Sometimes when you want to Send BTC out of an address and click on the MAX button, but when you hit Send you get a message like this:
The likely reason is Counterwallet miscalculated the amount required to pay transaction costs. Sometimes Counterwallet leaves too small amount for transaction fee. This problem doesn’t always happen - if the bitcoin network is busy, transaction costs jump and make this problem more likely to manifest itself.
Another reason may be an issue with the client (Counterwallet or other). One example that has recently affecting only Counterwallet is the inability of the asset owner (usually the issuer) to change Asset Description to over 41 (and less than 53) single-byte characters. In that case you can try a 3rd party wallet provided it meets your usability and security requirements.
A simple solution is to manually lower the maximum amount suggested by Counterwallet and “leave” just enough for the transaction fee. How much is “just enough”? See the article about transaction costs linked in previous paragraph.
The bottom line is “transaction costs fluctuate”, so try lowering the amount by a small amount until it works.
##Example 1:
- We have 2.42267145 at this (testnet) address
mndnMzJuAqgHcGpCqBMH4Ehurb1FmnSzhA - Counterwallet suggests that the MAX amount of BTC that we can send out is 2.42247144 BTC
- How much did Counterwallet leave for the transaction fee?
- It left us (2.42267145 2.42247144)=0.00020001 BTC which may not be enough at present time (and this may be before dust amount required by Counterparty assets at the same address is deducted).
If we go along with Counterwallet’s suggestion, we get this Insufficient BTC at address... error which also tells us we need approximately 2.42274919 BTC at this address.
A simple solution is to lower the amount being sent by just a little until the amount left for the transaction fee is large enough, and then the transaction will go through.
To make this quick we’ll simply take the BTC amount we have at the address and deduct 0.00025 BTC which in recent weeks has been a sufficient transaction fee on mainnet: 2.42017145 - 0.00025 = 2.42017145.
Now we enter 2.42017145 BTC instead of the amount suggested by Counterwallet.
The transaction has been successfully broadcast to the network and its details can be found here. Screenshot below shows the notification and a pending balance after this transaction.
Done!
Notice how instead of “0.000229999 BTC remaining at this address” that Counterwallet pre-announced, the final unconfirmed balance seems off by a bit. That could be due to the fact that we have some Counterparty assets at this address, and each requires a dust amount of BTC.
We could have done better if we decreased the amount in smaller increments.
##Example 2:
You could also sweep the BTC from this address from another Bitcoin wallet (by providing it with the private key of the Counterwallet address that you want to send from).