Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Technical Support
Re: $10 transaction fee on $11 transaction
by
TryNinja
on 22/07/2020, 21:26:27 UTC
Okay, lack of knowledge maybe, I used Electrum just as I always do. And I've been using it for months and I am fairly comfortable with the process. Like I said I don't know why it was sent like that
Because you just sent it with the "recommended fee" (which was too much). Wallets have a tendency to overpay in fees because they can't exactly know how much is enough. All they do is calculate an estimate based on how much was paid in the last blocks and in the current unconfirmed transactions in the mempool.

Since Bitcoin saw a quickly rise in the fees those last few days, you naturally had to pay more if you wanted a quick confirmation (which wallets assume it's true by default). Also, your transaction was a little bigger than the usual (5 inputs, 1 output). But still, you could have paid a lot less.

When you are going to make the transaction, take a look at the "Target fee" field at bottom-left corner of the "confirmation" window (above the "Finalize" button). This is how much you are paying in fees (in sat/byte). You could use something like https://whatthefee.io/ to have an idea about how much you should be paying.