Last month, BullBitcoin.com announced the public release of Batcher, an open-source software solution to help Bitcoin businesses massively reduce their usage of Bitcoin block space. This helps cut down on network transaction fees and increases the on-chain scalability of the Bitcoin network for everyone.

For the past 6 weeks, this feature has been live in Bull Bitcoin for all Recurring Buy orders (dollar-cost-averaging).

We are now very excited to roll-out this new feature for all Buy Bitcoin transactions, effective today!

Batching by default

• Previously, as soon as the user clicked on “Buy Bitcoin”, Bull Bitcoin would instantly send the Bitcoin payment to the user’s specified Bitcoin address.
• Going forward, when the user clicks on “Buy Bitcoin”, we add his payment to a batching queue. It will be merged with the transactions of other Bull Bitcoin users.
• The Bull Bitcoin batching system is configured to send payments over 60 minutes at maximum, or whenever the total transaction amount is over 1 Bitcoin.

Opting out

• After clicking on “Buy Bitcoin” the user is presented with the option of an Express Transaction. This option will remove the user’s payment from the batching system and Bull Bitcoin will send the Bitcoin payment instantly.
• However, Bull Bitcoin will not pay for Bitcoin Network fees if the user decides to opt-out of the transaction batching system.
• When opting out, the user must select the confirmation target of the Bitcoin transaction we will send him. Bull Bitcoin provides a convenient fee estimate for users to decide which network fee is appropriate for their needs.
• The network transaction fee amount is deducted from the Bitcoin amount purchased by the user. Therefore, users will receive slightly less Bitcoin than they purchased.
• Users that do not want to pay for their Bitcoin network fees can simply not opt-out of transaction batching, for which Bull Bitcoin pays the network fees.

Should you opt-out?

There are two reasons someone may want to opt-out: privacy and transaction speed. The downside is that you have to pay the Bitcoin network transaction fees and you are contributing to increasing the network transaction fees for everyone other Bitcoin network user.

Privacy: When your transaction is batched with the transactions of other Bull Bitcoin users, other Bull Bitcoin users can figure out that whoever else received Bitcoin as part of the same Bitcoin transaction is most likely another Bull Bitcoin user. Because Bull Bitcoin uses Coinjoin, chain-analytics companies will not be able to track our users more easily.. We are always transparent and precise about the privacy implications of using our services, but realistically batching has very little chance of having a privacy impact versus regular transactions.

Speed: Opting-out of transaction batching does not necessarily mean that your transaction will be confirmed faster, it only means that the unconfirmed transaction will be sent right away. The confirmation time will depend on the confirmation target (and network fee) you have selected. It is very possible that a batched transaction gets confirmed before the express transactions.