Question regarding fees for transferring funds to a new wallet

[Searinox]

Hello,

A year ago during the twilight of the GPU mining era, I mined about 0.85BTC, spread out over about 40 or so mining payouts worth around 0.01-0.002 on average. I'd like to transfer them to a more centralized, deterministic wallet. However, I'm concerned about transfer fees. How much should I set the fee for this transaction? Since it seems like there's something like 0.0001 BTC fee per KB and the wallet is 2MB in size, I'm kind of concerned. Also, would this get better with time if I just wait for the amounts to be more meaningful as mining difficulty increases?

Thank you.

[DannyHamilton]

Hello,

A year ago during the twilight of the GPU mining era, I mined about 0.85BTC, spread out over about 40 or so mining payouts worth around 0.01-0.002 on average. I'd like to transfer them to a more centralized, deterministic wallet. However, I'm concerned about transfer fees. How much should I set the fee for this transaction? Since it seems like there's something like 0.0001 BTC fee per KB

If the wallet is actually only 40 payouts, then the transaction to send the entire balance should be somewhere around 6 kB.  In that case a fee of 0.0006 BTC should be sufficient.

What wallet are you using?  If you are using Bitcoin-Qt (or Bitcoin Core), then it should compute the fee for you when you create the transaction and tell you if you don't have enough in the wallet to send the transaction.

Also if you are using Bitcoin-Qt (or Bitcoin Core), then you can type "listunspent" into the console in the debug window of the "Help" menu.  This will give you a list of all the payouts that the wallet is storing and you can count them.  If you figure 180 bytes per output in your wallet, you'll get a pretty close estimate of how many bytes it will take to send the entire amount.

the wallet is 2MB in size

The wallet has more in it than just the received outputs.  This is not a good estimate of how large the transaction would be to send the balance.

Also, would this get better with time if I just wait for the amounts to be more meaningful as mining difficulty increases?

Thank you.

If the exchange rate of bitcoin continues to rise, then yes the fee to send your balance will likely decrease a bit.  On the other hand, if bitcoin gets very popular and there are enough transactions being sent to approach the maximum blocksize on a regular basis, then the fees will likely increase a bit.

If you have access to a single large value output, it is possible to create multiple transactions each smaller than 1 kB and combine the many outputs that you have without paying any fee at all.  How long that will take will depend a lot on how high the value of the single large value output is.

[Searinox]

I have the qt client with default settings and when I want to send the amount it says "The total exceeds your balance by 0.0001BTC when the transaction fee is added". So from what you're saying the fee I'd be paying will be LESS than what you estimate. Would that transaction even go through? It's a one-time transfer, so I'm just interested in minimizing my fee and transferring everything over. I could leave everything at default and just offset the transfer by 0.0001, is that my cheapest option?

[DannyHamilton]

I have the qt client with default settings and when I want to send the amount it says "The total exceeds your balance by 0.0001BTC when the transaction fee is added". So from what you're saying the fee I'd be paying will be LESS than what you estimate. Would that transaction even go through? It's a one-time transfer, so I'm just interested in minimizing my fee and transferring everything over. I could leave everything at default and just offset the transfer by 0.0001, is that my cheapest option?

Have you upgraded your Bitcoin-Qt to a recent version?  Older versions may default to a 0.0001 BTC fee regardless of the size of the transaction, since the older versions may not be aware of the fee structure that the network currently enforces.

Have you run the "listunspent" command that I suggested?  If so, how many outputs were listed?

[Searinox]

It's version 0.9.2.1 downloaded today. Listunspent lists about 100 inputs, +/-10%.

[DannyHamilton]

It's version 0.9.2.1 downloaded today. Listunspent lists about 100 inputs, +/-10%.

I'm very surprised that the wallet would be indicating that it only needs a fee of 0.0001 BTC to send 100 inputs.

I'd expect that to be closer to 0.0018 BTC.

I'd try creating the transaction again reducing the amount sent by 0.0001 BTC and seeing what is says.  I suspect that you'll find that it will continue to demand a fee.

You could repeatedly try, reducing the amount by an additonal 0.0001 BTC with each attempt.  Eventually either the transaction will work, or you'll reach a point where the fee is more than you want to give up at the moment and you'll stop trying.

[shorena]

It's version 0.9.2.1 downloaded today. Listunspent lists about 100 inputs, +/-10%.

I'm very surprised that the wallet would be indicating that it only needs a fee of 0.0001 BTC to send 100 inputs.

I'd expect that to be closer to 0.0018 BTC.

I'd try creating the transaction again reducing the amount sent by 0.0001 BTC and seeing what is says.  I suspect that you'll find that it will continue to demand a fee.

You could repeatedly try, reducing the amount by an additonal 0.0001 BTC with each attempt.  Eventually either the transaction will work, or you'll reach a point where the fee is more than you want to give up at the moment and you'll stop trying.

Searinox it is way easier, you have to do less calculations and less try and error if you enable "Coin Control" in bitcoin core. Settings -> Options -> Wallet -> [X] Enable coin control features.

It allows you to select each input manually in the send tab. It will show you the size of the TX in bytes, the priority, the resulting change and fee on the fly.

[Searinox]

Bitcoin Core wanted a 0.0017BTC fee for the transaction. Looking at the formula Danny provided it seems about right: 180 x about 100 transactions listed = about 17KB x 0.0001BTC/KB = 0.0017BTC. So I paid it, and transferred everything to my new wallet. Hopefully with everything in one place, future transactions will no longer charge such a fee.

[shorena]

Bitcoin Core wanted a 0.0017BTC fee for the transaction. Looking at the formula Danny provided it seems about right: 180 x about 100 transactions listed = about 17KB x 0.0001BTC/KB = 0.0017BTC. So I paid it, and transferred everything to my new wallet. Hopefully with everything in one place, future transactions will no longer charge such a fee.

They are all one single input now. so any future TX from this pile of coins will cost you the regular fee. Unless you have to many outputs in a single TX