Sending BTC looks simple. Paste an address, set a fee, broadcast. But the address format you choose changes fees by 30 to 40 percent, the fee you pick changes whether your transaction confirms in 10 minutes or 10 hours, and a single network mismatch can lose the funds permanently. This guide walks through every variable that matters, from address prefixes to RBF, plus wallet-specific steps for the six tools most people use.
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Every Bitcoin address encodes a public key hash. The encoding determines size, fee cost, and compatibility. There are three formats in active use, identifiable by their first character.
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Legacy (P2PKH), starts with "1": the original 2009 format. Example: 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa. Still universally supported but produces the largest transactions, so fees run roughly 30 percent higher than bech32 at the same sat/vB rate.
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SegWit (P2SH-wrapped), starts with "3": introduced with the 2017 SegWit soft fork. Example: 3J98t1WpEZ73CNmQviecrnyiWrnqRhWNLy. Backward-compatible, about 25 percent cheaper than Legacy, still common on older exchanges.
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Native SegWit (bech32), starts with "bc1q": the modern default since 2020. Example: bc1qar0srrr7xfkvy5l643lydnw9re59gtzzwf5mdq. Cheapest to send from (smallest transaction weight), supported by every major wallet. Bech32m addresses starting with bc1p are Taproot (2021), even more efficient for complex scripts. Per bitcoin.org, bech32 lowercase encoding also catches typos via checksum.
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You can send from any format to any format. The format of the receiving address only affects the recipient's future spend cost, not your send. The format of your sending wallet's UTXOs is what determines your fee.
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Bitcoin fees are not a percentage of the amount sent. They are a flat rate per unit of transaction size, measured in satoshis per virtual byte (sat/vB). A typical bech32 send is around 140 vB. At 20 sat/vB, that is 2,800 sats, roughly $1.70 at $60,000 BTC. Send a million dollars or send ten dollars, the fee is the same.
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Live rates are published by mempool.space, which shows three tiers: next block (high priority), 30 minutes (medium), and 1 hour or more (economy). During quiet periods all three converge near 2 to 5 sat/vB. During congestion (Ordinals inscriptions in early 2024, halving events) the high tier can spike above 300 sat/vB.
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The fee market is a real-time auction. Miners pick the highest-paying transactions from the mempool to fill each block. If you underpay relative to current demand, your transaction sits unconfirmed until either fees drop or you bump it.
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A confirmation is one block built on top of the block containing your transaction. Blocks arrive about every 10 minutes on average, though variance is high (occasional 1-hour gaps are normal). Common confirmation thresholds:

Deeper confirmations reduce the probability of a chain reorganization (reorg) reversing the transaction. Reorgs deeper than 3 blocks are exceptionally rare on Bitcoin, but exchanges remain conservative.
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For payments under roughly $500 where both parties have Lightning wallets, on-chain BTC is the wrong tool. Lightning settles in under a second, costs typically less than a cent, and skips the mempool entirely. Per the Lightning Network whitepaper, it uses payment channels secured by Bitcoin, with the main chain only touched to open or close a channel.
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Lightning invoices start with lnbc and encode amount, expiry, and recipient. Example: lnbc100u1p3.... They are single-use and expire (typically 60 minutes). You cannot send Lightning to an on-chain address or vice versa without a swap service.
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Use Lightning when: paying small amounts, tipping, paying merchants who accept it (Strike, Cash App, Bitrefill). Use on-chain when: moving large amounts, sending to cold storage, paying counterparties who only support on-chain.
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If you broadcast with too low a fee and your transaction sits in the mempool for hours, you have two ways to accelerate it.
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RBF (Replace-By-Fee, BIP-125): rebroadcast the same transaction with a higher fee. The new version replaces the old in mempools. Requires the original transaction to have signaled RBF (most modern wallets enable this by default). Sparrow, Electrum, and BlueWallet all support one-click fee bumps.
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CPFP (Child-Pays-For-Parent): create a new transaction that spends an output of the stuck one, paying a high fee. Miners must confirm the parent to claim the child's fee, so both confirm together. Useful when the stuck transaction is incoming (you cannot RBF a transaction you did not sign) or when RBF was not signaled.
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Wrong network. Sending BTC to an Ethereum address (starting with 0x) is impossible from a real Bitcoin wallet (the address fails checksum validation). The dangerous case is "wrapped BTC" confusion: sending WBTC on Ethereum to a native BTC address loses the funds because they live on different chains. Always confirm the receiving wallet expects native BTC, not WBTC, cbBTC, or BTCB.
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Dust limit. Bitcoin rejects outputs below roughly 546 sats (about $0.30) as "dust." Sending 100 sats to a friend will fail. Lightning has no dust limit, making it the right tool for sub-dollar amounts.
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Fee too low, transaction stuck. Picking 1 sat/vB during a 50 sat/vB market gets you a 6-hour or longer wait. Use mempool.space to check current rates before broadcasting. If already stuck, use RBF.
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Address typo. Bech32 checksums catch most single-character typos and the wallet rejects the address. Legacy addresses have weaker checksums. Always verify the first four and last four characters, especially on mobile.
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Coinbase (custodial): Assets → BTC → Send → paste address → enter amount → confirm. Coinbase pays the network fee from its own pool and charges a spread. Off-platform sends to other Coinbase users are free and instant (internal ledger transfer).
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Sparrow Wallet (desktop, power user): Send tab → paste address → set amount → choose fee from the mempool slider → preview transaction → sign → broadcast. Sparrow shows the raw transaction, UTXO selection, and RBF toggle. Best wallet for understanding what you are signing.
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Electrum (desktop, lightweight): Send tab → pay to → amount → fee slider → Send. Electrum has supported Bitcoin since 2011 and works with every hardware wallet. Enable RBF in Tools → Preferences before broadcasting.
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Hardware wallets (Ledger, Trezor, Coldcard): The hardware device signs offline. You initiate the send from the companion app (Ledger Live, Trezor Suite, Sparrow paired to Coldcard via SD card or USB), then physically confirm the address and amount on the device screen. Never approve a send without verifying the address character-by-character on the device itself, not the computer screen.
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MetaMask: MetaMask does not natively support Bitcoin. You can hold WBTC (ERC-20 wrapped BTC on Ethereum) or cbBTC (Base), but these are not real BTC and cannot be sent to a Bitcoin address. To send native BTC from MetaMask holdings, unwrap via a bridge or DEX first.
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Phantom: Phantom added Bitcoin support in 2024 via integration with Magic Eden's runes and ordinals infrastructure. Send works similarly to Solana sends inside the app, but routing depends on whether you hold native BTC, Runes, or Ordinals.
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Address format specs from bitcoin.org and BIP-173 (bech32). Fee market data and confirmation tier conventions from mempool.space. Lightning mechanics from the Lightning Network paper by Poon and Dryja. RBF semantics from BIP-125. Wallet behavior verified against current documentation for Sparrow, Electrum, Coinbase, Ledger, Trezor, MetaMask, and Phantom as of May 2026.
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