Excessive Elektrum Fees

[sunsprawl]

Hi all, I'm trying to send some BTC from my Elektrum wallet and I'm getting a minimum 15% fee and up to 2200% fees for the transaction. I first tried with the previous version and upgraded to the new version and get the same fee scale. Does anyone have any information about what might be going on? I'm on a computer with Windows 10. TIA!

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[nc50lc]

You might be sending amount in "BTC" but your Electrum's unit is in "mBTC"...
2200% of the amount is ridiculously high specially with todays average fee rate.

Check the setting: "Tools->Preferences->Base Unit", then set it from "mBTC" to "BTC".

You can also set the fee rate estimation from "ETA" to "mempool" for lower average (1 up to 0.5mb from tip for the priority).
You can set it in the drop-down menu beside the fee-rate slider during the send dialogue box or advanced send menu.

[pooya87]

Are you by any chance using the 2FA wallet because the first transaction of a 2FA wallet will pay a fee to the service you are using that is equal to 0.0005BTC and it could look like a "high fee" if the amount you are transferring is small.

[hugeblack]

Hi all, I'm trying to send some BTC from my Elektrum wallet and I'm getting a minimum 15% fee and up to 2200% fees for the transaction. I first tried with the previous version and upgraded to the new version and get the same fee scale. Does anyone have any information about what might be going on? I'm on a computer with Windows 10. TIA!

I don't know how you calculated these percentages, but it is not how Bitcoin works or calculating transaction fees. It does not depend on the amount of money, but rather the number of input and output addresses, and the type of addresses.


Does your transaction have a lot of inputs? In other words, are you receiving a lot of small payments, running a faucet or receiving a lot of transactions?

In general, if you do not have a lot of input, and your addresses started with bc1, you will not pay a lot of fees.

[Pmalek]

You don't have to rely and use the estimates that Electrum suggests. Set your own fees. Right now while writing this post, mempool.space shows an almost empty mempool with less than 700 unconfirmed transactions. That means that 1 sat/vByte is all it takes (probably). But if you have hundreds of UTXO, it can be problematic.

If you set the fees to 1 sat/vByte or 1.1-1.2 sat/vByte just in case the mempools start to fill up and that would give your transaction a bit of an edge compared with everyone else paying only 1 sat, is it still too expensive for you?

[khaled0111]

Are you by any chance using the 2FA wallet because the first transaction of a 2FA wallet will pay a fee to the service you are using that is equal to 0.0005BTC and it could look like a "high fee" if the amount you are transferring is small.

I think OP is talking about the warning message Electrum displays when the fee you are going to pay is too high compared to the amount to be sent. In this case, 2fa can't be the cause because Electrum will send the 2fa fee to trustedcoin as a second/extra output not as a transaction fee, hence the too high fee warning message will not be displayed.
I believe the problem is with the denomination as nc50lc suggested. Electrum uses mBTC as denomination by default and most likely OP entered the amount he wants to send in BTC.

[sunsprawl]

You might be sending amount in "BTC" but your Electrum's unit is in "mBTC"...
2200% of the amount is ridiculously high specially with todays average fee rate.

Check the setting: "Tools->Preferences->Base Unit", then set it from "mBTC" to "BTC".

Yes, that is exactly what I was doing, thank you for the tip about changing the setting. Very much appreciated!

[NotATether]

Are you by any chance using the 2FA wallet because the first transaction of a 2FA wallet will pay a fee to the service you are using that is equal to 0.0005BTC and it could look like a "high fee" if the amount you are transferring is small.

Actually, 0.0005 [sic] BTC is still a worrying amount (wrt. price increases in future years)  just for providing 2FA.

That's basically $1.5 (assuming 1BTC ~=~ $30,000) for each 2FA wallet you create. This part is very important - it's not some one-time "lifetime" fee to enable 2FA in Electrum [which I believe would be much more logical].

If for any reason the BTC price skyrockets in a few years and there is no corresponding update from Electrum developers, people could easily end up paying around $10 for each 2FA wallet.

I'd say that 2FA should be abstracted out to an Electrum plugin with license keys that you have to buy from TrustedCoin for like 10 bucks (once/Electrum installation, as opposed to per-wallet)

[pooya87]

Are you by any chance using the 2FA wallet because the first transaction of a 2FA wallet will pay a fee to the service you are using that is equal to 0.0005BTC and it could look like a "high fee" if the amount you are transferring is small.

Actually, 0.0005 [sic] BTC is still a worrying amount (wrt. price increases in future years)  just for providing 2FA.

That's basically $1.5 (assuming 1BTC ~=~ $30,000) for each 2FA wallet you create. This part is very important - it's not some one-time "lifetime" fee to enable 2FA in Electrum [which I believe would be much more logical].

If for any reason the BTC price skyrockets in a few years and there is no corresponding update from Electrum developers, people could easily end up paying around $10 for each 2FA wallet.

I'd say that 2FA should be abstracted out to an Electrum plugin with license keys that you have to buy from TrustedCoin for like 10 bucks (once/Electrum installation, as opposed to per-wallet)

I believe the fee is paid for each 20 transactions which would make it $0.75 per tx for a very optional feature that people don't have to use and most users don't.
As for the price rise, I couldn't figure it out from the code but I don't think the fee is hard-coded into Electrum. It is received from the TrustedCoin server in which case it could be updated any time to lower the fee.

[hosseinimr93]

I believe the fee is paid for each 20 transactions which would make it $0.75 per tx for a very optional feature that people don't have to use and most users don't.

Right. The fee of 0.0005 BTC is paid for 20 transactions.
You can also pay 0.00125 for 100 transactions [Ref.]. In this way, the fee paid for each transaction would be only $0.375.

[DireWolfM14]

I believe the fee is paid for each 20 transactions which would make it $0.75 per tx for a very optional feature that people don't have to use and most users don't.

Right. The fee of 0.0005 BTC is paid for 20 transactions.
You can also pay 0.00125 for 100 transactions [Ref.]. In this way, the fee paid for each transaction would be only $0.375.

Even at $0.38 per transaction it's pretty darn expensive.  I guess for those who are not very technically savvy it's not too much to spend on security, but the same thing can be done for free.  A 2 of 2 (or 3) multisig wallet can accomplish the same thing for free.  One private key on a computer and another on a cell phone is essentially the same thing as a 2fa wallet with TrustedCoin as the second signer.

[pooya87]

Even at $0.38 per transaction it's pretty darn expensive.  I guess for those who are not very technically savvy it's not too much to spend on security, but the same thing can be done for free.  A 2 of 2 (or 3) multisig wallet can accomplish the same thing for free.  One private key on a computer and another on a cell phone is essentially the same thing as a 2fa wallet with TrustedCoin as the second signer.

Yeah, this is too complicated to setup for a newcomer. It only suites those with some technical knowledge of how bitcoin works and how to safely set something like this up. But I'd argue that someone who is "technically savvy" using a simple cold storage (with single sig like P2WPKH) using an airgap system is better and cheaper since their transaction size would be smaller too.

[Artemis3]

All my transactions cost 1 sat/B, you can set it manually and forget about the nonsense of "network fees". Just do it and check back tomorrow, so many things don't need instant payments it isn't even funny. And there is Lightning for the others.

[nc50lc]

All my transactions cost 1 sat/B, you can set it manually and forget about the nonsense of "network fees". Just do it and check back tomorrow, so many things don't need instant payments it isn't even funny. -snip-

Some are rushing to deposit to Exchange to be able to join the FOMO.
And as we know it, most Exchanges require a confirmation up to six so they can't send it with 1sat/vB during those times (high mempool size) or they'll miss selling it at their target price.

BTW, it's actually off-topic to the OP, he'd just mixed-up "mBTC" with "BTC".