You should be noticing that last few weeks, the mempool is packed with tx and people are paying very high tx fee. I also paid some crazy tx fees until yesterday I realised that if I pay low fees still it's not taking much longer time.
I had
some issues yesterday to send some fund and in the process of solving it I discovered this low fees phenomenon which I thought worth sharing with everyone. I am just not sure which board to share. I have Bitcoin Discussion in mind. I also have Development & Technical Discussion, Mining, Bitcoin Technical Support, Beginners & Help, Currency exchange in mind then I though to post it in Bitcoin Discussion with the hope that more people will read this to get benefit. I can not just post the same topic in several boards.
Check this image:
https://i.imgur.com/9ahocyt.png (I did not embed it intentionally because this will take the entire space)
1 to 6 sat/B is crazy then everything looks normal.
91 to 96 sat/B is again crazy then until 104 sat/B looks normal
105 to 106 sat/B is crazier until 160 sat/B
161+ sat/B is where the most of the miners are picking the transactions.
So automatically the current recommendation is 160+ sat/B.
If you are using Electrum then it's recommending any value from 1 to over 100 which I experienced yesterday for the tx to confirm within the next 10 blocks.
Yesterday when I did my first tx then I manually picked my fees since I did not have much worry about the tx confirmation time. I picked under 2 sat/B. I was assuming this will not confirm in weeks LOL but it did not happen(!) The tx was confirmed after 672 minutes!
Then in the 2nd tx instead of paying the crazy fees I again picked low fees (3 sat/B). It was confirmed after 98 minutes!
Now if you see the regular fees which Electrum recommended me then you will see the craziness.
Check the fees differences. I can bring you more 10+ tx I made in the last few day and all are the same with high paying tx because I used Electrum recommended fees.
So, my suggestion is that,
Stop paying high fees while you can spend very less fees for a transaction. Pick something even less than 2 sat/B.
I hope it helps.
Cheers :-)
Note: Please feel free to share this in other boards which were mentioned earlier. More people needs to see this. Thanks.