Topic: With Electrum i don't need to worry about how many inputs i have, right? (Read 166 times)

don't forget that when using Electrum it depends on your preference.
from Tools > Preference > Transactions
if you have set the "Coin selection" option to "Priority", what you explained here is what happens.
but if you have set it to "Privacy" then if you have multiple inputs (10x 1BTC) and want to spend a small amount of it (2BTC) then the transaction will include all of those inputs (spends all 10)

note that this feature will be removed in 3.1

It depends on what your intended outcome and/or use-case is... are you wanting to minimise transaction size? total fees required for a transaction? control privacy? prevent addresses from being linked?


Based on this comment, it would appear that you are concerned with having multiple UTXOs and generating transactions with a large data size causing the total fees to be increased. If so, coin control will not necessarily help you.

If you have a lot of small UTXOs and need to make a large payment that is close to your total balance, then you're going to need to select all your coins (just like the wallet would) to make up the required amount... if you need to make a smaller payment, then you'd need to select less coins, again just like the wallet would.

For instance, if you have inputs of 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 and 1... and you needed to send 2... the wallet isn't going to include all 10 of those inputs... it would only use 2 (ignoring fees for simplicity). I'm not sure how the ability to select specific inputs help here?

Electrum is actually fairly smart with it's selection of coins when generating a transction... granted, it's not perfect, but it does a pretty good job.


Coin control is more useful when you want/need to send from a specific address, or you want to FORCE the wallet to either include or exclude certain UTXOs... possible reasons include, consolidating... say you only need to send 2... but you have the 10 inputs... so you can use coin control to force ALL the UTXOs to be included (effectively the same as clicking "max" in Electrum)... or maybe if you had inputs of 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 and 7... and you wanted to send 6, the wallet defaults to using the 7... you could override the wallet and make it use all the 1's.

Or maybe you are required to spend from a specific address to prove ownership (ICOs and airdrops that require nominal payments from a particular address etc.)

you don't need to create a "new wallet", in the same wallet that you already have simply choose another new address.

additionally you don't have to do this. if privacy is not a concern of yours then next time you are making a transaction, for example paying for something, use all your transaction outputs instead, make the payment and get the rest in one new output in a change address (any address from your wallet would do).

I consolidate all my 31 inputs weeks ago with 50 sat/byte and now I have only 2 inputs in a segwit address.

If I finish with 20+ inputs again and the fees are low, I gonna create another wallet.

Eventually, you will have to worry. If right now you use a small input to pay a small payment, it actually makes no big difference. I suppose if you are always getting small inputs and always having to make small spends of equal size, then yes, you'd save on fees everytime you use up an individual input cleanly (without any change outputs).

But that's probably an unlikely scenario. Perhaps pick at least 1 address to always use in your small transactions, with all change going back to it every spend, so you don't feel like you're constantly having to consolidate. Or use up all the inputs you can in batch transactions.

Either way, as mocca points out, you're bloating up your balance with every dust input collected. Eventually, you'll have to face up to them one day. Better now when tx fees are low.

Sure, you can manually pick unspent outputs that will be spent in a new transaction. That being said: it's never a good idear to collect dust, since sooner or later the avg fee/byte needed for a fast confirmation will rise again, and at this point you'll have to pay a lot of fees to spend that dust...

It might be a good idear to use all your dust outputs to fund a new address you own, combining your dust when the estimated fee/byte is low can save you a lot on tx fees afterwards

Because I can simply select the coins I want to use for small payments.