Electrum Transaction Fees

[jayman5]

I`m trying to send a small amount of BitCoin via electrum wallet to my hardware wallet & i`m getting about 40% fee.

I then adjusted the fee paid bar left to the max & its lower but still high  saying - "the fee for this transaction seems unusually high 5.06%".

For comparison I transferred about $300 at the weekend from an exchange to hardware wallet and was charged less than $1.

Is this an electrum thing? is there anything else i can do?, as far as i know i only have one active address in my wallet

Thanks

[Findingnemo]

Fee is based on number of inputs and outputs not based on the amount you are transferring.

So you are probably sending more smaller inputs on default settings, you can use coin control feature to select which UTXO that you want to spend, let's say you are transferring $500 and you have 5 UTXO consisting of 50, 50, 50, 100, 1000. On default setting electrum will choose all the UTXO which leads to 5 inputs and one output but you can simply choose the UTXO of 1000 to spend 500 and the remaining will be sent back to change address and by doing this you will spend fees only for 1 inputs and 1 outputs.

[BrokenM14]

As Findingnemo mentioned, fees are based on the number inputs, but there's more than just that.  Fees are higher than usual at the moment because there're a lot of traffic on the blockchain.

If you're just sending to yourself, and there's no rush, you set the Electrum fee option to static and enter a small fee.  Last night did the same thing you're doing and set the fee to 2 sat/vByte.  The transaction hasn't confirmed yet, but I'm in no hurry.

You can check the average fee of the latest confirmed blocks here: https://mempool.space/

[Charles-Tim]

Is this an electrum thing? is there anything else i can do?, as far as i know i only have one active address in my wallet

Using only one address does not mean, as you send more coins to the address in different time, the UTXO will build up. And if you want to spend all the coins at once, the higher the fee. You can followed what Findingnemo posted.

To have access to coin control on desktop Electrum, click on 'view' and check ✔️ coins. You will see the coin tab which you can click on to access the coin control.

On mobile Electrum, click on your your wallet name -> addresses/coins. Use it to freeze the UTXOs of small or unnecessary amount.

[BitMaxz]

Which one did you use when sliding the fees to the cheaper static, ETA or Mempool?

If any of these, even after sliding it to the cheapest, still results in a high transaction fee, the above post may be correct, you have a large number of uTXO, which increases transaction size and leads to an expensive miners fee.

If you sent $300 in BTC from Exchange to this wallet and you just want to spend less than that, I think to lower the transaction fees you need to enable the coin control
- View> coins and then go to coins tab,
- then right-click any coins under that tab (below the amount you want to send),
- then choose coin control.

You can now create a transaction under the send tab, and other uTXOs and small uTXOs will be ignored. You should notice that the transaction size is much smaller and the transaction fee is much lower than before.

Edit: oppssss... Charles provided the same answer, but I added the ways to enable coin control.

Reference guide:

Source: screenshot by me and wallet, not mine.

[notocactus]

I`m trying to send a small amount of BitCoin via electrum wallet to my hardware wallet & i`m getting about 40% fee.

I then adjusted the fee paid bar left to the max & its lower but still high  saying - "the fee for this transaction seems unusually high 5.06%".

For comparison I transferred about $300 at the weekend from an exchange to hardware wallet and was charged less than $1.

Last weekend, you can move your bitcoin with fee rates like 2-3-4-5 satoshi/vbyte. Now, if you check Bitcoin mempools, you will have to pay fee rate like 30+ to 40 satoshi/vbyte to get a confirmation quickly in possible a next block.

https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC%20(default%20mempool),24h,weight

Is this an electrum thing?

Nope. It's Bitcoin blockchain and mempool thing that you need to learn and master it for your Bitcoin transactions in future.

is there anything else i can do?

Wait for the weekend. It's Thursday already but with a Bitcoin bull run, fee will be high for a while.

as far as i know i only have one active address in my wallet

Bitcoin transaction fees depend on your inputs, outputs because it contributes to your transaction size.

Minimize your transaction fee with Electrum wallet

[Mia Chloe]

The bitcoin network gives it's user a decent amount of freedom and one of them is choosing the fees you are willing to spend. For quite some time now I switched to Electrum and the reasons are quite simple. Anyways what you experienced is very normal. Electrum has three default methods of calculations for fee rate. One is the MEMPOOL calculator which makes use of the current transaction rate in the MEMPOOL, ETA (estimated arrival time) which calculates your fees based on the depth it would be when broadcasted with a particular fee. And lastly static.

Regardless of which calculator you make use of ELECTRUM will warn you that your fees rate is probably too high once it exceededs around 0.5% of the amount of coins you wish to send. To avoid this I recommend checking the MEMPOOL before broadcasting a transaction so you can tell the right fees to make use of.

[LoyceV]

I`m trying to send a small amount of BitCoin

There's your problem. You should avoid sending dust amounts of Bitcoin. Even if you pay a high transaction fee to send 0.00001 BTC, the receiver will have to spend most of it on fees if he uses it. It's better to use Bitcoin LN or a low-fee altcoin for paying small amounts.

[notocactus]

There's your problem. You should avoid sending dust amounts of Bitcoin. Even if you pay a high transaction fee to send 0.00001 BTC, the receiver will have to spend most of it on fees if he uses it. It's better to use Bitcoin LN or a low-fee altcoin for paying small amounts.

Lightning Network is good for small transactions.

Mastering the Lightning Network.
[List] Open-source Lightning wallets
Electrum Lightning Network walkthrough

More threads on Lightning Network for @jayman5.
[Table] All Lightning Network Threads In One Place

[Synchronice]

I`m trying to send a small amount of BitCoin via electrum wallet to my hardware wallet & i`m getting about 40% fee.

I then adjusted the fee paid bar left to the max & its lower but still high  saying - "the fee for this transaction seems unusually high 5.06%".

For comparison I transferred about $300 at the weekend from an exchange to hardware wallet and was charged less than $1.

Is this an electrum thing? is there anything else i can do?, as far as i know i only have one active address in my wallet

Thanks

When it comes to fees, you should never trust to Electrum because from my experience, it sucks at fee calculation but on the other hand, Sparrow is superb at fee calculation.

I`m trying to send a small amount of BitCoin

There's your problem. You should avoid sending dust amounts of Bitcoin. Even if you pay a high transaction fee to send 0.00001 BTC, the receiver will have to spend most of it on fees if he uses it. It's better to use Bitcoin LN or a low-fee altcoin for paying small amounts.

That's a good advice and on top of that, I want to add that people should start using of Coin Control to make smarter transactions and control their UTXOs. For example, OP, there might be a case when you have to pay 0.001 BTC but you have inputs of 0.001 BTC, 0.00057 BTC, 0.0002BTC, 0.0003 BTC. If fees are high, it's better to use coin control feature and pay with 0.001 input but if fees are very low, it's better to consolidate your inputs and pay with 0.00057 + 0.0002 + 0.0003 BTC.

[nc50lc]

I then adjusted the fee paid bar left to the max & its lower but still high  saying - "the fee for this transaction seems unusually high 5.06%".

So that's basically 1sat/vB and the amount you're sending is about 4000~6000 satoshi if there's only one input and depending on the Electrum wallet type.
Perhaps you're mistaking mBTC as BTC unit? Check the unit shown in your balance.

If so, I'll just quote my recent post here:

Have you changed the default denomination from mBTC to BTC or using the default?
Because if you're sending in "mBTC" but intended to send an amount in "BTC", the actual amount would be as low as the transaction fee resulting with that warning message.

e.g. If you intend to send 0.01 BTC and typed "0.01" in the send tab's amount but the actual unit is in mBTC, you're actually sending "0.00001 BTC".
With that even a small fee of 400sats would be 40% of that amount.

[DannyHamilton]

I`m trying to send a small amount of BitCoin

There's your problem. You should avoid sending dust amounts of Bitcoin.

@jayman5 , for more information about how to reduce fees and consolidate inputs when the fee rate is low, take a look at this thread.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2848987.0

[DYING_S0UL]

~snip~
I think to lower the transaction fees you need to enable the coin control...

Hey there BitMaxz

I had a quick question, does using coin control feature has any effects on the transaction speed or anything? I do use Electrum time to time but not that frequently. So I always kept my settings on default. Sometimes I do change the transaction fee using the slider or manually, but that's it.

[LoyceV]

does using coin control feature has any effects on the transaction speed ~?

No. Sats/vbyte is what matters for confirmation speed.

I do use Electrum time to time but not that frequently. So I always kept my settings on default. Sometimes I do change the transaction fee using the slider or manually, but that's it.

It's a good habit to manually select inputs. If fees are high, you can use a larger input. And when fees are low, you can consolidate many small inputs. Or you can avoid combining certain inputs for privacy reasons.