Avoid rush hour! Save fees!

New buyers of Bitcoin may be disappointed when they discover that their $100 USD purchase of Bitcoin is closer to $85 by the time it arrives in their wallet. It's a frustrating problem.

As Bitcoin purchasers wanting to move Bitcoin from one place to another, buyers are at the mercy of mining transaction fees. These are calculated through a process that accounts for transaction size and the market density at the time of the transaction - basically, how busy the traffic is at the time you wish to deliver your Bitcoin.

While your average Bitcoin n00b might not have any sense of how to control a number of factors that can reduce transaction fees, one that can be watched easily is the market volume. When market trading volume for Bitcoin is high, fees will also be higher as miners will prioritize higher-paying transaction fees over lower fees. So, the easiest way to minimize fees is to watch the traffic.

If you are buying your Bitcoin on an exchange app like Coinbase, it is quite safe to hold in your Coinbase account while waiting for traffic to subside. Long term, however, you are going to want to have your private keys stored in your wallet, not on Coinbase. If anything ever happened to Coinbase or to your Coinbase account and they had your keys, you would lose access to your Bitcoin.

So when is a good time to move Bitcoin? Certain days tend to be lighter on traffic, such as Saturday afternoons in North America. When you are ready to move your Bitcoin, take a look at the network traffic on sites like:

blockchain.info at https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees
or worldcoinindex at https://www.worldcoinindex.com/coin/bitcoin

There are many other websites for checking out volume. Don't move your Bitcoin during big spikes in traffic - you will pay a premium for it to be delivered, or sit waiting if your fee is set too low.

With the introduction of SegWit, this will soon be less of a problem. Many transactions will not need to be performed on the main block-chain and this could alleviate a lot of traffic, sort of like a ring road around town might ease urban congestion.

In the meantime, don't deliver your Bitcoin to your wallet during rush hour!

Have another handy, n00b-friendly tip that can reduce transaction fees? Please reply!

image source:
www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2017/02/traffic-jam-nightmare-in-brazil/_jcr_content/par/image.img.1280.high.jpg/v0.jpg