How high can the transaction fees become?

[BlockCheney]

Have there been made any calculations how high the transaction fees for bitcoin main network could get in the future?

I currently have my BTC stored on a MultiSig cold wallet, which can't be connected to a lightning node. Do you think it's a better idea to move them to a lightning wallet like on electrum for example before the transaction fees get too high? I want to avoid paying a big amount just for one transaction in the main network

[BlackBoss_]

Have there been made any calculations how high the transaction fees for bitcoin main network could get in the future?

You can check mempools there. The first website is more easily to use but if you need some advance, use the second website.
https://mempool.space/
https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC%20(default%20mempool),24h,weight

I currently have my BTC stored on a MultiSig cold wallet, which can't be connected to a lightning node. Do you think it's a better idea to move them to a lightning wallet like on electrum for example before the transaction fees get too high? I want to avoid paying a big amount just for one transaction in the main network

You can use Lightning Network in Electrum wallet but you have to open your channel.

Basics of the Lightning Network
Electrum Lightning Network walkthrough
The Lightning Network FAQ
[Complete] A fortnight of lessons on the lightning network
Overview of lightning network nodes owned by forum users

[Kruw]

Have there been made any calculations how high the transaction fees for bitcoin main network could get in the future?

The only thing more impossible to predict than the price of Bitcoin in the future is the price of Bitcoin's fees in the future.

I currently have my BTC stored on a MultiSig cold wallet, which can't be connected to a lightning node. Do you think it's a better idea to move them to a lightning wallet like on electrum for example before the transaction fees get too high? I want to avoid paying a big amount just for one transaction in the main network

If you are storing your coins for long term, keep them in multisig (and make sure you don't accumulate too many small UTXOs).  If you are spending your coins, keep some in Lightning.

[Velemir Sava]

I have never tried it, but if the level of traffic density on the network, for example some time ago, the average gas cost was above $10-15 dollars and it makes us confused about whether to do it or not, especially if the amount we want to withdraw is small given the gas costs that have to be paid. not worth it/expensive.

At first glance, express transactions usually require lower fees and are processed faster in an effort to avoid high transaction fees on the Bitcoin main network and save costs. However, if you want to try it like in Electrum, that's okay, the important thing is that it supports the function you mean.

[Litzki1990]

When there are a lot of Bitcoin transactions, Bitcoin transaction fees usually go up a lot. For some time now we have been noticing this issue regularly that Bitcoin transaction fees are high although sometimes these transaction fees come back to normal levels but still most of the times we see transaction fees high. Looking at the past and present, we have to imagine what Bitcoin transaction fees might look like in the future. In the past we have also noticed that the transaction fees of Bitcoin are sometimes very high but after a few days the transaction fees are back to normal and we are also seeing the same now. After a sudden spike in transaction fees, transaction fees are back to normal. As the transaction fees are changing now, maybe the transaction fees will change in the future as well.

[Plaguedeath]

How high the fee depends on Bitcoin price and the transaction size (address type, inputs, outputs etc), so the answer is ∞ aka infinity.

Lightning network is a good choice to make your transactions cheaper, but I'm not sure if it's good to used as long term holding because it's not yet 100% secure The end of Lightning Network? , it's not the end of LN, but I just want to show if there's still a vulnerability in this network.

[headingnorth]

Average transaction fee ranged from $5 to $9 between Nov 12 and Nov 15, then suddenly shot up to $18 today (Nov 16) which is where we are at the moment according to this chart.

Bitcoin Avg. Transaction Fee historical chart
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html#3m

Why the big spike causing the fee to double to $18 in one day? Who knows? Ordinals?

[tbct_mt2]

Why the big spike causing the fee to double to $18 in one day? Who knows? Ordinals?

It is surely because of Ordinals, Inscriptions.

https://dune.com/dataalways/ordinals
https://dune.com/dgtl_assets/bitcoin-ordinals-analysis

Two analytical pages for Ordinals, Inscription facts above clearly show you some spikes recently from Ordinals, Inscriptions. It is not new as Glassnode Insights had a report on it too.
Inscriptions, Mempools and Miners

They are just coming back recent days.

[Jawhead999]

Why the big spike causing the fee to double to $18 in one day? Who knows? Ordinals?

Yes, as you can see there's a sudden high liquidity in this token and Bitcoin fee is increased at this time too. You can check the recent block in mempool.space, take this TX as an example where someone willing to send 0.00000546 BTC by paying $11.24 fees, 546 Satoshi is a dust limit/smallest valid transaction in Bitcoin network.

[philipma1957]

well my sha gear is happy. blocks are about 8 coins to 8.5 coins.

A 25% markup.

and as I explained time and time again this can’t be done every day for ever but it can easily be done for one week  of every 13.

It will back off by monday or tuesday.

then fire up again.

[Poker Player]

Here we go again with the spamming crap in the mempool. I remember a couple of weeks ago or so I was able to do a transaction for a decent price in fees, but now if you want to do a transaction and get it confirmed fast it's going to cost you almost $10, and if the transaction you send is $50 it's a 20% fee. We will have to wait for the craziness to go down a bit.

[Bitcoin_people]

Bitcoin's free increases as the transaction volume increases. For days we see this problem where free is low for a few days and suddenly goes high. It takes a long time for this bitcoin transaction free to return to normal and we have to wait for that time, because it is not possible for us to trade with such a high free. Moreover, we have seen in the past when the Bitcoin market was at its peak and many transactions were free of charge. But it didn't stay for long but it came back to normal again. However, if most of the stuck transactions are completed, transaction free may return to normal. Trading pressure has eased a bit today as compared to yesterday and trading is free and reduced, hopefully it will return to normal very soon.

[tbct_mt2]

Yes, as you can see there's a sudden high liquidity in this token and Bitcoin fee is increased at this time too. You can check the recent block in mempool.space, take this TX as an example where someone willing to send 0.00000546 BTC by paying $11.24 fees, 546 Satoshi is a dust limit/smallest valid transaction in Bitcoin network.

Dust limits are different for Legacy and Native Segwit, Taproot addresses.

Legacy addresses: 546 satoshi
Native Segwit addresses: 294 satoshi
Taproot addresses: 330 satoshi

How was the dust limit of 546 satoshis was chosen? Why not 550 satoshis?
What is meant by Bitcoin dust?

Code:

dust = (input_vsize + output_size) × 3 sat/vB

[FinneysTrueVision]

Do you think it's a better idea to move them to a lightning wallet like on electrum for example before the transaction fees get too high? I want to avoid paying a big amount just for one transaction in the main network

The fees are already too high. The best time to open a lightning channel is when fees are low because it requires an on-chain transaction. Lightning is meant for smaller payments so perhaps you shouldn't move your entire cold storage to lightning. I would just open a channel big enough for a few payments and occasionally top it off.

[lombok]

Why the big spike causing the fee to double to $18 in one day? Who knows? Ordinals?

Yes, as you can see there's a sudden high liquidity in this token and Bitcoin fee is increased at this time too. You can check the recent block in mempool.space, take this TX as an example where someone willing to send 0.00000546 BTC by paying $11.24 fees, 546 Satoshi is a dust limit/smallest valid transaction in Bitcoin network.

So when many projects are on the BRC-20 network and it turns out to be excellent, when many transactions are carried out on BRC-20 coins this can be the main cause of congestion on the BTC network which will ultimately increase transaction costs. Is not it?

Yesterday Bitcoin transaction fees increased, I was willing to increase transaction fees to 56 satoshis/vbyte. I didn't check transaction fees and BTC network congestion, which made my first transaction take up to 2 days to get confirmation due to the increase in BTC network and fees.

[philipma1957]

Do you think it's a better idea to move them to a lightning wallet like on electrum for example before the transaction fees get too high? I want to avoid paying a big amount just for one transaction in the main network

The fees are already too high. The best time to open a lightning channel is when fees are low because it requires an on-chain transaction. Lightning is meant for smaller payments so perhaps you shouldn't move your entire cold storage to lightning. I would just open a channel big enough for a few payments and occasionally top it off.

or recognize why it happens.

scrypt is the better algo for small sends.

both doge and ltc are dirt cheap to send coins .  and they do it quickly.

they are not going away .

also so far no action against ordinals. so it appears the powers to be are fine with sending scrapes to ltc/doge for small payments.

no matter what btc does other than adding a viable coin for merge mining btc makes 1 block and ltc doge makes 12 blocks.

[Kruw]

or recognize why it happens.

scrypt is the better algo for small sends.

both doge and ltc are dirt cheap to send coins .  and they do it quickly.

The mining algorithm has nothing to do with transaction fees.

[yhiaali3]

In my opinion, you should keep your Bitcoin stored on your cold wallet for now until the fee madness subsides a bit. Transferring Bitcoin to an Electreum wallet will cost you a lot of fees for now.

In addition, you need to pay fees to open your own channel on the Bitcoin Lightning Network. This means that you will pay a lot of fees at the moment, so perhaps it is better for you to wait a little while, perhaps the fee madness will subside and you will return to normal.

[Strongkored]

Yesterday Bitcoin transaction fees increased, I was willing to increase transaction fees to 56 satoshis/vbyte. I didn't check transaction fees and BTC network congestion, which made my first transaction take up to 2 days to get confirmation due to the increase in BTC network and fees.

If your wallet provides the RBF (Replace by Fee) feature, you can do this as soon as you realize the network is congested and you really need the transaction to be confirmed immediately and also ready to pay higher fees.
I often do this when I don't check the mempool first.
The current situation is unpleasant for small transactions because the fees involved are quite unreasonable, making people reluctant to transact with Bitcoin.

[adaseb]

The fees will stay high. I don’t think we will have a 1-2 sat byte period in a while, however the fees we are paying now aren’t sustainable. I am talking about 250sat btye fees, I think this will die down as soon as the ordinal market is taking a breather.

If you can try and make your transactions on the weekend, usually fees are lower. Last week it was easy to get 30 sat byte transactions out during the weekend. Then when Monday came the fees spiked right up again.