Bitcoin Forum

I just checked and found out that transferring bitcoin is bloody expensive !  For reference, am just quoting the details of my first transaction which I did just to check how everything goes...


Bought from localbitcoins: 5USD - 0.00108668 BTC
Transferred to bittrex exhcange: 0.00084133  3.86 usd
Transaction fee: 0.00024535  which is approx 1.13 usd

22% transaction cost!

this is bloody expensive, I thought this crypto thing is supposed to reduce the transaction cost but they seem more expensive then the banks imho.

it's the consequence of the effect of bitcoin prices are more expensive, if you do not want to be charged a fee it would be nice you do not have to transact.

When the price of BTC is this high, the transaction fees on small amounts are prohibitively expensive. For sending smaller amounts you'd be better off using a different cryptocurrency. BTC will still be much cheaper than banks, wires, or anything else when sending large amounts.

In this case it's very high indeed.
But thing is you would pay similar fee when transferring eg. 100+ BTC In other words less amount you transfer the fee percentage rises. Which makes BTC not suitable to transfer small amount.

Of course is gonna be expensive if your coins are going through 2 services that charges fees.

How is that Bitcoin's fault? If you want to send 5BTC P2P to a friend, you are only going to pay one transaction fee that can be worth less than $1, and not 22% of your transaction.

Yesterday, for example, I sent a transaction with a $0.3 fee and It got confirmed in the same day.

How the hell can you get transaction fees less than $1? That would mean that LocalBitcoins is a total ripoff scam. Have a read of my thread question about my massive fees charged by them: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2134185.msg21331269#msg21331269

Their site says "Current outgoing bitcoin network fee: 0.00029576 BTC (Withdrawals)" then how does my fee charged end up being 0.00435292 BTC? That's an absolutely huge difference between and $1.40 quoted on their site and the $20 actually charged!!

Because they are overpricing their fees just like almost every wallet in the market.
e.g: I use Electrum to send my fees, but I also have Mycelium on my android and they want me to pay a fee of 466 sat/byte, while sometimes all I need is to send a tx with a 60 sat/byte fee.

They suggest you to pay high fees because other people are doing the same. And why people are paying high fees? Because their wallets are suggesting them to do so. So, is all their fault at the end.

P.s: I'm not saying it's all their fault. I know that blocks being full will also increase the price of the fees.

So basically with any desktop or mobile wallet instead of leaving it at default fees you should change the settings to "the "low/lowest fees" setting or if they allow you to enter a number, just divide the default by 1/8th and set it as your fee?

It depends on time u send transaction. Currently u can send it for 2 cents. Which is almost nothing, like free.
When spam attack happen, or just there is many transactions happening, you must pay more its normal.

Few weeks ago I got ripped off even more than you.
Sometimes for small transactions you could pay even higher fee than the value you're sending.
But,after this last SegWit things should improve gradually if I'm right.

Yes, SegWit should greatly reduce prices. However, things like LTC and Eth will definitely have lower costs.

I had a SEPA wire transfer recently. It cost me 10 EUR.

I had seen BTC transactions recently that had 30 EUR tx fees.

That should tell people something that maybe BTC is heading the wrong direction.

Bloody friggen greedy ass miners, ripping us all off! Bitcoin will be doomed with those greedy bastards sending it to the grave.

Maybe its heading in a wrong direction because of some greedy miners, Its not the real purpose of bitcoin as the creator proposed, a peer to peer electronic cash system and who will used this system when transaction fees are so high?

Earlier this day I wanted to transfer $10 to my steam account but lo and behold, it's asking for a $4 tx fee which is pretty nuts. I need it within an hour but apparently if I pay any lower fees, I would be receiving the money in ~3 hours. I miss the times where you can pay 10k sats for a tx and still receive it within the next 2 blocks or so.

BTC transaction fees are helping open up the space to competitors. What can devs do to try and lower this fee? I thought processing fees were something Satoshi wanted to abolish!

Because it is still a business (i think) but not that much. depends.

I agree. I can't withdraw may btc in mining site due to expensive fee. Tsssssk. Transaction fee is higher than my bitcoin . lol

Hehe, that's how a victim of salami tactics usually thinks  :D 

Just kidding. No victims here. BTC is just not the best way to transfer small amounts anymore (used to be when there was no so much users and BTC price was low ).

Better still, you count/calculating the cost before you think of making the transaction. Well, I did a transfer yesterday and the transaction fee was fair on luno. I suggest one accumulates all transactions to be made at once and not in bits.

You pay same fees for sending 1M$. I don't think there is any bank taking 1$ to this amount transaction.

It's for this reason Dash, ETC and Litecoin and now BCC are growing in popularity. 

Don't you remember when a dime bag used to cost a dime?

Agreed! It just seems these exchanges are making some good money while we are playing with the coin market:)

it will be back to normal after segwit addresses are activated.
i tried to send with 0,03$ fee and it get confirmation in 10 minute with segwit address.

Compared to the power that is needed to keep the network of Bitcoin alive it are normal transaction fees. For shopping or like paying a drink I would not recommend Bitcoin. I do feel Bitcoin should evolve to the point that it is possible. Currently, I do most quick transactions with litecoin if I want to pay someone. Even if the transactions fees were low now the network could not handle the higher transactions happening on the network in the first place. Visa level would not be even possible. I am curious how they wanna solve that in the coming years to come.

Your only option is finding a wallet that charges you less to almost none whenever you buy bitcoins. Weeks ago I tried using an Abra wallet where I paid about 1 percent teller fees. I then moved the funds to Bittrex which costs nothing. I was surprised looking at an amount similar to what I've sent using the Abra app. The really down moment was it took mo almost 24 hours to receive the funds in Bittrex because of heavy traffic in the blockchain, my friends were able to receive the funds more or less 30 minutes though when they tried to transfer the funds.

It really sucks that its so expensive these days. I try to keep the BTC txes to a minimum. Its almost more worth to exchange BTC to another coin, send coin and then convert back to BTC if you are transferring between exchanges atleast.

maybe its just normal like other agencies fee is so expensive,its there way of business anyway :)

I think you need to read more about how things work in this crypto world of Bitcoin.
That fee is charged by local bitcoins, not by the network. They might said is the cost of the transfer which is fine, but it happens that they might set the transfer fee too high for the amount you are sending. That is called bad management of fee. Nowadays there are a lot of procedures to calculate the fee adequately but most of the services out there wont use them

I think any transaction and deposit is expensive and bitcoin is no exception. Expensive or expensive transaction fees depend on the amount of money. But bitcoin has the advantage of being fast, convenient and time saving compared to banking transactions.

Agree with you mate that transaction fee was depend on how much amount you transact and i think it was too much because before i transact much huge bitcoin but the fee is not big like today. That is the main concern of all bitcoin users that is why i think they need to review that and it will back the old fees.

its because the bitcoins value is high that time ,  but look at today and the last days as you can see the bitcoin transaction fees are pretty much low because bitcoins value has dropped so in short the transaction fees usually depends on how much the current value of bitcoin is. and also the more bitcoins you send is equals to much expensive transaction fees. for me its not really a big deal and its pretty normal, its just a part of the game.

the bitcoin fee is expensive because fee price following bitcoin price right now, 2 years ago if you send with the same amount you just pay less than $1

I think as it stands today, only those who are making heavy transaction benefit from it, those making micro payments tend to suffer. The problem of the unstable value of bitcoins affects all.

But today the transaction fees has gone almost 70% down and it is fast also, so i dont think that now their should be any problem in micro transactions.

i guess theses days the transaction fees went down low after the price drop of bitcoin and i see many people also complaining that the transaction are a lot faster with a cheap fees its maybe because most bitcoin users  dont sell often these days and blockchain network is not yet congested or traffic. and i think other reason to this is the banning of china.

Volitality won't cause low fee but no of transactions blocks to be solved does. Actually, flactuation can cause cheaper fee than volitality.

It wont really affect microtransactions as of now and the pain on sending those amounts are gone as of now this is the best time to make transactions.Less fees+Less Congestion which we can accept with fast confirmations. This is the thing I do really love on bitcoin and should really be maintained in long run.

Two business and general transaction fees are not the same, you can see this for yourself if you send coin from a 'normal' wallet. Fees will always be there, and will get more so as the user base builds (at the massive rate it is now).

Back to normal: Transactions fees in the Bitcoin Network retreat in their prices (http://www.crypto-economy.net/back-normal-transactions-fees-bitcoin-network-retreat-prices/?lang=en)

True. Tx fees are more noticeable on smaller transactions. And it also depends on what you use to send. There are fees that go around 400sat/byte and there are also those that confirm within the hour with just less than 100sat/byte. Hope it doesn't spike up again.