Bitcoin Forum

Since a measly 200 byte transferral (carried out many times though) can cost you 3 €cents in bitcoin, some folks seek to avoid those fees. Even tiny sums of BTC can cost you enormous fees.  >:(

Secondly, there may be a future as an µ payment system for BTC.

One idea is to set up a network of nodes with a "bitcoin free transaction relay policy", which advertise themselves say, in this forum or thread.  ;)
use bitcoin-qt.exe -addnode=173.242.112.53 to employ them.

Another idea is to e-mail wallet files with small sums of btc. The mail transfer then is basically free, 100% of the sum arrives at the mail recipient.  :-*
This could be automated of course.
example: say you have a tiny sum in a webwallet at blockchain.info . if you transfer it, the 0.0005 fee will eat it. That's why you run "importprivkey" in rpc console window of btc-client, followed by the private key of that webwallet in Qt-format, which you find in import/export part in the webwallet.
---> this way you pay no fee and keep your micro-bitcoins  ;D ;D




what other ways is there to get rid of fees ?  :'(

(reedited) in rpc console window of bitcoin-qt.exe you might type:
settxfee 0.0001

that adds addional fee .0001 to the standard fee .0005, so that won't help at all, other than speeding up transfers and impoverish you in the process  :'(

Is there a way on a Mac client to sweep coins from wallets you hold the private keys to to one wallet without posting to the blockchain?

Technically it should be possible.  How's it done it practice?

Google "bitcoin free transaction relay policy"

Keep in mind that the fees are pretty much not fees at this point, but are really anti-spam measures that use the fee mechanism.  I routinely send zero-fee transactions and get them relayed and mined in normal time.  It takes some awareness of the default client's priority mechanism, but if the 3 cents bothers you, you can avoid it right now, usually.

Also keep in mind that the fee system is constantly evolving and improving.  The day when fees will be set by market forces is coming soon.

Can't you just set the fee to zero? I've never tried it myself, but I'm pretty sure transactions with no miner's fee still get confirmed. I see it a lot when I withdraw BTC from web wallets.

If you wanted to avoid transaction fees...   and you have a bitcoin in your instawallet and what you're buying is a bitcoin... just give the guy the url.

That's if you're talking about small amounts of coins and something stupid simple like instawallet. 

If you're looking for something bigger than encrypt your wallet.dat .. and give it to the guy with the keys...  let him move it out and pay his fees...

There's a million ways to get around fees... but the problem I have with this is that fees are what are supposed to keep the bitcoin miners mining...  doing crap like that only hurts the bitcoin infrastructure.

Miners at this point don't care that much about the fees, however the miners have the final say whether to include your transaction or not, based on if you included a fee or not. Competition between miners will drive the tx fee low, but eventually few nodes or miners will accept zero fee transactions.

This is an interesting idea.  How long do you suppose it would be before some troll finds it funny to perform a spam DOS attack against the "zero fee forwarding policy" sub-network?

Note that to eliminate the fee associated with relaying transactions you'll have to compile a special version of the client that will allow the DOS attack and convince people to run it.

Not entirely sure what you are asking.

Are you asking for a program that will import private keys from multiple addresses into a single wallet (so the wallet still had lots of addresses and lots of small outputs)?

Or are you asking for a program that will take lots of small outputs that are associated with lots of addresses and combine them all into a single output on a single address?

I want to sweep the "dust" from small holdings wallets to one wallet without touching the blockchain. I imagine that's just a private keys import??

Currently using MultiBit.

Is it doable?

So you want to take "dust" that is on one wallet and move it so that you still have "dust", but it is on another wallet?  I'm not sure why you would want to do that, but yes, you can import the private keys of the addresses that have the "dust" into the other wallet, and then that other wallet will have all those addresses and all that "dust".

I think, what he means by sweep, is like what Mt. Gox means, which means, the transaction must go through the blockchain. You get all your dust, and send it all to a single address.

By my understanding of transaction and priority, would it be possible to take all that dust, and add at least a whole 1.0 bitcoin that is at least a day old (>144 block confirmations old) and the fee might not be needed anymore?

Yes.  If you want to combine all the "dust" into a single output associated with a single address, it would require a blockchain update.

Depending on the quantity and age of the "dust" outputs, it would be possible to combine them with a single larger value and sufficiently aged output to "sweep" them up with no fee.  If you have a lot of outputs, it may require multiple passes.  This is because any transaction larger than 10 kilobytes is going to require a fee.  I'm not aware of any program that currently does this for you (although I have given some consideration to writing one).

How large of a value and/or how old the single large value output needs to be would depend on the age and value of the "dust" outputs you are attempting to sweep.

I was able to remove satoshi dust using a coin control client and 100 bitcoins.  Here is the client: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=144331.0;all (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=144331.0;all)

You send 100 bitcoins to the wallet with the dust.  You wait one day.  then the 100 bitcoins is old enough to be spent without a fee.  You then create a transaction that has your 100 bitcoins input and 53 satoshi dice inputs.  You send this to another wallet.  This transaction will satisfy the criteria for no transaction fee.

The criteria for a zero fee transaction is that the transaction be less than 10,000 bytes in size, about 54 inputs, and that the big input, 100 BTC, times the number of confirmations divided by the size is less than 57.6.  For 100 bitcoin that takes about 1 day.

Just set fees to 0.0001 on your client.

If everybody (or a large majority) does this, then this will become the new standard. It's a community effort, but the community must be aware that it can change the fees and that it has a voice and vote in this issue.

in rpc console window of bitcoin-qt.exe type:

settxfee 0.00001

is that really enough ?

No it's not. If it doesn't have high enough priority nobody will even relay it. Minimum is 0.0001 btc.

well that cuts fees to a fifth.

however small, thats a start  :-*

That sets the optional additional fee, which is the same as the setting in the "options" user interface dialog. For most transactions, that would mean you are including 0.00051 BTC in fees, which would give your payments a slight preference for blockchain inclusion over others that pay only the minimum.

so it's coded in source.

one would have to alter then recompile the sourcecode and run a little node network with "bitcoin free transaction relay policy"

You can use electrum to enforce fees. However, if a fee is required, your transaction will never go through without it anyway, so there really isn't much point.
Fees are there to help keep the network secure. If your transaction is "harmful", you will have to pay a fee. It's as simple as that.

I'm not sure about that.

Eventually fee threshold will be lowered again if price rises enough. For now it is like it is. For the majority of "normal" transactions you're not required to pay a fee anyway.

"Who" will lower them?

Anyone willing to compile and use a new version of the reference client.  Realistically, this means the development team that operates bitcoin.org unless there is an uprising from the userbase.

This.

One thing that has to be said is, even if that were to happen, it would only mean that transactions would be relayed with a lower fee. Whether or not such a transaction would be included in a block is entirely up to miners to decide.

would be nice if the fee was based on a 7 day average for bitcoin price and have the data taken from a website once daily. at the vary least it would allow fees to stay proportionally the same.  to send one bitcoin with .005 fee, at the old price of 5$ thats $.025 (2.5 cents)  at current 70$ thats $0.35 . while not "allot" it is sure as hell isnt the same fee.

if you work the math back the other way that would be like having the fee at .07 BTC back when they were 5$ each.

Fortunately the fee is 0.0005 (not 0.005).  At current $70, that's $0.035. Which is like having a $0.0025 fee back when it was $5 per bitcoin (which is exactly what the fee was back then).

Great, I now need about 100.0 BTC to make sure my dust can be consolidated. Anyone want to lend me 100.0 BTC for a day? Didn't think so. (I promise to return it, however, do not charge me interest for it.) If someone lends me 100.0 for this purpose, I will return it, and you can rep me. If I don't return it, you can label me a scammer. I am ready to provide a whole bunch of government credentials and my complete home address, my cell phone, etc.

All I want is to consolidate my less than 0.1 BTC dust.

I'd need 2 days. 1 day to make it age enough, and another day to age it before returning to you after I've grouped up my dust.

This is not true.  It should be relayed just fine.  It'd just sit in the miners' transaction queues until it's old enough.

True. I'll correct myself: if any of the outputs are less than 1 bitcent, then nobody will relay it.

How about we turn the trust equation around.

You send me a copy of your wallet.  I'll consolidate the dust for you, and send you back the exact same amount as was in the wallet in the first place (to a brand new address in a brand new wallet that you create so you don't have to worry about me having access to the funds after I send them to you).

This way you only have to trust me with $7.80 rather than me trusting you with $7800.

You can rep me.  If I don't return the consolidated dust, you can label me a scammer.

guys,

we need to make our voices heard.

this whole fee rip-off needs to be terminated once and for all.

Us, the bitcoiners, we must enforce a proper FEE POLICY !

stay with me on the topic.

I assume the admins will kill my account though.

But I will be back.

FIGHTIN' FOR PEOPLES' BTC WITH WORKERS'S FEE POLICIES !! decided on by workers !

So that's .00050000?

If so, fifty thousand satoshis is a lot!

We won't kill your account.  We don't really give a sh*t.  I don't disagree with the current fee policy, and think that it works well enough to not screw with it.  You can lobby for whatever you think is best, but I would suggest that you actually learn what the fee policy is, and why it's that way, before you proceed.

The only thing you can do is set up your own miner and mine transaction without fees. Whining won't help.

Hi Mr DannyHamilton, I will take you up on your offer. But instead of giving you the wallet, how about giving you the private keys instead? I have attempted to consolidate my dust previously, so I only have 6 addresses left with unspent outputs. I can PM you the private keys to those addresses and how much they should have.

My old wallet has maybe 200+ addresses, but only 6 have anything in them, all the rest are zero.

Up to you.  You can send them in PM, or in email, or you can print them on paper and send them in the mail.

If you know how, you can encrypt them with my public key before sending them so nobody but me will be able to access them.  This would be safest.

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.17 (Darwin)
Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org
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9Gw9T+C07TbfpOWmw+3yFVqRhGx3edtlgV44teyXIphIN4ivSw8wHU9E1gcL219v
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j5eTybesTq383Rc/pc44L1AozWyj/Uk7TNT6X+gPMzh6BeKVez1GXKIrTU446XA1
xF5EmCHiZYZmpumm
=YotD
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Sent by email. I will wait patiently. This is going to be interesting. If you are generous, you can send more than what is in those keys. hehehe.

That won't happen.

 ;D

Oh dear.

When you said "my less than 0.1 BTC dust" I assumed (incorrectly) that you meant something close to 0.1 BTC.  Specifically, I thought you meant something more than 0.01 BTC.

Sending the amount you claim in the email to you without a fee might be a bit tricky.  I'll see what I can do, but if you'd have explained that the total amount of the consolidated dust was going to be less than the 0.01 BTC fee threshold I probably wouldn't have offered to help.

Oh dear. Sorry about that. I didn't want to look as poor as I actually am. hahaha. Anyway, this will be interesting. I can wait longer if you need the time (unless you have 1000 BTC or something that has extremely high priority.)

Off-topic, but how do I rep you? There's no "rep" or "like" button unlike in other forum software, so I guess it means that I simply post that you did what you offered to do.

Actually, I can think of a solution now that you hold my private keys and can move the coins out later. That is, to send 1 or 2 BTC to each of those keys, then you can sweep them all out later. No need for 100 BTC. In order to do this with the previous example of 53 or 54 keys, you'd only need 54 BTC instead of 100 BTC.

But then, you'd have to trust me that I wouldn't get those 6 coins before you're done with the consolidation.

Right now, there are only two people who have the private keys. If it's any consolation, I'm running Bitcoin-Qt with the new wallet now, so I don't see the old keys. (I do have them backed up, and of course, I just emailed them to you.)

And, just so you can sort of trust me, I won't touch any amount you put in those keys I'll let you finish our little experiment. While I am not that religious, I am a Catholic and have faith in the newly elected Pope, and I don't want to go to hell over 6 bitcoins. (I don't want eternal damnation even for 6 million bitcoins.)

Otherwise, let's see if you can come up with other ideas.

Incidentally, would you be willing to sell me some BTC in exchange for buying you something with my credit card from some online store like Amazon? Wow, did I just think of a way to buy BTC without you having to accept reversible transactions ...

Bitcoin doesn't work that way.  The fee isn't based on the number of addresses, it's based on the number of inputs and outputs.  Each address can have multiple inputs and/or outputs.  I'll take a look today and see just how much dust you have distributed in there.  Then I'll work on sweeping the larger (easier/faster) bits of dust first.  There is no need for me to transfer any bitcoins to those addresses, since outputs from multiple addresses can be included in a single transaction.  The issue isn't going to be sweeping the dust.  That shouldn't be too difficult, although it may take a few days.  The issue is going to be finding a way to get the swept funds back to you.

It may turn out that I'll have to pay a 0.0005 BTC fee out of my own funds to send the final swept amount back to you. I'll hold up my commitment, I just wish I had confirmed the actual balance beforehand.

As for rep, it will be sufficient for you to state in this thread that I have delivered as promised.  That way anyone who is following this will see/know that I held up my end of the bargain.

i know it was already mentioned, but

The creation fee is set to 0.0005, the source can be modified to set the creation fee to 0.0001 and at that point since the relay fee is 0.0001, it'd be relayed to any pool/miner that hasn't modified the source code to change the min_relay_tx_fee..   sure, it'd be placed below all those 0.0005's, but with blocks going out at the rate they are now, you probably wouldnt have to wait any longer than at 0.0005.  maybe a block or two at most.

if something happens like several months ago when there actually was a large amt of unconfirmed transactions queue'ing up (too much satoshi dice and the declining hashrate jan-feb), you'd probably want to set the fee to 0.00050001

If you manage to get the dust, you can send me coins even from another address to avoid the tx fee. You'd then have inadvertently mixed my coins (washed, laundered, anonymized) Don't worry if you think my coins are tainted (if that matters), they only went through Satoshi Dice.

I still wonder about the way bitcoin works on inputs. If you send 1 coin to 1 address and wait for 144 blocks, isn't it supposed to be able to be sent anywhere else without a fee, including all previous inputs? Or if you send 144 coins to 1 address and wait 1 block, or you send 26 coins to 1 address and wait 6 blocks.

Or I may have completely misunderstood how bitcoin works regarding separate inputs and transaction fees. I am always learning about this.

ideally we would have some thunderbird plugin which does mass import/export of private keys from e-mail to the btc-client (via rpc).

I hadn't realized that each key/address that you went me only had one input each.  This won't be too bad.

The biggest problem is going to be sending you the consolidated dust, since a fee is typically required with ANY output less than 0.01 BTC (I think).  I'll probably try creating a raw transaction with 0 fee and see if it will relay/confirm.  If it doesn't, I'll try sending it with a minimal fee.  I hope to send it to you within the next 24 hours.  I'll let you know here if I run into any delays.

Yes, do the zero fee. I can wait all week. I will be praying (going to church and stuff) anyways until Easter Sunday, and I will not be online after tomorrow. You can send me more than the dust, and I will return the difference (after ageing it, or by next week) so we both don't pay a fee.

when you transmit / import a private wallet key, you gotta hurry to spend the stuff before the other guy does. keep that in mind.

but usually its tiny sums so it won't matter much

a lot many threads deal with the fee problem in BTC

it is exacerbated by the rise of the BTC exchange rate

I just found the login to an old Silk Road account that had about 30 BTC in "change" that I'd left in there over a year ago.

If you are familiar with SR you'd know that they use 0 fee transactions for BTC withdrawals.

Well I decided to withdraw the now valuable coins back into my wallet but the Tx took almost 24 hours to get the first confirmation because there was no way to add a fee. Is that what you really want?

Back. Well, @BeetcoinScummer, maybe for 30 coins, you might want even the minimal fee. However, if it's 30 coming from 1 input, shouldn't it be very high priority by now? Several months of confirmations?

Actually, if you are the only one with the private key, you can wait for it, eventually it will get included in a block, with that much (30) coins.

How about just pay the damned fees. It's a few cents. Freedom as in speech, not as in beer ffs.

Would it be possible to simply abandon the smallest dust you have in your wallet?

I have both dust and not-dust, and I'm pretty confused by all this, and maybe just abandoning the lowest amounts would be best?

It is up to the market to decide, there's nothing anyone can really do about it. Or, you know, you could use/create a less shitty alternative - one that supports adding a fee.

Dust is easy enough to handle.

• Never create a transaction more than 10 KB
• Never create an output less than 0.01 BTC
• Use compressed privkeys
• For every 250 bytes, your tx must include an input of 1-day-old 1 BTC, or 2-day-old 0.5 BTC, etc.

Boom.
Another tactic is to send yourself a huge amount of change. If you want to send someone 0.01 BTC, using your own 0.01 BTC input, also include a 1 BTC input and a 1 BTC output back to you. The TX will confirm as long as soon as the 1 BTC is a few days old.

Notice this transaction (https://blockchain.info/tx/bf2856852afba172a4c59fdd53e2f6630c4713981a78f4ab0d25c5228357fbea) from my donation address: 51 inputs, 9218 bytes, 0 fees. Consolidates a lot of dust, and it could have handled a bit more dust. This is how you spend things like SatoshiDICE dust without losing money.

nimda, does one need "coin control" app to do that?

Probably easy for you, but not for an end-user like me. All I can do is look at the GUI and weep.

For the most part. Although if you send a large amount to an address with dust on it, wait several days, and then spend a carefully chosen value from that address, you can consolidate dust without fees.