I have btc on Electrum mobile wallet.
I want to buy a hat using crypto from an online vendor.
Vendor accepts several crypto currencies.
It's a one time purchase.
I don't want to spent more than 20 cents in transaction fees.
I want the transaction confirmed within a couple of hours.
What are my options?
I thought of Lightning but that is still going to cost me a lot in transaction fees when opening a channel. And since this is a one time purchase, it defeats its purpose because, well, might as well just directly purchase using btc.
So...what can I do?
I was going to suggest you to use the Lightning network but you can't use that because the first time you still have to pay the fee which will exceed the 20 cents limit. If your vendor accepts several cryptocurrencies then simply don't use BTC to pay the amount. Use another token like BNB or Matic they have the lowest transaction fee. I mostly prefer them whenever I have to avoid transaction fees.
See if your vendor accepts Matic, or BNB for payment method, if yes then check if the transaction fee is lower than your limit of 20 cents or not. Because the fees might exceed in rare cases so make sure to check that before making any transaction. And if you already have your funds in BTC and to get Matic or BNB you have to swap them into any of these two coins.
And this will cost you too So it might be possible that if we combined all the fees made, it would cross your 20-cent limit. So, I don't think there is any other way for you to make this happen but to wait for the transaction fee to drop, but in any case, the fees are not going to drop below 2$ maximum so expecting it to drop below 20 cents will be idiotic.