In reality, you can check your Bitcoin balance and transaction history directly with your own wallets, nodes and even don't need any Bitcoin block explorer to do it.

Bitcoin block explorers practically provide a lot of convenience for us. Obviously we have to be careful when using block explorers because they are centralized hosted and our privacy can be leaked. Use them with Tor connection if you do care about your privacy.

Let's return to this topic.

What is the first Bitcoin block explorer in history?
It is built by theymos. Are you surprised? 

Bitcoin Block Explorer
It used to be hosted at http://theymos.ath.cx:64150/bbe/
It was live on November 10, 2010.

At some points of time, it was mirror hosted at https://109.123.116.245/
Need mirror for blockexplorer.com

How does the first Bitcoin block explorer look like?
See its archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20101113061427/http://theymos.ath.cx:64150/bbe/

I use it to explore the Bitcoin Genesis block and get a result as follows.

• https://web.archive.org/web/20101113075930/http://theymos.ath.cx:64150/bbe/block/000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f

You want to have block explorers today?

• Get many of them from [Huge List] Bitcoin Helpful Links/ Tools

Other hidden facts you did not know, I guess so, because I did not add it in OP.

• theymos initially launched the Block explorer as a close source, and told that he maybe make the code public later which never happened.
• He run it for a long time till 2012 ^{not sure because theymos announced the new domain in 2010, but Wayback machine shows it in 2012} when he switched the domain to blockexplorer.com ^[1], before selling it ^{around Feb 2013} to Liraz.org. The owner of Liraz site is Lira Siri (Twitter/ X). His account on Bitcointalk is liraz.
• Lira Siri runs the Bitcoin block explorer for a while until May or June 2020 before made some change and later turned it to Joseon Explorer
• Source of the information

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120308072440/http://blockexplorer.com/

Some screenshots for above information.

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Blockchain.info possibly a second Bitcoin block explorer in history.

It was run by piuk. Blockchain.info - Bitcoin Block explorer & Currency Statistics (announced in August 2011).

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Note:

• It was posted first in that topic, on Bitcointalk
• I leave the source link to avoid plagiarism accusation.
• I excluded/ included minor things from an original thread ^{if necessary}.

In cryptocurrency, you will have to use many things such as cryptocurrency wallets (should be open source, non custodial) and exchange accounts.

Make sure you do as follows

• Use strong passwords for your wallets, accounts.
• Passwords must be unique. That means, Never reuse your passwords from one account to another, from one platform to another.
• Passwords should be generated randomly and not in any pattern of your own favorite.
• Use password manager tools if possible.

Some resources to learn about it.

• Are your passwords in the green?
• Haveibeenpwned.com. Check data breaches, whether your email address is in any data breach.
• How to create a strong password? Idea
• How to create a strong password (and remember it)
• Create a secure password

Password generators and management tools

• Keepass
• Keepass for Android
• Password Safe
• Proton Pass
• They can have password data breach too so be careful.
  
  • Notice of recent security incident (LastPass)

Creating strong passwords are good but not enough. Never store your passwords in online accounts (Dropbox, Google Drive, Azzure, Telegram, Facebook, ...). You will get nightmare some day if doing so.

Gary Gensler as a chair of SEC. - Securities and Exchange Commission, led this regulatory agency with more actions against cryptocurrencies and this market. While in reality, the mission of SEC. is to regulate securities markets. ^[1]

Newbies in this market are very sensitive and vulnerable to regulatory news and SEC, Gensler are driving forces for chaos of this market recent months. He did not fulfill his role as a chair of SEC and a latest hoax from them hours ago is another big shame.

Gensler said he wants and does everything to protect US. citizens and investors in cryptocurrency market. In reality, the fact is he caused a lot of unnecessary problems in this industry and many companies, people lost money because of his shady activities.

[1] SEC Defined, How it works

Sources

• https://fortune.com/crypto/2023/06/14/gary-gensler-sec-congress-crypto-playbook/
• https://twitter.com/jeffjohnroberts/status/1669074600175517697

SUMMARY

• Mempool is the best option. It's much better than ETA and Static but always double check mempool to compare it with given estimation from Electrum wallet.
• If you know what you are doing, are aware of mempool (volatile memory), you can use any option because with any option, you are free to customize your fee. After your initial broadcast, you can bump your transaction fee later if you want to have faster confirmation.
• Reminder: Electrum uses sat/vbyte for fee rate but its label is in sat/byte and has yet been corrected by Electrum developers. That issue
• Many screenshots are from months ago, I don't have access to my wallet at the moment to make new screenshots, but if you are curious about information, you can quickly check it with your Electrum wallet.

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Your transaction fee will be decided by transaction size, fee rate. You can save transaction fee by using either lower fee rate or reducing your transaction size.

• Transaction fee = Transaction size * Fee rate

Let's discover it, step by step!

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TRANSACTION SIZE
You can reduce your transaction fee by reduce its size that requires you to know how to use your inputs and outputs effectively.
For inputs, you can reduce the input number by consolidate your small inputs when network is not at high demand from users. Then you can make consolidation with very cheap fee rate.
For outputs, it depends on how many senders you will send your coins too with your sending transaction, including your own change address as part of outputs.
Generally, you can reduce transaction size by using Segwit address (Bech32) that starts with bc1q. Since its deployment in 2017, many wallets and later centralized exchanges support that wallet type.
Please use some Bitcoin Transaction Size Calculators at Reference (bottom) to understand it better.

A strong reminder, you can use centralized exchanges that support Segwit but you should not rely on them. Storing your coins on centralized exchanges, with custodial wallets, is extremely risky.

• Reminder: do not keep your money in online accounts

Let’s control your coins by non-custodial wallets like Electrum, Bitcoin Core wallets. In this guide, I present only Electrum wallet as it fits with newbies and their limited resources for wallet storage.

FEE RATE
Now, let’s move on to fee rate. What is best fee rate for you to use?
It depends on your need.
If you want to move your coins within a short time like 10 or 20 minutes (~ 1 or 2 next blocks), you will have to pay expensive fee at that moment.
If you are not hurry and can wait longer, you can use lower fee rate and wait for like 1 hour (next 6 bocks) or even longer like 12 hours or 24 hours. Remember that if you use too low fee rate, your transaction will be at bottom of mempools and waiting time will be up to 14 days (2 weeks or 2016 blocks). After that, if your transaction is still not confirmed, there is possibility that it will be dropped from mempools.
Note that not all mempools will drop your transaction but some will. That leads to a need that you might see your transaction is Failed, then you will have to re-broadcast it.
Be aware of this risk and avoid to choose extremely low fee rate. If you only need to consolidate your inputs, don’t do this when network is in high demand. Just observe mempools and choose good times to broadcast your transactions.

WHERE TO CHECK FEE RATES?
Check it in mempools. There are some websites to do that but I’d like to recommend two sites:

• https://mempool.space/
• https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC%20(default%20mempool),24h,weight
• https://mempool.jhoenicke.de/#BTC,24h,weigh

With mempool.space, you can choose chart option to have better overview. If you are new with this experience, use their main page and get default given information.


The second site, Joe-hoe, is more advanced but it is more helpful.
Now, how to use it?
Block time is about 10 minutes in average. When you broadcast your transaction, it will appear in mempools. Then miners will pick transactions that can give them most beneficial transaction fees (with highest fee rates and biggest sizes). They will prioritize such transactions, and 1 block equals to 1 vMB from tip of mempool.
Hovering the mouse on the mempool chart, you will see different fee bands (in different colors) and corresponding size of waiting transactions within that fee band. Let’s consider and choose a fee band that matches you.

HOW TO CHOOSE FEE RATE WITH ELECTRUM WALLET?
In Electrum wallet, you will have three options when broadcasting your transactions: ETA, Mempool, and Static. Let’s dig into each of them.

Turn on Edit fee manually.

ETA
What does ETA means? It is Estimate Time of Arrival. It means something. It is only estimation of arrival time or first confirmation time for your transaction.

Mempool is lively up and down, so an estimation at the time you broadcast your transaction can be not correct. The actual confirmation time can be longer or shorter than ETA if mempool is up or down, respectively. ETA gives you estimations in time like 30 minutes, 1 hour, etc.
This is disadvantage of ETA option. It usually will cost you more than Mempool and Static options.

Mempool
Mempool is an option which gives you information in how many waiting blocks for your first confirmation, such as within next 1-2 blocks, next 10 blocks, 25 blocks, etc.
It is a better option than ETA. You will have less likely overpay fee for your transaction.


Static
This option is useful when you comprehensively know what you are doing. It is helpful when you only make your transactions when mempool drops to your favorite fee rate.
When you use this option, with your experience and mempool observation, you won’t overpay fee for sure.


Comparison
Compare three options and see difference, ETA and Static options provide overpaid fee than Mempool option. All of them are estimations because we don't know how mempools will become in next 100 minutes.

Within 10 blocks

• ETA: 106.3 sat/vbyte
• Static: 100 sat/vbyte
• Mempool: 14.5 sat/vbyte

Double check with https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC%20(default%20mempool),8h,weight


ELECTRUM ON ANDROID
Use Electrum wallet on mobile (Android) like your hot wallet and store small fraction of bitcoin there, security-wise.

On mobile, you can check mempool by tapping on Network, then tap on any point on the fee color stripe (left is from tip of mempool, right is bottom of it). You can install Electrum and create an empty wallet on your mobile and use it only for mempool checking.


SCHEDULE YOUR TRANSACTION TO WEEKENDS

• Weekends will give you best transaction fee. Best means cheaper or cheapest as I shared in that post.
• Weekends are best chances for your to make small input consolidations too. Especially Sunday.

It is a summary table for what I analyzed on Bitcoin transaction fee.


REFERENCES

• Making sense of Bitcoin transaction fees (Bitzuma)
• How to manually set transaction fees (Bitcoin Electrum)
• Always updated bitcoin fees image from mempool.space
• [TOOL] Bitcoin data API to use in bitcointalk as images
• [Telegram Bot] Bitcoin Fees - fees and tx tracker
• Bitcoin Transaction Size Calculator (Jameson Lopp)
• Transaction size calculator (Bitcoin Optech)
• UPDATED - Plot your transaction in the mempool
  
  • https://bitcoindata.science/plot-your-transaction-in-mempool.html
• Consolidation your input: It's not purpose of this thread but you can read
  
  • Consolidate your small inputs
  • Practicing it with Bitcoin transaction size calculators above

---

Note:

• It was posted first in that topic, on Bitcointalk
• I leave the source link to avoid plagiarism accusation.
• I excluded/ included minor things from an original thread ^{if necessary}.

The reply box is too short, I have to expand it anytime I make a reply. Is there any way to expand it and save the customized setting (box size) forever?

So I will no longer have to repeat this step manually again and again.

• If there is way to do this, please teach me.
• If the forum has yet had this customization, should we deploy it from now?

Thank you. I am still learning here.

I know it is an altcoins talk forum, focus on alternate cryptocurrencies, not Bitcoin.

I notice there are three boards for wallets:

• MyEtherWallet
• Metamask
• Trustwallet

I also notice there is a Bitcoin forum board, so I believe it makes sense to have child boards for Bitcoin wallets such as Bitcoin Core, Electrum, Mycellium, Ledger, Trezor and more.

• https://www.blockchaincenter.net/en/altcoin-season-index/
• The website has 3 tabs for Altcoin season; Month; Year.
• The bottom line is you know if you join when it is already a season, a month, a year for altcoins, maybe you are late and are part of FOMO wave participants in the market. You must smell altcoin movements with the Index and enter early enough.

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Altcoin season index

• Their method
• Quote

  If 75% of top 50 coins performed better than Bitcoin over the last season (90 days), it's Altcoin season.
  

The index is 65%  now. We don't have an Altcoin season.


Altcoin month index

• Their method
• Quote

  If 75% of top 50 coins performed better than Bitcoin over the last season (30 days), it's Altcoin month.
  

The index is 78%  now. We have an Altcoin month!


Altcoin year index

• Their method
• Quote

  If 75% of top 50 coins performed better than Bitcoin over the last year, it's Altcoin year.
  

The index is 37%  now. We don't have an Altcoin year.

You can use alternatives like Trading View.

KYC is pain and if you do KYC on a centralized exchange, you lose your identity document, forever.

If you are seriously with your privacy, anonymity, you will have need to look for non-KYC exchanges. Then you will have to compare their trading fees.

There are three websites for you to do so.

• https://kycnot.me/
• https://orangefren.com/
• https://coinmarketfees.com. It seems the website is not keen on non-KYC exchanges but you can try.