Bitcoin Forum

Hey,

I'm wondering if it is possible to off Zero-Cost Transactions?

I have looked here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Free_transaction_relay_policy

But would I need to set a miner up or something?

Maybe other Crypto-Currencies have no fees on transactions?

You pay fees if you use recently acquired coins and/or if you are sending coins that you received from several different addresses (ie if you have a large number of "inputs" to collect from). How recent are the coins you are trying to send?

I was actually interested in knowing what it would take to send micro-transactions.

You don't really have to pay fees. If you use an ewallet (CampBX, MtGox, TradeHill, etc.) you can always send bitcoins for free. If you want to use the client, there is a patch somewhere to avoid fees. The problem is that a transaction that doesn't pay fees can take a lot of time to process depending on a number of factors. See the fee structure here: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/190/5

So if you have 10 Bitcoins that are one week old and came from one address, you can send those bitcoins in small amounts without paying anything.

Aside from all of this, I anticipate it should be possible to patch the client so that it carefully chooses which coins to send, in order to do a transaction without fees AND without creating a transaction that will be difficult to get processed.  Much of the time, you COULD send a fee-free transaction just by carefully selecting from your coins.  The current client doesn't allow this or even bother to try to avoid fees, instead, seeming to always favor the smallest available coin that will do the job, even if using that smallest coin now (rather than waiting for it to age) is the reason a fee is being charged.

When I load physical bitcoins, I often manipulate my wallet so that it always only has one coin (or transaction input, rather) at any given time, keeping the rest of my coins offline on paper wallets.  Part of why, is I have a preference for my coins appearing in Block Explorer as being funded from a single address (as opposed to two or more).  If I control what coins are in my wallet, I am able to control and predict when I will be required to pay a fee.

Thanks for the help btw.

Based on the link in the OP, it seems that people can setup miners so that the micro-transactions get in the block-chain. What would it take to setup an appropriate miner?

A miner tries to find blocks. When he finds one, he earns 50 bitcoins + money from the transaction fees he included in the block. The problem is that it is really hard to find blocks right now unless you have a cluster of GPUs. So if you set up a miner to include your transactions, you will have to wait until your miner finds a block and that could take a really long time (i.e. months).

Thanks nmat

Mmm, that's new to me. I thought that you only had to pay fees with some services (like Mt. Gox).
So, if I have understood correctly, when I send someone some bitcoins using the client, I pay some of them as a fee?

Possibly. Depends on the factors mentioned above (see the link I posted). The fees you are talking about are charged by exchanges when you convert bitcoins to dollars and vice versa. These fees are used by the network to avoid spam transactions.

If you are using a fountain service, I would advise pointing your funds to a balance (not necessarily a wallet), so you are not stuck sending the coins you received from the fountain.

Of course, most exchanges/wallets/accounts charge a fee anyways, but this should still save you time and/or money.