the transaction is sending the change to your new wallet, you can export the transaction to the SegWit Electrum before broadcasting it.
To do that:

• Instead of clicking "send" in the pay window, click "Advanced" instead.
• In the "Advanced Preview", set the fee and other options you want to change then click "finalize", click "sign" (type your password) to sign it,
• After that, export the transaction by using "Export->Copy to clipboard" (lower-left).
• Open your SegWit Electrum and use the menu "Tools->Load transaction from text", paste the exported transaction and load it.
• If you see that the other output is highlighted in green, it means that it's going into your wallet and it's safe to click "broadcast".

[NeuroticFish]

I have some btc in a legacy electrum wallet (when I go to receive and select new address they all begin with 1).

I think I should store my btc in a segwit wallet.

If you don't spend those coins, imho you should not hurry with this change.

Should I create a new segwit wallet and simply send my btc there?
Is there a way to upgrade my wallet without incurring a fee?

The only way is to create a SegWit wallet and send your coins there. This means that you will have to pay the miners' fee.
The miners' fee depends on how busy the network is and how big your transaction is (not the amount of money, instead the size in bytes). For example, if you received coins many times to that address, the size of the transaction will be bigger.

So I suggest you watch a website like https://mempool.space/ or https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,24h and if you see the mempool almost empty or the fees very low, then it would be the moment for your move.
This way you won't pay much. But again, this is feasible only if you don't intend to spend in the near future, since I don't know when the fees will get very low again, it may be in the next week-end or in months.
Usually the fees are lower in week-ends.

Is there a way to retain the history (not a major issue if not) from the old wallet?

It's usually recommended to keep a backup of the old wallet, just in case. And then it will have the history.
Also if by chance all the transactions are made with only one address from the old wallet, it will be easy to see all the history on any blockchain explorer just by starting (backwards) from the transaction that sends the funds to the new wallet (but not in the wallet).

[hugeblack]

I have some btc in a legacy electrum wallet (when I go to receive and select new address they all begin with 1).
I think I should store my btc in a segwit wallet.

Using "segwit wallet" will give you cheaper fees based on several factors in addition to the number of times you want to send coins from.
If you use your wallet only once, using "segwit wallet" may mean more completed with low return from low fees.
Use this table to know how much you earn from using segwit and If you find you are spending too much money on fees, go to @nc50lc suggestion

In	Out	legacy (start with 1)	segwit(p2sh start with 3)	segwit(bech32 start with bc1)
1	1	192	134	110
2	1	339	225	178

[electruminium]

Thanks for all the replies. Lots of great advice there! appreciate it.