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I sent BTC from exchange to my Ledger and I see high network fees

This article explains why you may see very high network fees when receiving BTC from the exchange to your Ledger.

High network fees

Once you received some BTC from the exchange (eg. Coinbase, Binance, etc), you may see high network fees for this particular transaction. It is normal to see the high fees for receiving from exchanges. 

These are so-called payment batching.

The process of batching refers to combining multiple payments (withdrawals) into a solitary transaction that has numerous outputs. This method can reduce the data overhead for the transaction, which is the primary factor determining Bitcoin fees. By merging several transactions into a single one, it is possible to lower data usage and consequently cut down on fees that the exchange has to pay.

The fees for this consolidated transaction are shown in Ledger Live, which may give the impression that you paid a higher fee. However, upon checking the block explorer link within Ledger Live, it becomes apparent that the exchange covered the transaction fees by sending BTC to several addresses/users of the exchange at the same time.

Read more about payment batching in this dedicated article.

Who pays network fees on receiving?

Good to remind you that when you are receiving funds in Ledger Live, from exchanges or not, you never pay the network fees indicated in the transaction on the explorer.

The network fees are always paid by the sender of the transaction. 

If you are receiving from the exchange, you only pay the withdrawal fees set by the exchange during the withdrawal process.

Seeing high network fees on sending?

Bitcoin network may get very congested from time to time and it can result in high network fees and can lead your send transactions to get stuck as pending. 

If your transaction got stuck, please refer to this article to speed it up.

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