Using Coin control

Coin control gives you more control over the coins in your account. This advanced feature allows you to choose a coin selection strategy when you make a transaction and choose which coins may be spent.

About Coin control 

Ledger Live version 2.11.1 introduces a new coin control tool that allows you to select a coin selection strategy and the coins that can be spent. Before this new feature, all transactions for Bitcoin and Bitcoin-based crypto assets used a First-In-First-Out (FIFO) algorithm to automatically select coins. In other words, the oldest coin was first spent, then the second oldest, and so on until the amount was sufficient to fulfill the transaction amount. 

The coin control feature empowers you to better protect your privacy and manage the network fees you need to pay to spend the account balance.

Using Coin control 

Before you can use the coin control feature, make sure you have updated Ledger Live through the notification banner or downloaded the latest version of Ledger Live.

How to use coin control

To use the coin control tool:

1. In Ledger Live, navigate to the Send tab.
2. Select your Bitcoin (BTC) account (or another account that supports Coin Control) and type in the recipient address. Then click Continue. 
3. Enter the Amount you want to send.
4. Select Fees > Advanced and type in your desired Fee amount.
   This website can help you choose the most optimal fee for your transaction.
   
5. Select Coin control then Continue.
   
   The Coin control menu appears. 
   
6. In the Coin selection strategy drop-down list, select one of the following strategies: 
   • Oldest coins first (FIFO): the default strategy spends the oldest coins first. 
   • Minimize fees (optimize size): the strategy spends the lowest number of coins to reduce the byte size of the transaction. This strategy results in a low network fee. 
   • Minimize future fees (merge coins): the strategy spends the maximum number of inputs so that a potential price rise does not make smaller coins economically unspendable. Indeed, if the price of a crypto asset increases too much, smaller coins may be worth less than the cost of the network fees to spend them. 
7. (optional) Untick the checkboxes of the coins you don't want to include in the selection. 
   

     Note that the Coins to spend and Change to return indicators display how much is spent from and returned to the account. 

8. Click Done to return to the Send flow to verify and send the transaction.  
   

Understanding coin statuses

The following table describes the different coin statuses: