Bitcoin transactions - are we living in stone age? :(

[Cricktor]

I just sent $3,300 USD of bitcoin from Kraken exchange to cold wallet this morning. My fees were $2.94.


The current Bitcoin average transaction fee as of Dec. 2 is only $5.76:

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html#3y

The amount in fiat equivalent doesn't matter regarding needed transaction fee. What matters is the size of the transaction. And btw Kraken and likely all other exchanges pool many withdrawals from it's users into one large transaction and very likely they charge all the customers included in the pooled transaction in sum more than the transaction actually needs to get confirmed.

Most charts or fee prediction is based on a simple transaction of one input and two outputs (target address and change address for coins that return the excess back into your own wallet). OP's transaction is far from such a simple transaction (simple seqwit transaction: about 226vB vs. OP's transaction 5.6kvB; OP's transaction is nearly 25 times "heavier" and thus costlier).

Never paid anywhere close to what the OP is claiming. The most I paid was about $12.
You are doing something very wrong if you are getting charged $197 in fees because that is not normal at all. It is not even close to the average fee.

You compare grapes with watermelons. Your transactions were likely very different in size from OP's. OP's transaction used optimal fee, but it was expensive due to it's size. His transaction was probably not constructed optimal, but the transaction fee was what it needed to be at the particular time when it was submitted.

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[tabas]

I haven't seen that it pumped as well to that amount for the fees. But let's say that it is for real and we get to that point that we have to pay that much, it is hard to spend that a lot for a fee even if it is going to require us to do a necessary transaction. But we know the reason behind and that's the ordinals and they're making the fees quite higher these days. I thought that the network has cooled down and we're able to spend lower than $2 for the fees but I was wrong and the fees currently at $4.44 for high prio.

[tread93]

Seems absurd for a BTC transaction to pay nearly 10 percent, were you using a Bitcoin ATM? LOL. Maybe perhaps this could be the aftermath of what Bitcoin Ordinals have done to congest the network??? This can't be the normal fees though it just doesn't add up. Please provide more insight on what this transaction TX is so somebody can check and potentially even give you some advice on how to lower the fee.

[hosseinimr93]

Seems absurd for a BTC transaction to pay nearly 10 percent, were you using a Bitcoin ATM?

Transaction fee doesn't depend on the amount you send. So it's not a percentage of the amount.
The transaction OP is talking about includes 53 multi-signature inputs and that's why the fee was that high.

Please provide more insight on what this transaction TX is so somebody can check and potentially even give you some advice on how to lower the fee.

You could know more details about the transaction, if you had read previous posts before making a new reply.

[thecodebear]

Well, let's cut the cheese! Bitcoin transactions are expensive and extremely slow. Do you disagree?

0.05000000 BTC: $1,979.94
Fees paid: 498.3K Sats - $197.32

Fees is at 197.32 USD? Is this madness? All the best to the Bitcoin supporters who daydream about Bitcoin becoming a popular payment method. I mean, realistically, no one would like to spend a bloody 197.32 USD for a small 2000 USD transaction. This is non-sense!

As a community, what can we do to stop this madness? Or being decentralized, comes with its distinct downsides?

Honestly, it feels like living in ancient times looking at this fees and time to receive confirmation.

lol what?? Yes that is nonsense you are right haha. Average tx fee right now is like $3 or $4, not $197. Not sure where you got those numbers from. If thats a real transaction then someone accidentally screwed up the fee big time, you do see that occasionally happening when someone pays orders of magnitude too much on accident, whoever did that transaction paid about two orders of magnitude more than they needed to for the fee.

I assume this is some sort of joke/troll thread from the OP.

[Mrbluntzy]

I have read so many post on this forum when other members are saying that you can invest only small amount of money into Bitcoin. It is the truth but high transaction fee will be a barrier to investing only small amount because of the high fee of transaction that will accompany it. If there were any suggested solution to fight down the high transaction fee, I would have drop my suggestion. If fee is high, it will be frightning to new small amount investors. If fee keep changing and getting high then the phrase of saying "you can invest small amount into Bitcoin" Will change to investing a more big amount.

[seoincorporation]

Well, let's cut the cheese! Bitcoin transactions are expensive and extremely slow. Do you disagree?

0.05000000 BTC: $1,979.94
Fees paid: 498.3K Sats - $197.32

Fees is at 197.32 USD? Is this madness? All the best to the Bitcoin supporters who daydream about Bitcoin becoming a popular payment method. I mean, realistically, no one would like to spend a bloody 197.32 USD for a small 2000 USD transaction. This is non-sense!

As a community, what can we do to stop this madness? Or being decentralized, comes with its distinct downsides?

Honestly, it feels like living in ancient times looking at this fees and time to receive confirmation.

lol what?? Yes that is nonsense you are right haha. Average tx fee right now is like $3 or $4, not $197.

We need more information about the transaction to know how OP is calculating the fees on that transaction. If he has tons of inputs and outputs in that transaction then that could explain the high fees. And some cool information would be to know the wallet.

Another option is that op is making a withdrawal from a service like an exchange, which would explain the high fees too.

[hosseinimr93]

lol what?? Yes that is nonsense you are right haha. Average tx fee right now is like $3 or $4, not $197. Not sure where you got those numbers from.

The ID of the transaction OP is talking about has been already posted in this thread and you could check that to see if he/she is right.
What caused the transaction fee to be that high has been also explained, but unfortunately you don't read the replies.

[Darker45]

The example is probably not the best one. The user has paid too much in fees. It could have been lowered down through means which are all available right now.

However, the point generally remains: that Bitcoin transactions are expensive and slow. There's the SegWit, there's personalized fees, there's consolidation of UTXOs, there's even Lightning. The fees remain high nonetheless, on-chain transaction fees to be specific. 

More than a decade has passed and this remains an issue. The rise of Ordinals has even aggravated the problem. Perhaps there's a point in centralized services. Perhaps there's a point in IOUs. Perhaps Hal was right.

Bitcoin itself cannot scale to have every single financial transaction in the world be broadcast to everyone and included in the block chain. There needs to be a secondary level of payment systems which is lighter weight and more efficient.

I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin, to be the "high-powered money" that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash.

[BlackBoss_]

The example is probably not the best one. The user has paid too much in fees. It could have been lowered down through means which are all available right now.

However, the point generally remains: that Bitcoin transactions are expensive and slow. There's the SegWit, there's personalized fees, there's consolidation of UTXOs, there's even Lightning. The fees remain high nonetheless, on-chain transaction fees to be specific. 

More than a decade has passed and this remains an issue. The rise of Ordinals has even aggravated the problem. Perhaps there's a point in centralized services. Perhaps there's a point in IOUs. Perhaps Hal was right.

The Taproot activation 3 years ago and the developments of BRC 20, Ordinals and adoption of Inscriptions began to show their impacts on Bitcoin demands and mempools. Unfortunately, it is not kind of impact normal Bitcoin users want to see because those Inscriptions are useless for many Bitcoiners but they still have to bear abnormal expensive transaction fee because of Ordinal Inscriptions.

If the community can vote to support Taproot, they can vote to do something against Taproot.

Inscriptions, Mempools and Miners.

[philipma1957]

Would you mind sharing how to consolidate the inputs? It will be very helpful for a lot of people who do not transact regularly on Bitcoin but use it as an investment.

What hosseinimr93 meant is that if he had consolidated the UTXOs at low fee (the UTXOs that become the high inputs in the transaction), like using 2 sat/vbyte last month, the fee paid would have been low while making transaction with 1 or lower inputs this time around.

[Nov 2023] Fees are high, wait for opportunity to Consolidate your small inputs

@philipma1957
Let us be expecting Coinbase to support lightning network: https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1701806701853507886?t=rzIECclUUPCUz1FDlB72AQ&s=19

There are now easy to use lightning network wallets like Muun. You do not need to have channel before you will use lightning network. It is online and should be used with just little amount of money. Just for making transaction.

For holding, I will still prefer onchain and offline wallet.

There are many exchanges that are supporting lightning network now https://github.com/theDavidCoen/LightningExchanges

looked at the list and maybe I can use nicehash.

I am on the wrong pc but I will really check that list and get back here as I would like to be able to use an exchange legally.

most seem to not allow be to join.

and I am not opening a vpn or tor to go around it.

I am in the usa here is the list from the GitHub link

"Top Crypto Spot Exchanges Position   Node URI   KYC on deposit or withdraw   Min. Chan Capacity (BTC)
Binance   YES (JUL-2023)   ⚡   Twitter   1   Link Binance   n.a.   n.a. --------------------------------------------------- usa banned
Coinbase   NO   🔴   Twitter   2   n.a.   n.a.   n.a.
Kraken   YES (APR-2022)   ⚡   blog   3   Link Kraken 🐙⚡   💔 YES   n.a.
Bitfinex   YES (SEP-2020)   ⚡   blog   4   Link bfx-lnd0, bfx-lnd1   💔 YES   0.04 ------------------------------------- usa banned
Bithumb   NO   🔴   n.a.   5   n.a.   n.a.   n.a.
------------   ---------   ----   --------   --------   --------   --------   -----
Bitstamp   YES (JUL-2019)   🟡   website   8   Link ln.bitstamp.net   💔 YES   0.0002 ---------------------------------- really fucking with me to log on.
OKEx   YES (APR-2021)   ⚡   blog   15   Link okex   💔 YES   0.04
OKcoin   YES (MAR-2021)   ⚡   Twitter   32   Link okcoin   💔 YES   0.04

NiceHash   YES (Q3-2020)   ⚡   website   116   Link ln.nicehash.com   n.a.   0.005 ------------------------------------------- I mine here I could send small LN

Southxchange   YES (Q3-2018)   ⚡   Twitter   176   Link southxchange.com   💚 NO   0.0002
CoinCorner   YES (Q1-2021)   ⚡   Twitter   242   n.a.   n.a.   n.a.
BitMex   YES (AUG-2018)   🟡   Twitter   247   Link BitMexResearch   💔 YES   n.a. --------------------------------------- I was dropped here for being in USA
Buda   YES (Q3-2018)   ⚡   blog   248   n.a.   💔 YES   n.a.
Mt Pelerin   YES (JAN-2023)   ⚡   blog   n.a.   Link ln.mtpelerin.com   💚 NO   n.a.
Paxful   YES (SEP-2021)   ⚡   article   n.a.   n.a.   n.a.   n.a.
BullBitcoin   YES (SEP-2021)   ⚡   article   n.a.   Link bullbitcoin.com   n.a.   n.a.
Bitaroo   YES (SEP-2019)   ⚡   Twitter   n.a.   n.a.   💔 YES   n.a.
River Financial   YES (OCT-2019)   ⚡   Twitter   n.a.   Link ln.river.com   💔 YES   n.a.
VBTC Vietnam   YES (JAN-2021)   ⚡   Twitter   n.a.   n.a.   💔 YES   n.a.
FixedFloat   YES (FEB-2019)   ⚡   blog   n.a.   Link fixedfloat.com   💚 NO   n.a.
LOFT   YES (FEB-2021)   ⚡   Twitter   n.a.   n.a.   💚 NO   n.a.
PrimeBit   YES (SEP-2021)   ⚡   Twitter   n.a.   n.a.   💚 NO   n.a.
SimpleFX   YES (SEP-2021)   ⚡   website   n.a.   n.a.   💚 NO   n.a.
BitcoinVN   YES (NOV-2021)   ⚡   website   n.a.   n.a.   💚 NO   n.a.
Bipa   YES (NOV-2020)   ⚡   blog   n.a.   Link bipa   💔 YES   n.a.
Boltz   YES (APR-2019)   ⚡   website   n.a.   Link boltz.exchange   💚 NO   n.a.
Kollider   YES (JAN-2021)   ⚡   Twitter   n.a.   Link kollider   💚 NO   0.005
LN Markets   YES (MAR-2020)   ⚡   Twitter   n.a.   Link LN Markets   💚 NO   0.05
Tauros   YES (MAY-2022)   ⚡   article   n.a.   n.a   n.a   n.a
Coinfinity   YES (JUN-2023)   ⏳   Twitter   n.a.   Link coinfinity.co   💔 YES   n.a
Ripio   YES (AUG-2023)   ⚡   Twitter   n.a.   Link Ripio 🐖   💔 YES   n.a
StealthEX   YES (NOV-2023)   ⚡   Twitter   n.a.   n.a.   💚 NO   n.a.

I invite the representatives of the exchanges to signal their support to Lightning Network also in this repo.
so the list has"




So for now I can do an LN send from nicehash I earn 40 a day and withdraw to a none LN and pay the higher fee. I let it sit a while before I draw it out.

I am willing to check  bitstamp as It says I have an account.

[yhiaali3]

wrong.

at a minimum binance and coinbase have to work.

especially since binance is on the outs with usa.

and  no hard wallet does it.


you are not going to make this work with just binance and electrum.

if you think all btc will be able to work with only binance and electrum offering LN

you are forgetting everyone must have those two services

Ie how do you send me LN if I own a trezor and a safepal wallet.

I completely agree with you on this point, I for example reside in a country banned by Binance and Coinbase due to US sanctions and do not have an account on either of these exchanges so I do not have the option of sending a Bitcoin lightning transaction from an Electrum wallet.

Yesterday I had to withdraw an amount of about $100 from my Electrum wallet to one of the central exchanges that does not support lightning and I had to pay a $10 fee, but I preferred to reduce the fee to $6 and wait more than 12 hours until the transaction arrived. This is madness .

[Darker45]

The example is probably not the best one. The user has paid too much in fees. It could have been lowered down through means which are all available right now.

However, the point generally remains: that Bitcoin transactions are expensive and slow. There's the SegWit, there's personalized fees, there's consolidation of UTXOs, there's even Lightning. The fees remain high nonetheless, on-chain transaction fees to be specific.  

More than a decade has passed and this remains an issue. The rise of Ordinals has even aggravated the problem. Perhaps there's a point in centralized services. Perhaps there's a point in IOUs. Perhaps Hal was right.

The Taproot activation 3 years ago and the developments of BRC 20, Ordinals and adoption of Inscriptions began to show their impacts on Bitcoin demands and mempools. Unfortunately, it is not kind of impact normal Bitcoin users want to see because those Inscriptions are useless for many Bitcoiners but they still have to bear abnormal expensive transaction fee because of Ordinal Inscriptions.

If the community can vote to support Taproot, they can vote to do something against Taproot.

Inscriptions, Mempools and Miners.

I'm afraid removing Taproot doesn't address the issue. This problem has been here way before Taproot became a thing. Secondly, do we necessarily have "to do something against Taproot" when in fact it's not as if Taproot was an upgrade whose objective is to pave the way for Bitcoin NFTs? Taproot was meant for security, privacy, scalability, and other good things. It was not meant for the Ordinals. Bitcoin NFTs seem to have come out merely as a sort of an unintended consequence of what's otherwise a great upgrade.

[thecodebear]

lol what?? Yes that is nonsense you are right haha. Average tx fee right now is like $3 or $4, not $197. Not sure where you got those numbers from.

The ID of the transaction OP is talking about has been already posted in this thread and you could check that to see if he/she is right.
What caused the transaction fee to be that high has been also explained, but unfortunately you don't read the replies.

Cool. I was responding to the OP seemingly implying that $197 is somehow a normal tx fee as he claimed it was "nonsense" and "madness" and "expensive and really slow" and "living in ancient times". And I was pointing out it obviously isn't since it's nearly two orders of magnitude higher than average tx fee. That's cool that you found the actual transaction and the reason for the high tx fee. But I wasn't responding to that. I was responding to the OP seemingly thinking that the current state of Bitcoin is that people are paying $200 tx fees. Thanks

[kentrolla]

This is the only aspect I hate about Bitcoin and it's completely agai st the principles why Bitcoin came into existence as Satoshi Nakamoto didn't create Bitcoin for us to pay a whopping 10% as transaction fees and these extremely slow transactions are making us even more frustrated.

I had faced similar issue during 2017 bull Run as I had to make BTC payment as per agreement for my project which was completed by a freelancer and we aligned on payment in terms of Bitcoin but I made a mistake of holding it for a while for transaction fees to come down but guess what I lost huge amount because the value of Bitcoin had dropped by the time transaction fees dropped. This is a major flaw which has to be fixed.

[avikz]

Many thanks for all your replies! What I understood, that due to  large number of multi-sig inputs, the fees has gone up to this level. This is pretty nonsense!

Can anyone please share their experience on how to reduce fees for such large number of inputs? Anyone knows?

Is there any way to consolidate these inputs before sending out a transaction?

[so98nn]

If we are using bitcoin for daily transactions then yeah it’s gonna be big problem whenever Bitcoin is within high price range. I mean pick any history chapter (prices) then we will see the increased trend of higher fees. I don’t find it exciting anymore as it’s just the usual day when we see higher price per sats or bitcoin as whole.

I don’t know, I am simply considering saving or holding my bitcoin just like the other days. If I really want to transact for something then I could do it with low fees and wait for the transaction to go through. Many wallets have customised fees and it can be done RBF just in case it gets stuck.

Just hypothetical solution:
What if there is provision where sender OR buyer can share 50%-50% fees? This can relive the burden on one peer by distributing it between two. Moreover, there should be option to slide the % between two. If the opposite party agrees they could take up all the fees or have more share on their end.

[Tyke]

Bitcoin has a job to do in the blockchain space as do other cryptocurrencies.  I've never seen Bitcoin as the only true blockchain, and would never hesitate to use others.  In my opinion, Bitcoin is too slow to be a currency, but is highly secure for large payments.

[KiaKia]

Bitcoin is like a gold for me, I don't plan to accept Bitcoin as means of payment from anyone, in short no one will be willing to use Bitcoin as means of payment, sorry to say buy it's the complete truth, this high transaction fee is not encouraging at all.

Bitcoin isn't perfect and we can see that it's not a very good one for making payment, even my bank transfer is way cheaper than using Bitcoin, but apart from high transaction fee, everything else that Bitcoin has to offer is all good for me.

If you want to avoid this then use Lightning Network but for payment solution, this is going to be a big problem with Bitcoin and Ethereum, they are both very bad for making day to day payment, something else is better, maybe Solana or other project, get ready people, the next bull run will come with some frustration.

[Z-tight]

You are doing something very wrong if you are getting charged $197 in fees because that is not normal at all. It is not even close to the average fee.

As has already been said, the sender of the tx overpaid in fees, though they had too many inputs which also adds to the tx fees that one is going to pay, but they could have paid well lower than that if they had a better BTC knowledge.

Can anyone please share their experience on how to reduce fees for such large number of inputs? Anyone knows?

Is there any way to consolidate these inputs before sending out a transaction?

You can use coin control to select the inputs that you want to spend in a tx, if you do not use coin control, your wallet software would probably use all of the inputs in the tx and send back what is left as change, so with coin control you reduce the number of inputs to use in your tx, and it is also great for privacy. You can consolidate inputs at anytime, but it does not make sense to do it when fees are high because you are going to pay tx fees to send all your inputs into one address in one tx, so you have to wait for fee rate to drop before consolidating your inputs, but take note that it is bad for privacy.