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What tips do you have for making transactions in a high-fee environment?
2645 sats \ 4 comments \ @fixthemoneyfixtheworld 20 Nov 2023 bitcoin

Some online merchants I pay in Bitcoin still only accept on-chain payments, and opening channels on Lightning can sometimes be very expensive. How do you deal with this when the mempool gets very hot? Do you use Liquid? or a custodial Lightning wallet like WoS?

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127 sats \ 0 replies \ @pillar 20 Nov 2023

If a merchant only accepts onchain, there is not much to do when the mempool is clogged but to suffer.

Outside of answering your specific question:

  • Find a merchant that uses lightning, convince your current merchant to use lighting, etc. Find a way towards Lightning. It probably helps if you make it explicit to that merchant that you are moving your business elsewhere because he doesn't accept lightning.
  • Be wise and get your UTXOs nicely arranged when fees are low.
  • Be wise and get your Lightning ready when fees are low.

As you see, it's mostly about moving to lightning and getting ready when the mempool is friendly.

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85 sats \ 0 replies \ @xz 20 Nov 2023

Don't use P2PKH or P2SH addresses.

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22 sats \ 0 replies \ @OT 20 Nov 2023

Best to be prepared for high fees by having a few LN channels & a small amount of liquid (to refill LN channels). If you don't want to run a LN node some mobile LN wallets like electrum, Phoenix or blixt have worked well for me.

I'd personally wait for the fees to come down a bit to open LN channels. Fee's usually come in waves so I think they'll eventually come down a bit in the next few weeks or months.

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23 sats \ 0 replies \ @Zepasta 20 Nov 2023 freebie

If the merchant only accepts on-chain payments, there isn't much you can do besides bite the bullet and pay the high fees. You could do a PayJoin but i don't think it would make much difference.

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