Bitcoin UTXO management: how to prepare for high fees in Sparrow Wallet
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- čas přidán 20. 05. 2024
- In this video I talk about Bitcoin UTXO management:
What is a UTXO?
How small UTXO's can ruin your bitcoin stack
How to prepare your UTXO set for high fee environments by consolidating/mixing
Privacy implications and considerations.
Other relevant videos:
How to CoinJoin with Sparrow Wallet: • Video
New to Sparrow? See all the guides, here: www.southernbitcoiner.com/spa...
Timestamps:
00:00 intro
00:33 What is a UTXO?
4:14 Why manage UTXOs?
9:47 How to prepare your UTXO set?
10:06 Privacy implications
11:48 How to consolidate UTXOs
14:53 CoinJoin / Mixing
16:54 How big should UTXOs be?
15:22: How to CoinJoin with Sparrow Wallet: • Video
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One of the best videos I have seen on UTXO management. Thank you very much and keep it up!!
Thank you!
That was very well explained, thank you for the Tutorial. Learning about UTXOs helped me to understand that we do not own bitcoin as such, rather we are the gatekeepers to historical transactions etched into the blockchain. Whoever holds the key has the power to unlock and broadcast the economic energy stored. Props to the developers who deliver awesome tools such as Sparrow Wallet free of charge. Keep up the good work dude! Liked & Subscribed.
Thanks for the feedback. Glad it was helpful :)
Yep, I like to think that you don't hold bitcoin, but you rather hold the right to spend it.
Great tutorial. So much to learn about UTXOs management. just a beginner.
Great overview. Using TestNet was a good choice to show, not just tell, viewers how the process works. I think lots of people get bogged down by the concepts, but seeing it done in practice makes the process a lot less intimidating.
Thanks for the feedback. Yes definitely. Testnet saved me a heck of a lot on fees :)
I’m sure there are many wallets that support testnet. It’s just a matter of going onto the wallets documentation and seeing if there is any testnet support
@@MichaelBlast I haven't tested it, but it looks like Blockstream's Green wallet also supports testnet and coin control in their desktop wallet software. TBH I haven't yet seen a mobile wallet that does a great job at UTXO management.
Great explanation, just what I was looking for. Thanks!
This is an excellent video! Very clearly explained. Thank you for putting the time and work in.
Thank Cole! great video. Using sparrow wallet is great for this type of tutorial and easy to follow.
Perfectly explained!
Great stuff. Well done man!
I never knew this. Thank you for the knowledge
Thank you. Great video
Just found your site. Excellent info. I have ordered a Jade and am downloading the Sparrow wallet. One of the problems I see with large UXTOs is if you had one of 10BTC and sent $50 to someone the whole 10 BTC disappears from your wallet for a time before it returns as change. It could be a bit worrying.
Great video - helps a lot!
Excellent video, very informative, thanks!
Thank you so much!
Perfect! Really good explanation
Great video! You have a new subscriber!
Very useful. Thank you. ✌️.
Best video on this yet, QUESTION: say a person has 2 bitcoin total, what is the ideal amount of UTXOs to have, would you want one at 1.5 , one at 0.3 and two at 0.1 so that we can send out small or large amounts without revealing our whole stack?
Really it’s up to you. I would just avoid anything smaller than maybe 0.1 BTC
Maybe have:
1 BTC
0.2 x3
0.1 x4
Thank you need this 🙏 💯⚡️🧡
Awesome explained sir ❤
A few questions:
Where is the UTXO coming from, is the person who sends you the BTC sending it, and if so why? Isn’t the block chain fee all that’s needed? Why extra fees made in UTXO’s? How much is 1 UTXO worth?
nice, thanks!
Very well done. Finally grokked
Excellent video. You explained it well. And you showed good examples with the reasons why. I subscribed and I will send a tip. You should do more of these. I am learning every day.
Great to hear! Thank you!
Great video brother
Great video ! thanks 😊
Great expatiation!
Thanks for your excellent instructional videos- it is greatly appreciated. Just sent some sats to your address listed as a thank you. Keep up the great work!
Thank you! Appreciate that!
Could you cover how to REDUCE one large transaction into smaller utxo's using sparrow? Some people send large chunks in one transaction without realizing that for privacy reasons, you wouldn't want someone seeing a large amount of bitcoin you own. Thanks!
I'm using STRIKE to accumulate sats, I haven't withdraw for a year, I'm treating as my savings account, is that something I should worry about and move to cold wallet?
another Q, if I have my private key address with some funds in it, how am I supposed to access them, without a .dat file?
Great video, keep up the good work
Great video.
1. What might be a good practice size for sending BTC to cold storage ? If we DCA should we send 0.01 or 0.05 BTC in 1 transaction to a trusted HWW ?
2. Sparrow may not be commonly known for newer people, whereas Ledger Trezor might be 1st choice for new bitcoiners learning cold storage. IF we are setting up Sparrow for the 1st time with the intent to manage Ledger Trezor, do we have to create a seed for Sparrow or can we ignore that step ?
Thanks very much for your videos and help.
1. I can’t predict the future or how high fees will go! But I would say 0.01 is good. Might be better to wait for 0.05, up to you.
2. No. The seed is already generated in Ledger / Trezor. Simply connect the device to sparrow, create a new wallet, and select “connected hardware wallet”
What the recommend action in your experience after someone bought his own btc !?
1- sending them directly into hard wallet then mix its Utxos.
2- mixing them then transfer into HW??.
Thank-you for a very well explained intro to the subject. A question please? if I intend on being a long-term hodler and therefore don't expect to spend much, if any, of my btc, would it be optimal to consolidate my holdings into fewer relatively larger UTXOs - e.g. 4 x UTXOs representing 25% of my btc each? My assumption is that if I'm not going to spend it for a long time, then I don't need to worry so much about privacy?
Yea, that could work for a long term hold. I would recommend having maybe 1 or 2 smaller ones- you never know!
@@SouthernBitcoiner Thanks for taking the time to reply. I really appreciate it
Is there any value/merit in coinjoining from a cold wallet (ColdCard)? My main worry is moving from cold to hot, and to a lesser extent fees. Love your work -
I would send bitcoin from my ColdCard to a different wallet specifically for mixing. Don’t make your ColdCard keys a hot wallet.
If concerned about hacking: send a few UTXO’s to your mixing wallet, mix a small amount of bitcoin at a time, send to cold storage, and repeat.
Hope that makes sense
@@SouthernBitcoiner yep complete sense - set up my seperate hot mixer wallet after your vid on coinjoin, together with a cold bip 85 "receiving wallet", thanks for taking the time to reply
Nice video! I have a bunch of sats stuck in mempool for several weeks, any ideas why / how to get it unstuck?
Just wait. Either it was successful or it returns to you.
Wouldn’t a big UTXO create a small change output (if I don’t spend it as a whole) and thus create more and more small UTXOs in my balance all over again? How would I escape that or does a consolidation even make sense at all? Thanks!
Hi thanks for clear explanations. What's the point merging into a same utxo if we can just wait for a final transaction and use those utxo to pay? If we merge, we pay fees for the merge plus the fees for the final transactions, right?
Yes you do pay to merge. It’s best to merge when the fees are low. So under 15 sat/byte is probably a good time to merge.
We do this so that when fees spike high, we are prepared for it 👍
@SouthernBitcoiner Thanks for answering, that's the part I missed to understand. Indeed, we have to perform this internal mix when fees are low
I learning to use this wallet and then I installed v1.9 and can not see mixing option is available for my UTXO's. Please advise ?
thanks for the video, great explanation. One thing I still don't understand... do you actually pay a fee to consolidate within your own wallet? Is it the same fee rate as when you're sending sats to a different wallet?
Yes you do pay a fee when sending to the same wallet. Same fee rate yep.
Probably a dumb question, what if before sending some KYC sats to my sparrow wallet I send them through a couple of lighting wallets, will they still be traceable to my identity?
It probably will NOT be traceable to your identity.
I don’t say not with 100% certainty because I don’t understand lighting as well as I understand the main network
@@SouthernBitcoiner thanks for the reply mate! Love your contents 🧡
Can you do this consolidation method with just about every wallet or only sparrow? I get that if you can't see your individual UTXO You're basically lumping the entire balance together.
Yes all wallets will do this behind the scenes. Sparrow just makes it a lot easier
hi
i am trying to come to grips with understanding how utxo work . let’s say i have a wallet with 10 utxo and i send the complete contents of btc to a new wallet , what do i have ? do i have 1 utxo ? . thanks in advance
Yes, if you send the entire balance to a new wallet, you will have 1 UTXO in the new wallet
I have been digging in UTXOs more. Wouldn’t need to consolidate UTXOs make small purchases difficult or pointless for companies? For example, if Walmart sells me bubble gum for SATs. What would Walmart do when fees are too expensive move small transactions? Will companies have to use third party intermediaries?
Yes Bitcoin can not handle a lot of transaction throughout resulting in higher fees. 2nd layer solutions like lightning network fixes this
@@SouthernBitcoiner Yes. However, we have to be mindful when pulling BTC off of exchanges. We have to make sure the UTXOs amounts are worth it. I know early on, I pulled the minimum amount of, $20 to 30, now I have learned my lesson. I can imagine how many of us over learned, "no your keys, not your bitcoin". 🤔
primary reason to consolidate now, is for when you need to pull btc off the base chain into layer 2 (like lightning, etc.) btc base chain only has enough space for a person to do 1 transaction every couple years once it's fully adopted.
Without downloading sparrow, can I check in Trezor or Ledger or BitBox how many UTXOs I currently have? How can I see that in the meme pool or in one of these wallets?
You have to use a wallet software that shows UTXO’s. Not sure if these wallets show that.
In my opinion, it’s Best to import your wallet public key into Sparrow to see them
Q
Importing *public* key (not private key) would allow you to view only on ledger and trezor but would we be able to sign transactions through the two 🤔
Say you have a ledger with a number of UTXOs and you send to a new wallet in 1 transaction will the new wallet just have the one UTXO?
Sorry think you answered this already 👍
You must consolidate during a low-fee period or the whole exercise is a waste of time and fees.
This is a great tutorial! Say, if I have 50 UTXOs in a ledger and I send them all to something like a trezor or jade in one go, does that mean it’s now 1 UTXO? And if I send it twice, it’s now 2 UTXO and so on?
Yes, correct. Just be aware of the privacy implications of sending big UTXO’s
@@SouthernBitcoiner thank you. I know you didn’t do this in the video, but is it wise or necessary to have a completely separate account/wallet within the same HW device for non KYC?
Yes. It is a good idea to have different accounts for KYC vs NoKYC
@@SouthernBitcoiner thank you
Does it matter how many unspent outputs you have for utxo management?
Yes, better to have fewer UTXO’s.
Depends on how much bitcoin you have but maybe aim for 5-10
If I buy a new hardware wallet and send all of my
BTC onto it from my previous hardware wallet, Would I still inherit those UTXO's or would I have one single UTXO from that transaction?
If you send the entire balance in 1 go, then you will have 1 UTXO
@@SouthernBitcoiner thank you so much! I think I’ll do it just for peace of mind 😂
Great video thank you for putting this together.
A couple questions:
1. Will sending all UTXOs and Bitcoin to a new wallet consolidate everything and you’re good to go?
2. What about the Lightning network? I believe that’s where most all “payments” will be.
Thanks for the feedback.
1. Yes, sending all your bitcoin to a new wallet will consolidate all your coins. Just keep in mind that this isn’t all too good for your privacy.
2. You could definitely have some sats in a lightning wallet in preparations for high fees
@@SouthernBitcoiner who’s to say your wallet wasn’t hacked and someone just sent all your coins to their own wallet, or that you indeed own the second wallet in question?
@@JordanStambaugh1 Surveillance companies use particular heuristics to make probabilistic guesses.
This particular heuristic would be the common ownership heuristic. They see all those inputs join and assume they all belong to you. Because you send it ALL to a new address they can assume you are the new owner too.
Again, its all probabilistic and they can never be 100% sure
@@SouthernBitcoiner right so if they can’t be sure then it doesn’t hold up for anything. Plausible deniability
This is a simple question. But if I have had several UTXOs and I sent them all to cold wallet. How do I actually determine the number of UTXOs and what are the sizes of each?
Where are you sending from?
The wallet you are sending FROM should show you, if it’s a good/technical wallet like sparrow.
If not, open the transaction in Mempool.space to see the transaction flow
@@SouthernBitcoiner Different places.
What if you don't use sparrow...
So this does not work with smart phones???
Sparrow is not available on smartphone. If you have android, try Samourai wallet
Sending 3 times to the same address would count as 3 UTXOs? Not really, right?
Yes. That’s 3 UTXO’s because they each were sent in a separate transaction.
Never reuse bitcoin addresses by the way
You guys understand how it works but that doesn't mean you know how to teach it everybody has a different wallet when you explain something you always use a software wallet what we need is individual wallet being used in a case and that would help a lot of people with the education of it and until people are willing to do that nobody will ever know.
Seems like you are just splitting the fees up, not really saving
Imagine someone dca ed 10$ for last 5 years.
Haha would be a disaster if each DCA was a withdrawal , but very unlikely this happens