- It sucks when your transaction gets stuck in the mempool for hours
- You can avoid this huge mempool queue by using a few sneaky tricks
- These mempool tricks will also work when it comes to saving a few sats
When Bitcoin goes wild and pumps like it has done over the last couple of weeks, more and more Bitcoiners crawl out of the woodwork. While this is great as they fuel the price action and help you score some epic gains, they also clog the network.
Just as we saw during peak 2017 Bitcoin madness, the Bitcoin network has been jamming up with transactions sat in the mempool for hours on end during certain periods. So, I’m going to teach you how to avoid getting stuck in the mempool for hours on end, and possibly even save yourself a few sats when Bitcoin is as dead as crypt!
Learn to Check the Mempool
If you’re going to become fee-savvy and learn to skip queues, then you’re going to need to do a little bit of work before you make a transaction. It’s not much work, it takes maybe 5 seconds to do, so don’t get worried. To save yourself sats and time, head on over to blockchain.com and check out the mempool transaction count. This is the number of transactions that are currently sat in the mempool waiting to be processed.
When volatility is high and there’s lots going on with Bitcoin, there will be more transactions. On the other hand, during quiet times, the mempool will be relatively quiet. So, the more transactions sat in the mempool the longer you would normally have to wait – it’s pretty simple really.
Adjust Your Fees Accordingly
Step 2 in becoming a Bitcoin transaction master is to adjust your fees. Most wallets, let me rephrase that, the better wallets out there will allow you to adjust your fees. Usually there will be a dropdown menu that gives you three options, high, standard and low, and this is good enough to use this trick.
After checking the mempool, you’ll want to bump your fees to high if there are more transactions in the mempool. This will mean miners are more likely to prioritize your transaction as they’ll earn more money from it. Instead of your transaction taking a couple of hours to be included in a block, you might even make it into the very next block.
On the other hand, if the transaction count is fairly low, you can drop the fees down to low in order to save yourself money. If there aren’t many transactions, you’ll get included in the next block or one shortly after – saving a couple of sats in the process. Remember, stacking every sat you can counts!
Go Be a Pro!
I’ve shared my transaction secrets with you, so go out there and try out this trick. Hopefully you can use this newfound knowledge to your advantage to skip the queues and get your Bitcoin moving faster and more cost effectively than ever before. Who knows, you might even be able to jump the queue and get your trade executed faster at a better price!
