LTC transfer from one wallet to another, fees, time it takes, etc

Hi,

I’ve googled this so many times, but still can’t seem to find a definitive and clear answer or explanation. I sent some LTC from an old Litecoin wallet (0.8.6.2-beta) to my new wallet (Electrum Litecoin) yesterday (approximately 20 hours ago as of now), and it still hasn’t arrived. I know I need to include a fee, and I have. I set the fee to 0.005 LTC (which seemed ok to me, as it roughly translates to about 1.5$ which is still higher than the average LTC transaction fee according to this website https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/litecoin-transactionfees.html#3m) . However, it’s about the fees I just can’t seem to get any clarity on. I’m wondering if anyone can help with any of the following.

  1. I’ve been trying to find a website or a calculator that can work out and suggest a fee. I know fees are based on transaction size, but this again, I don’t know how to work out. Is there a good website, or an app that can help with all this?

  2. I’ve read that if the fee is low (or even if there’s no fee) that the transaction may take a long time, or even never complete. What happens in the latter case? Does the amount sent get refunded/credited back to the address it was sent from, or is it forever lost and stuck in some limbo?

  3. If I want to transfer LTC (or any other cryptocurrency really) from one wallet to another, or even to a physical hardware wallet (I’m considering purchasing the Ledger Nano S), is there no way around having to pay fees for every single transfer? I suppose what I’m asking is I’m not paying someone else, I’m “paying” myself. It’s like if you had to include a fee if you bought a new wallet, and wanted to transfer your “traditional” money, say a 10$ note from your old wallet to your new one. Obviously, there’s no fee for this. So I’m thinking, it’s money I already own, and I just want to move it from one wallet to another. I can accept that perhaps a fee must always be involved, as obviously this is different from the physical example I cited above, but I just need someone to confirm this for me definitively, one way or another.

Many thanks,

Vlad.

It’s now been a little short of two days, and the transaction still hasn’t completed, and I’m starting to get worried.

Especially because when I click on the details of the transaction, in the old wallet, it just says “Status: 0/unconfirmed”. What’s really strange is that immediately after I initiated the transaction, in the next couple of hours or so, when I was monitoring this, it was saying something like “… broadcast through x nodes”. But it seems after I’ve shut down my computer over night, and then after I restarted it and opened up the wallet again, this has reverted to “0/unconfirmed”, and it’s not changing at all, and my computer’s been running now for over 24 hours.

I didn’t think this was relevant, I thought once you submit a transaction, it doesn’t matter whether your computer or the wallet are running?

Can anyone shed some light and hopefully reassure me?

Many thanks.