High transaction fees affects those who DCA

[Agbamoni]

The current Bitcoin fees wouldn't have mattered to me because I am not selling, but the fees do matter because I DCA, and I don't want to leave my coins in the centralized exchange. This month, I have spent roughly $5 to $10 in transaction fees when I DCA every week. It may seem small, but in my country, it's enough to cover my feeding expenses for a month cumulatively.

I discussed this issue with my friend, and he suggested I use an exchange that utilizes the Lightning Network. According to him, this would help me get off with no fees any day. While I'm considering this alternative, another option is to wait for a month or two, then use the amount we kept for weekly DCA, hold it for a month or two, and lump sum. This way, i would incur just a one time fee. What are your thoughts on this? I feel like I may use the money kept for DCA for other expenses.

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[adultcrypto]

The current Bitcoin fees wouldn't have mattered to me because I am not selling, but the fees do matter because I DCA, and I don't want to leave my coins in the centralized exchange. This month, I have spent roughly $5 to $10 in transaction fees when I DCA every week. It may seem small, but in my country, it's enough to cover my feeding expenses for a month cumulatively.

This is the challenge some of us are also facing, the high transaction fees is not just allowing us make regular purchases since the amount is not so big. For people transacting huge amount, the fee is insignificant that they can pay it conveniently. But a situation whereeby the fee is close to your weekly investment amount, it becomes a big problem.

While I'm considering this alternative, another option is to wait for a month or two, then use the amount we kept for weekly DCA, hold it for a month or two, and lump sum. This way, i would incur just a one time fee. What are your thoughts on this? I feel like I may use the money kept for DCA for other expenses.

Consequently,  instead of weekly DCA, I'm also considering making it monthly to save me some bucks in terms of the fees. My investment budget for a month is not that big that I have to worry about the risk of keeping them in CEX. I just hope the fees normalises soon.

[mk4]

While I don't recommend unnecessarily leaving funds on exchanges, you're option here is to not withdraw the BTC after every DCA purchase. Instead, probably do the withdrawals biweekly/monthly(whichever you're comfortable with). That way, you'll significantly decrease your fee payments.

[Zaguru12]

Seriously DCAing in this period of time has been a thing of concern because in can’t move the funds to their wallets. I also encountered such problems when trying to purchase some bitcoin and had to pay close to 0.2 of the intended amount for DCA on transaction fees. The right idea is to buy bitcoin and accumulate and move it to your cold wallet biweekly or monthly or when the fees reduces a little. But the problem remains on which exchange.

My advice is to buy from non custodial exchanges like Bisq, aside the privacy advantage on bisq it also has an in-built wallet that can generate your seed for you and you can simply password it¹. This way you wouldn’t bother too much of any centralized exchange collapsing. You leave your funds on that personal bisq wallet and later move it to your cold wallet.

1. https://docs.bisq.network/secure-wallet

[Charles-Tim]

If exchanges is not involved, you can use ViaBTC free accelerator and use low fee like 10 sat/byte for legacy addresses, or 18 sat/vbyte for native segwit addresses.

For exchanges, you can use side chain to accumulate 5 to 10 times. Send the money back and convert it to bitcoin. Just do not leave huge amount on the side chain because they are not actually bitcoin but pegged with bitcoin price. They are altcoins.

I discussed this issue with my friend, and he suggested I use an exchange that utilizes the Lightning Network.

Good idea.

[EarnOnVictor]

The current Bitcoin fees wouldn't have mattered to me because I am not selling, but the fees do matter because I DCA, and I don't want to leave my coins in the centralized exchange. This month, I have spent roughly $5 to $10 in transaction fees when I DCA every week. It may seem small, but in my country, it's enough to cover my feeding expenses for a month cumulatively.

I discussed this issue with my friend, and he suggested I use an exchange that utilizes the Lightning Network. According to him, this would help me get off with no fees any day. While I'm considering this alternative, another option is to wait for a month or two, then use the amount we kept for weekly DCA, hold it for a month or two, and lump sum. This way, i would incur just a one time fee. What are your thoughts on this? I feel like I may use the money kept for DCA for other expenses.

The Mempool congestion has been an issue and who knows when the fees will be beaten lower to accommodate reasonable fees. This is a discouragement truly but is not the first time that we will experience this kind of situation, which is why I know it's not going to be the last.

You and your friend have also made the right suggestions, so don't be discouraged, I also advise you to continue to DCA without minding the situation. You can use your Debit/Credit card, P2P, or Lightning network if the money is not big. But if the money is big enough, I wouldn't mind the network fee if I were you, but I will be DCAing once a month.

This would have saved you a lot of money if followed and could be paying barely $3+ for the transaction a month if you study the Mempool correctly.

[Dave1]

The current Bitcoin fees wouldn't have mattered to me because I am not selling, but the fees do matter because I DCA, and I don't want to leave my coins in the centralized exchange. This month, I have spent roughly $5 to $10 in transaction fees when I DCA every week. It may seem small, but in my country, it's enough to cover my feeding expenses for a month cumulatively.

I discussed this issue with my friend, and he suggested I use an exchange that utilizes the Lightning Network. According to him, this would help me get off with no fees any day. While I'm considering this alternative, another option is to wait for a month or two, then use the amount we kept for weekly DCA, hold it for a month or two, and lump sum. This way, i would incur just a one time fee. What are your thoughts on this? I feel like I may use the money kept for DCA for other expenses.

I do agree, but this is just short term effect of the high transaction, sooner or later it will go down a bit. And obviously, you have to look at the long term, maybe 1-2 years still or at least when we are in the bull run you will forget that at one time brc20 ordinals clogged the network.

So just continue to accumulate as much as you can and simply ignore or just hold the money that you got and timing the network when it is not congestion.

You need to be just observant and in the end, everyone of us here will make a profit by doing DCA.

[salad daging]

The cost per week that you spend up to $10 for me can be said to be quite large especially if you conclude on the accumulative month, even if you buy P2P on the forum will still be charged above $3 or may be low.

Indeed, the lightning network is an alternative to avoiding more expensive fees but honestly the lightning network still has few users, compared to the onchain network which is more widely used including myself.

Or you can do it by saving money first until it accumulates one month and then buy on the exchange and withdraw it directly.
You can also buy every week and then hold it for 1 month on the exchange after the btc is large you can withdraw it at least this should not keep it on the exchange for long.

But if you only keep it on the exchange for 1 month I think it's not a problem in order to save costs.

[stompix]

I discussed this issue with my friend, and he suggested I use an exchange that utilizes the Lightning Network. According to him, this would help me get off with no fees any day. While I'm considering this alternative, another option is to wait for a month or two, then use the amount we kept for weekly DCA, hold it for a month or two, and lump sum.

It stops being DCA since you're going to buy in a slump sum that might be 50% of the average , for better or for worse, it could also be the exact average of for the whole year, exactly on that day but anyhow it will be better than spending 10% or 5% of fees, those are lost money anyhow.

I feel like I may use the money kept for DCA for other expenses.

That's your problem, and you must overcome that with discipline, if you feel like you're wasting that money on unnecessary expenses then better just incur the fees, at least you end up with something while buying rather than just spending, but again, it com down to what expenses you think of.

Anyhow I would suggest trying LN as your fried did, the rest are just measures that will chip money from you with other expenses
- moving between coins to save on withdraw fees and then change back to bitcoin will again incur extra fees
- using a dex will get you in problems with sending small sums to the buyer, you will see increase fees there
If we would have a truly cheaper solution for this ready then those exchanges would have already been out of business.

I do agree, but this is just short term effect of the high transaction, sooner or later it will go down a bit. And obviously, you have to look at the long term, maybe 1-2 years still or at least when we are in the bull run you will forget that at one time brc20 ordinals clogged the network.

You do realize that when saying from now on the network will be less congested it means that less people are going to actively use Bitcoin, right?
Cause you can't have 1sat/b byte transactions in the next block unless you have less than network capacity in waiting transactions.

While being a rosy pictures on the fee issue is quite a grim prediction for actual Bitcoin usage.

[legendbtc]

. What are your thoughts on this? I feel like I may use the money kept for DCA for other expenses.

To be honest, bitcoin transaction fees are becoming quite annoying for small investors like us. Today I just transferred a small amount of my bitcoin to an exchange to sell for fiat and if I remember correctly with 2 transactions, I lost almost $6 and I'm really uncomfortable with the fees. Yes, it's not a large amount of money but $6 for transaction fees is something that makes me feel unsatisfied. I usually don't sell my bitcoins but today I had urgent business so I had to sell some and I was quite surprised at the fee I had to pay.

[YUriy1991]

To be honest, bitcoin transaction fees are becoming quite annoying for small investors like us. Today I just transferred a small amount of my bitcoin to an exchange to sell for fiat and if I remember correctly with 2 transactions, I lost almost $6 and I'm really uncomfortable with the fees. Yes, it's not a large amount of money but $6 for transaction fees is something that makes me feel unsatisfied. I usually don't sell my bitcoins but today I had urgent business so I had to sell some and I was quite surprised at the fee I had to pay.

I also tried it yesterday and the results are almost the same as what you said in terms of the fee request range, and if approved then it can be executed, but it's still not bad compared to last week, almost 3x more than today. and the waiting time is up to five days before completion. Is this the case and do we seem forced to do it or is it just my opinion, regardless of network congestion when BTC is going up.

[Mahanton]

The current Bitcoin fees wouldn't have mattered to me because I am not selling, but the fees do matter because I DCA, and I don't want to leave my coins in the centralized exchange. This month, I have spent roughly $5 to $10 in transaction fees when I DCA every week. It may seem small, but in my country, it's enough to cover my feeding expenses for a month cumulatively.

I discussed this issue with my friend, and he suggested I use an exchange that utilizes the Lightning Network. According to him, this would help me get off with no fees any day. While I'm considering this alternative, another option is to wait for a month or two, then use the amount we kept for weekly DCA, hold it for a month or two, and lump sum. This way, i would incur just a one time fee. What are your thoughts on this? I feel like I may use the money kept for DCA for other expenses.

If you would really be that tending to make some DCA then the fees are high, then it would be that impossible that you wont really be able to make out those kind of calculations whether it would be worth it or not.

We do understand and really know or aware that storing up your coins on exchanges for too long does really impose that kind of risks on which this is something that must really be done considering about exchange hacks could really happen and this is something that we do avoid for it to happen and get caught with it since we know that are the things that you would be that able to experience on this case.
Making active transactions in between exchangers and with your non custodial wallet will really that hurt that much specially into those times where Bitcoins fees do always hit up $20
as far as i remember.

So your option whether you would really be that waiting for the network to come down or would really be paying up fees just because you are scared of the risk? which it
doesnt really make sense if you do such act.

[fuguebtc]

While I don't recommend unnecessarily leaving funds on exchanges, you're option here is to not withdraw the BTC after every DCA purchase. Instead, probably do the withdrawals biweekly/monthly(whichever you're comfortable with). That way, you'll significantly decrease your fee payments.

This is the solution I'm implementing, and it's not just a temporary solution during times of transaction fee spikes, I've been implementing it more regularly to save as much on transaction fees as possible . The collapse of FTX is a warning to us that storing assets for long periods of time on exchanges is something we should avoid. Furthermore, just because FTX collapsed doesn't mean the remaining exchanges will collapse anytime soon, and temporarily leaving some bitcoin on exchanges isn't a bad thing.

OP said he doesn't like storing bitcoins on exchanges, but I think he should consider what you said because I don't think it's too bad.

[OgNasty]

As long as you trust your exchange I don’t see any immediate need to withdraw. Certainly if transaction fees are a concern then withdrawing once every could weeks or even monthly is probably not a big deal. In times like now where there is uncertainty I wouldn’t want to be storing funds on Binance, but in normal times there’s not a huge risk in leaving a couple weeks of DCA on an exchange.

[Crypt0Gore]

Bitcoin DCA in this period of time is worrying, I now have to wait for weeks before moving Bitcoin into my offline wallet for long term hold, sometimes I have to check mempool from time to time to make sure that the transaction fee is affordable, it's going to be very hard for people that make less money, it's not worth sending $50 Bitcoin with $4-$10 on Bitcoin network, if you do this in few months you will realise that you have spend a lot of transaction fee alone.

I recommend storing your fund somewhere for weeks before buying Bitcoin unless the transaction fee becomes reasonable enough, if not it's better to keep saving up the money first, this will be a very hard thing in the coming bull market as there will be a lot of congestion on the network and only those with the $$$ will be able to do some transactions successfully, it's really a big concern.

I am glad that I already bought some Bitcoin before the transaction starts going up but now I can't make small transactions because I am worried about the transaction fee, I just decide to use something else for daily payment solution.

[BABY SHOES]

What you are doing may be similar to what I do by doing DCA every week because buying on Binance exchange and then storing within 1 month will save costs for 1x instead of doing it every week then this might be said to be a waste considering our DCA is not too big then the expenditure of $10 per week for withdrawing it is still quite large of course it becomes our burden.

I always have a target when the DCA has accumulated $100 - $150 after it is high then I withdraw to the hardware wallet for security, so that is the strategy I do because I have never used a low-cost express network even though many exchanges accept this express network, but still the desire on the onchain rather than the express network.

You are free to choose other alternatives, but that's what I do with DCA every week and then make withdrawals every month.

[tabas]

Any will do. They seem to be good plans at all and if the time comes that the price of Bitcoin goes into correction and yet the fees are still not yet fine. I think that you have to do it and take those fees by that time or calculate if it's worth it to pay those fees for you to buy the cheap price by that time. But it's not a problem if you're going to wait until the fees goes down. We've got ways of how to deal with these high fees and gives us more idea on how we'll able to continue DCAing. IMHO, many does this that they keep and save first their money and wait for the right timing of cheaper fees and price of Bitcoin if it's possible then that's when they do the transfers whichever is favorable but much better if both does at the same time.

[Sim_card]

This is the same challenge that everyone is having especially those that DCA weekly. I know that it is not advisable to keep your funds in CEX but presently,  I think there is nothing that can be done rather than pile up your bitcoin that you bought through DCA on CEX for up to a month, whereby you can transfer them to your noncustodial wallet to lessen the tx fee. I would have suggested that you keep the pile up the fiat for one month before you DCA and transfer immediately to your wallet but nobody can predict the price movement of bitcoin as the price might be higher when you are ready to buy with the money that you have saved for one month than the previous weeks. Therefore, you should use Binance to save your coins but you should also be praying that it is safe till when you will move it to your wallet.

[bestcoins1]

I also tried it yesterday and the results are almost the same as what you said in terms of the fee request range, and if approved then it can be executed, but it's still not bad compared to last week, almost 3x more than today. and the waiting time is up to five days before completion. Is this the case and do we seem forced to do it or is it just my opinion, regardless of network congestion when BTC is going up.

You don't have to be forced to do this as long as you don't need money suddenly or still want to keep Bitcoin because you don't want to sell it at the current price. You can use the time to wait for the fees to become cheaper so that you don't pay more fees when making transactions. So don't think of it as a complicated problem as long as you can still wait for cheaper fees on the current Bitcoin network, because I'm sure this fee problem will change again in the near future when Bitcoin prices start to run more stable.

[fzkto]

. What are your thoughts on this? I feel like I may use the money kept for DCA for other expenses.

To be honest, bitcoin transaction fees are becoming quite annoying for small investors like us. Today I just transferred a small amount of my bitcoin to an exchange to sell for fiat and if I remember correctly with 2 transactions, I lost almost $6 and I'm really uncomfortable with the fees. Yes, it's not a large amount of money but $6 for transaction fees is something that makes me feel unsatisfied. I usually don't sell my bitcoins but today I had urgent business so I had to sell some and I was quite surprised at the fee I had to pay.

Sometimes the commissions are not very high and you can take advantage of this moment. But now I agree that the commissions are very high. This has happened many times and always came back to normal, so probably soon everything will become small.