Bitcoin Forum

Hi all

Can someone tell me why i have to pay fees when making a transaction?

What are they for?

And how much should they be??

about what fees you are talking about?

They are to "reward" the miners, and the should be from 0.0005 - 0. The more you pay the faster your transaction confirms.

He is talking about miners/tx fees.

The fees are designed to give miners a reason to process your transaction. It costs money to mine, why should they do it for free?

Right now, the block reward is much more than the transaction fees, but that will change as the block reward goes to 0. Eventually, the only reason that miners will process transactions will be for the transaction fees.

Next reason might be protecting their Bitcoin investment, so free transactions might still exist  ;)

And Can I choose the fee or do I have to pay it?

You are able to choose it depending on what wallet you use. I recommend using coinbase if you are not rich because they pay the 0.0005 fee for you!

The fee is completely optional; however, a transaction without a fee may take much longer to confirm than a transaction with a fee. Furthermore, most wallets decide for you what fee you will pay. If you don't like that you can always download the source code and change it.

Thanks for the info guys  this really helps me... I will use coinbase

If I am not in urgent use of btc, I would prefer to receive btc without any fees.

Think i would have to agree with you on this....i hate the idea of fees on top of your transactions although now i have a better understanding as to why they exist

Coinbase pays the fees for you!

You can customize tx fees with blockchain, electrum etc.,

I don't think coinbase takes care of the 0.0005 fees. The fees will be deducted from your transaction.

No they do. But since there are sooooo many transactions going to coinbase, they kicked it down to 0.0002.

Using the official bitcoin-qt, the fee would be just 0.0001/KB.

Coinbase did not pay the fee for me before.

I haven't done transactions much with btc, but I use coinbase and I have paid that fee a few times.

In my experience with Coinbase(I use it all the time) they pay the fee. That might make using it as a wallet worthwhile, but it's also online which isn't secure.

Actually, I take it back, in my last transaction, I didn't pay a fee which I saw that as weird.

Maybe they do pay the fee for their customers.

I think of Coinbase as one of the more secure online wallets for btc.

Blockchain.info is the most secure, since the Blockchain.info doesn't hold your private keys. Well either way, it's best not to use a online wallet when you are handling large amounts of Bitcoins since it's not worth the risk.

Yeah it is.

But i do think that coinbase earned a bit of reputation for trust (although it apparently is difficult to buy btc).

It is very easy to buy from coinbase.

Ya. 2 things I want to say. First, they only pay the fees for transactions over 0.001. Second, it is as secure as you want it to be. If you want you can enable two factor and make sure you phone never goes out of sight. You can make sure that "remember me" isnt checked, etc. The safest you can get is paperwallets.

For large amounts of Bitcoins use paper wallets or armory offline. Keep only small amounts of Bitcoins for everyday use at hot wallets like Blockchain.info, but Bitcoin client on your comp would be better

Yes. BTW, the best way to get a paperwallet is through paperwallets.org.