Quote from: h4ns on Today at 03:36:08 PM

Hi, I just learned the difference between sweeping and importing a private key from a paper wallet into Electrum and that, overall, sweeping is the "better" option.
What I could not find out is whether or not I have any control over the fee I have to pay.
I read some reddit threads about "Outlandishly high fees for sweeping from a paper wallet" or " it will not doing it for anything less than %5" and now I'm a bit worried as I never tried the sweep option before (I used to use Blockchain.info only) and it's a relatively high amount, so I don't want to pay like thousands of dollars* just to cover a third-party fee I have no control of.
*which is probably not going to happen but, you know, just in case...
Thank you guys. Any help is highly appreciated.

Sweeping in simple terms is moving all the coins you have in a particular wallet to another wallet. This means that even if you have coins scattered all over the addresses , the wallet will automatically consolidate all inputs to a single out put which is your new receiving wallets address. When you are sweeping you can still adjust your fees depending on how long you wish to wait before it gets confirmed on the MEMPOOL.

When you make use of a private key you are simply restoring the wallet from a paper wallet the reason is simple, for you to be able to spend the coins in a wallet or sweep a wallet, the transaction has to be signed with the private keys, else there won't be a transaction id to broadcast to the network.