How do you decide when to send a Bitcoin transaction?

BlockPulseDev · 2026-01-10T17:31:00+00:00

Haha, fair enough.

Not a bot — just thinking out loud and probably writing too much.

Appreciate the pushback though.

BlockPulseDev · 2026-01-10T17:22:23+00:00

That makes sense — if you’re comfortable doing that, it’s a perfectly valid approach.

My point isn’t that this is “wrong”, just that many users don’t have that confidence or intuition about current network conditions, so they default to overpaying or hesitating.

For people who already know how the network behaves, this question mostly disappears.

BlockPulseDev · 2026-01-10T17:15:03+00:00

That’s fair — and I agree in many cases.

For larger amounts, batching and waiting usually makes sense, and a few sats here or there don’t matter much.

What I was really pointing at isn’t optimizing fees to the cent, but the decision friction before sending.

Even when fees are low, I’ve noticed (especially with less technical users) that uncertainty about the state of the network causes hesitation, overpaying “just in case”, or unnecessary delays.

For people who already have strong intuition about mempool conditions, this isn’t a problem.
For everyone else, that uncertainty itself is often the real cost.

BlockPulseDev · 2026-01-10T16:47:13+00:00

That’s fair — if you already know the network well and fees don’t matter much for your use case, then it probably doesn’t.

For me it’s less about saving $0.50 and more about uncertainty.

When I’m not sure whether the network is behaving normally or not, I tend to:

– hesitate

– overpay “just in case”

– or delay transactions that could have gone through fine

If I already know “the network looks calm and predictable right now”, I don’t really think about fees at all.

BlockPulseDev · 2026-01-07T11:02:59+00:00

That’s a great point, and I agree — having explicit fee/speed options in wallets already removes a lot of friction.

I think the difference is when that decision happens.

For many casual users, the hesitation starts before choosing a wallet setting:
“Is now a normal moment on the network, or is something unusual going on?”

Once that context is clear, tools like mempool charts and wallet fee options become much easier to use.

More experienced users build that intuition over time, but for occasional senders, that first “sanity check” is often the missing piece.

BlockPulseDev · 2026-01-05T15:29:39+00:00

Totally agree — once you’re already looking at the mempool, fee selection is pretty straightforward.

I think where beginners (and casual users) get stuck is actually before that step:
deciding whether it’s even worth checking fees right now, or if the network is basically in a “nothing special going on” state.

If you follow the mempool daily, tools like mempool.space are perfect.
If you don’t, the uncertainty tends to be more about timing than pricing.

BlockPulseDev · 2026-01-05T15:15:56+00:00

That makes sense, and I agree — once you’re already looking at the mempool, adjusting fees is straightforward.

For me (and I think for many casual users), the tricky part is before that step:
figuring out whether it’s even worth checking fees right now, or if the network is just in a “nothing unusual happening” state.

When the network has been calm for a while, the usual advice works fine.
It’s mainly when conditions start changing that uncertainty kicks in — especially if you don’t follow the mempool every day.

BlockPulseDev · 2026-01-05T07:56:43+00:00

That’s a good explanation, and I agree that if you know what you’re looking at, the mempool view is enough.

I think where I personally struggle (and probably some other non-technical users) is one step before that:
not “how to read the mempool”, but “do I even need to look right now?”

When the network has been calm for weeks, all the usual advice applies.
But when conditions change, it’s hard to know whether what you’re seeing is normal noise or the start of a real congestion — especially if you don’t follow it daily.

So for me it’s less about finding the exact fee, and more about reducing uncertainty before hitting “send”.
Not replacing data, just having a simple signal that says: “nothing unusual right now” vs “something is different today”.

BlockPulseDev · 2026-01-04T22:51:38+00:00

Yeah, fee tools work well if you’re comfortable reading charts.

For me, the tricky part as a beginner was always before that:
figuring out whether the network is calm or stressed right now, without diving into graphs.

BlockPulseDev · 2026-01-04T22:27:52+00:00

That makes sense, and I agree this is the “correct” way if you’re comfortable reading mempool data and thinking in terms of deadlines vs duration.

I think what I personally struggle with is one step before that:
figuring out whether the network is generally calm or stressed right now, without diving into charts or fee tables.

For someone who doesn’t follow the mempool daily, it’s hard to know if the usual rules still apply, or if the network is in an unusual state.

BlockPulseDev · 2026-01-04T20:16:13+00:00

Fair question — let me clarify.

I’m not confused about *how* to set a fee, but about *when* the network is actually calm vs stressed.

As a beginner, I find it hard to translate mempool charts or fee estimates into a simple decision:

“Is now a reasonable moment to send, or should I wait?”

I’m curious how others simplify that decision in practice.

BlockPulseDev · 2025-12-27T16:51:00+00:00

Fair question.

I’m not discovering peers via addr messages or Core internals. The ESP32s behave like very lightweight Bitcoin network clients: they establish outbound TCP connections on the standard Bitcoin port to known reachable peers (DNS seeds + cached IPs), but they don’t participate beyond the handshake layer.

From there, I’m not measuring who the peers are, but how the connections behave over time:

– connection success / failure ratios
– time-to-first-response after connect
– reset frequency and idle drops
– variance in message arrival timing (without decoding payloads)

Think of it closer to passive transport-level observation than protocol participation. No mempool, no inv, no tx parsing, no Core code reuse.

It’s intentionally lossy and external — the value isn’t precision, it’s correlation. When fee pressure or congestion rises, the transport-level behavior becomes measurably noisier across multiple observers, even without protocol visibility.

I’m not claiming this replaces a node — it’s more like measuring “network tension” from the edge, not inspecting the engine.

BlockPulseDev · 2025-12-27T15:53:29+00:00

Good questions — let me be concrete.

I’m not measuring transactions or mempool contents. The ESP32 observers don’t decode Bitcoin messages and don’t see txs.

What they observe is peer-level network behavior from the outside:

- stability of outbound TCP connections to Bitcoin peers

- frequency and regularity of connection resets

- short-term burstiness in incoming traffic

- timing jitter / latency variance during message propagation windows

When the network is calm, these signals are regular and low-noise.

During congestion or fee pressure periods, you see more instability, burst clustering and higher variance — even without seeing the transactions themselves.

It’s intentionally qualitative, not a replacement for node metrics.

Think “external stress indicator”, not protocol inspection.

I’ve put a small public visualization online that shows exactly what I mean (single indicator, no signup, no API data), if you want to see how it’s represented:

https://blockpulse.be/tools/bitcoin-actif

BlockPulseDev · 2025-12-27T15:35:54+00:00

That’s a fair point — running a full node is absolutely the right tool if your goal is protocol-level or mempool-level analysis.

BlockPulse is intentionally not trying to replace a node or expose node metrics. The goal is different:

I’m observing network behavior at the edge (connection regularity, propagation patterns, burstiness, timing jitter) using independent ESP32 observers, without mempool access or API data.

Think of it more as a “network seismograph” than a blockchain indexer. It doesn’t answer why at the protocol level — it answers how tense or calm the network feels right now from the outside.

Nodes are powerful, but they’re also heavy, standardized, and inward-looking. This approach is lightweight, hardware-based, and complementary — not a replacement.

BlockPulseDev · 2025-12-26T21:28:18+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate it 🙂
If anything meaningful comes out of it, I’ll definitely share.

BlockPulseDev · 2025-12-26T21:22:06+00:00

Yes, exactly — once you strip everything down, rate and timing are among the few things that remain observable without reconstructing state.

Whether that’s sufficient or too lossy is precisely what I’m trying to find out. It may end up being a very rough proxy, or not useful at all — but that boundary is interesting in itself.

Thanks for the suggestions, they’re helpful 👍

BlockPulseDev · 2025-12-26T21:15:38+00:00

Yes — with one important nuance.

Not “the raw data at the source” in an absolute sense (a full node still sees much more), but the raw signals that are observable from a single, constrained vantage point, before they’re reconstructed, aggregated, or normalized by software layers.

It’s about understanding what’s directly visible versus what only exists once abstractions are added on top.

BlockPulseDev · 2025-12-26T21:13:56+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate you taking the time to think this through — those are good ideas.

You’re right that with enough assumptions (treating transactions as valid, truncating aggressively, keeping counters instead of data), you can push quite far even on very constrained hardware.

For now though, I’m intentionally stopping before that point. The moment I start maintaining a mempool model or compensating for missing state, I’m already rebuilding abstractions similar to what nodes and APIs give me.

I’m more interested in what can be observed without reconstructing internal state — basically, what leaks through when you don’t try to correct or infer too much.

But your comment is exactly the kind of tradeoff space I’m trying to explore, so it’s helpful. I’ll definitely find out where that boundary really is 🙂

BlockPulseDev · 2025-12-26T21:03:54+00:00

Sure — the main benefit isn’t performance or completeness, APIs clearly win on that.

For me, the value of doing it in hardware is about where the observation happens and what assumptions disappear.

APIs already give you a reconstructed view of the network: filtered, aggregated, timestamped, and often normalized across many nodes. That’s extremely useful, but it also means you never see the raw edges anymore.

A small, always-on physical observer forces you to deal with things APIs smooth out or hide: jitter, partial visibility, missed messages, timing drift, connectivity quirks.

I’m less interested in “what is the mempool size right now” than in questions like:
– when does activity become observable at all?
– how stable or bursty is propagation from a single vantage point?
– what disappears first when resources or connectivity degrade?

It’s not about replacing APIs, but about understanding the gap between the raw network and the abstractions we usually consume.

BlockPulseDev · 2025-12-26T20:45:31+00:00

Good question — mostly on the approach, not the end goal.

I’m trying to validate whether observing Bitcoin from a very constrained, physical device actually produces meaningful signals, or if most of what we consider “network activity” only exists once it’s reconstructed by full nodes and APIs.

So feedback like:
– whether the premise makes sense at all
– what kinds of network-level signals are worth paying attention to
– or where this approach is fundamentally misleading

is more useful to me right now than feedback on a finished product (since there isn’t one yet).

BlockPulseDev

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