Why is my transaction so big and thus so expensive?

I have a bitcoin wallet that I am accessing using Electrum. In this Wallet, I have received Bitcoin from a total of 29 (very small) transactions. Now, I want to access my BCC in this wallet. Therefore, I want to transfer all the bitcoin to another wallet. However, the transaction has 29 inputs and is 4kB in size, making it super expensive!

The suggested transaction fee when using the smallest suggested fee is almost 10% of my bitcoins and thus more than I would earn from the BCCs! Is that normal? Is there anything I can do to circumvent this?

Gasp0de

Posted 2017-11-03T20:35:14.137

Reputation: 113

I don't follow. If you want to access your BCH, why are you performing a bitcoin transaction? Why not just leave the bitcoins where they are and transfer the BCH? – David Schwartz – 2017-11-03T21:05:09.673

3I need to use the private keys of my wallet to access the BCH. If the BCH wallet is malicious, they can steal my BTC. Therefore I wanna move the BTC before importing the private keys into a potentially malicious wallet – Gasp0de – 2017-11-03T21:56:03.173

Answers

thus more than I would earn from the BCCs! Is that normal?

Yes. Right now (3-november'17) it is normal. Your comment about importing private keys into another program which you do not trust is very smart. But today the fees in BTC-network are quite high to combine small outputs for emptying the address. There are some ways to decrease fees but they require skills and are not fast.

amaclin

Posted 2017-11-03T20:35:14.137

Reputation: 5 763

In that case, I'll just wait for further technical improvements in bitcoin hopefully decreasing the cost of microtransactions (not too unlikely if bitcoin should become a payment method at some point. I will also look for a way to get less miniature payments and combine them into bigger ones. Thank you for your answer! – Gasp0de – 2017-11-03T22:20:20.443

I managed to get my transaction through today for 0.5 mBTC / kByte. Just have to wait for the right moment it seems. – Gasp0de – 2017-11-06T10:08:34.760

usually i send my coins with a fee 1 satoshi per byte :) – amaclin – 2017-11-06T10:24:54.163

I think you answered your own question. Yes, the transaction is so expensive because you are combining multiple inputs. This makes the transaction high in terms of bytes, but low in terms of value. As such, the transaction fee (which is based on bytes, not value) may not be worth the transfer you are attempting.

However, since it sounds like what you are actually trying to do is access the BCH (Bitcoin Cash) that you also own due to the fork, you can instead leave your bitcoin where it is on the main Bitcoin blockchain, and instead perform your transfer on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain where the fee will likely be cheaper. This is, of course, assuming you need to move your bch at all. Unless you need to spend it, you can just leave your bch where it is as well.

Jestin

Posted 2017-11-03T20:35:14.137

Reputation: 8 339

Thanks for your answer, but as I commented under my question, I don't want to insert my private keys into a potentially not trustworthy program as long as my entire bitcoin possessions are in that wallet. – Gasp0de – 2017-11-03T22:23:09.940

Then what you want is a tool that creates the necessary BCH transactions but lets you sign them with a tool that you trust. – David Schwartz – 2017-11-03T22:38:51.153

Does such a tool exist? Is it possible to sign transactions with a different tool that is widely used (e.g. gpg or something)? – Gasp0de – 2017-11-03T22:55:13.393