[Electrum] Send bitcoin to multiple addresses | Mass payment | Multi payment

[AB de Royse777]

I was a bit surprised to see there are no tutorial or guide for sending multipayment using the latest Electrum. I found one but this is for old version. Anyway, many of my clients actually do not know how to do multisend LOL. I hope this will help them and the bitcointalk community too.

I will not cover security issues and others. When you are installing Electrum, please find your own study on these parts. The version I am using is Electrum-4.1.5

Let's start:

Download Electrum from the official site: https://electrum.org/#download
Verify if you can and then install.

Let's consider, I would like to send bitcoin to the following addresses. The amounts for each address are next to it, separated by a comma.

Code:

bc1qhvsk0l0zn7mssr9euuqj8als9wqx9wcrdk4lmr,	0.00087000
bc1qwarkwn5wg2ynqhna2hnweh4lq4pz2n7v8fgu54,	0.00087000
bc1qf5h5mnwdtww7f0ktx6qp8kve6pujgvazpt0je5,	0.00087000
bc1qc7k8p6mtgss6s3ws3ddhpw0hf6ywhpwzx49tez,	0.00087000
bc1q2863mlyr8q7dq584p9l2ckaxz0k3c9fkmfek38,	0.00087000
bc1q4hn0ggx0kutlmqlw0hr52evynpkwdt3jwucs52,	0.00087000
bc1qradlnp7tjnk4fke05ychyykfzhp7tdfwzqkm0g,	0.00087000
bc1qmm85cn7f0h6uduwkzzuvmpacystppgqxwxs0sq,	0.00087000

The addresses are from one of my signature campaign and all these addresses are publicly known, so I hope this does not do anything wrong with anyone's privacy.

-1. Open your wallet.

- 2a. Addresses tab > Chose the address you want to send coins > Hover on the address > Right click > Spend from
- 2b. Send tab
(Do any from 2a and 2b)

-3. Pay to text box: Copy and paste the address and amounts. One each line, same format as above.
(Total amount will be seen on the Amount label)

-4. Press Pay button.
(New window pops up)

-5. Set Target fee
(You can take help from jochen-hoenicke to set a fee for the next block.)

-6. Press Finalize button.
(Another window opens, replacing the one you just had)

-7. Press Sign button.
(Broadcast button will be activated)

-8. Press Broadcast button.

Good job!
Take the TX ID if you need.
TX ID for the above payment:

Code:

71e09fd52f4ad65a8efdd500fcfb0ecd5d8fb285ca03b90f6cb5941bb59231a7

Note: One address (output) as you can see is an additional address. This will be an address from the same wallet to send back the remaining balance. It's actually coming back to your wallet. Read this related post if you want to specify an address for change.

The settings I have used for my Electrum:

[1715085649]

1715085649

[1715085649]

1715085649

[1715085649]

1715085649

[AB de Royse777]

If anyone wants to translate, then feel free. Once you have it ready, then post the link. I will add it in this post.

[o_e_l_e_o]

One more thing to note:

Next to any one address, instead of specifying an exact amount, you can instead insert the character ! on its own. This will tell Electrum to send all remaining funds from your specified inputs to this address after allocating the necessary amounts to all the other outputs you have specified. This is useful if you want to redirect your change somewhere else, or if you want to eliminate the change output and just "round up" everything that's left over in to one of your outputs.

[BlackHatCoiner]

The minimum amount of bitcoins you can transact is 1 sat or 0.00000001. What exactly are you sending? You can't send 0.000870004002 as it has more than eight decimals.

[AB de Royse777]

The minimum amount of bitcoins you can transact is 1 sat or 0.00000001. What exactly are you sending? You can't send 0.000870004002 as it has more than eight decimals.

I did not pay attention to the decimals. Good catch.

Next to any one address, instead of specifying an exact amount, you can instead insert the character ! on its own. This will tell Electrum to send all remaining funds from your specified inputs to this address after allocating the necessary amounts to all the other outputs you have specified. This is useful if you want to redirect your change somewhere else, or if you want to eliminate the change output and just "round up" everything that's left over in to one of your outputs.

Thanks for this. I didn't have it in mind. It was a quick post without spending much time. Hopefully now it is a complete topic.

[LoyceV]

-5. Set Target fee

You have enabled Advanced preview already (as seen from your screenshots). Without that, and especially when you use Pay to many, it doesn't hurt to click "Advanced" first, to make sure everything is as expected.

I also prefer to to show all details by default: click Tools > Preferences > Transactions > tick Advanced preview.

[Saltius]

I don't wan't to use those so-called change addresses provided by Electrum.
Thus I always use pay to many function so I can manually chose change addresses.

[NeuroticFish]

I don't wan't to use those so-called change addresses provided by Electrum.
Thus I always use pay to many function so I can manually chose change addresses.

If you want to send the change back to original address, you can obtain the behavior much easier, if you uncheck Tools->Preferences->Transactions: Use change addresses

Also if you use non-standard change address, the hardware wallet may complain (my Ledger does).

[o_e_l_e_o]

I don't wan't to use those so-called change addresses provided by Electrum.
Thus I always use pay to many function so I can manually chose change addresses.

If you are not using the provided change addresses so you can redirect the change to a different wallet, perhaps a different address type to confuse transaction heuristics and blockchain analysis, or perhaps to deposit to an account at a service, then that's a great idea and good use of your change.

If, however, you are doing as NeuroticFish suspects and just sending the change back to the same address it came from, then can I ask why you are doing that? It achieves absolutely nothing beneficial, it does not make future transactions any smaller, it does not save you on fees, but it does compromise your privacy and the privacy of other people you are transacting with (and potentially even your security in rare cases).

[Saltius]

I don't wan't to use those so-called change addresses provided by Electrum.
Thus I always use pay to many function so I can manually chose change addresses.

If you are not using the provided change addresses so you can redirect the change to a different wallet, perhaps a different address type to confuse transaction heuristics and blockchain analysis, or perhaps to deposit to an account at a service, then that's a great idea and good use of your change.

If, however, you are doing as NeuroticFish suspects and just sending the change back to the same address it came from, then can I ask why you are doing that? It achieves absolutely nothing beneficial, it does not make future transactions any smaller, it does not save you on fees, but it does compromise your privacy and the privacy of other people you are transacting with (and potentially even your security in rare cases).

I haven't reused addresses for quite a few years.

Most time I just choose the next address to the spend address in the wallet address list, and electrum would colour it green so I know it's my wallet's address.

Change jumping to different wallet address of mine happens sometimes for some certain transactions for the benefit you mentioned.

[pooya87]

The minimum amount of bitcoins you can transact is 1 sat or 0.00000001.

Technically speaking the minimum amount of bitcoin you can send is 0 and practically speaking due to standard rules it depends on your transaction but the minimum would be about 294 satoshi.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Most time I just choose the next address to the spend address in the wallet address list, and electrum would colour it green so I know it's my wallet's address.

Then again I don't see the benefit of doing this. Letting Electrum send your change to a designated change address doesn't make it any less "your wallet's address". It will be highlighted yellow instead of green to show that it is a change address. By using your system, you confuse which UTXOs in your wallet are change and which have come from external sources, making it more likely for you to compromise your privacy by combining UTXOs you wanted to keep separate or combining multiple change UTXOs in the same transaction.