Raise the minimum transaction fee

[xDan]

You are free to raise the minimum transaction fee that you pay. Just as I am free to raise the minimum transaction fee that I pay. Or not. If you do, your transactions will confirm promptly. If not, your transactions may languish waiting on some free block space.

Market mechanisms work. There is no problem here.

There is a problem if it's hard to know what transaction fee will guarantee inclusion in the next block.

It's not much of a market if none of the items on sale have a price tag.

[ranochigo]

Miners are getting greedy and though we pat ourselves that BTC is decentralized and is not dependent on others like Banking systems are but without confirmations no one would accept any transaction and we ultimately rely on them to get our transactions confirmed.

And today we are thinking of raising the fee to 0.0005, tomorrow even that might not be enough for hungry mining farms and then we raise it 0.001 .. 0.002 .. and so on. And when the reward halves, what will be the fee then??

Hopefully by then the price will be high enough, otherwise BTC would start losing one of its main charms which is the ridiculously low fees.

Price isn't much of a factor. Even if you're paying the same amount of transaction few as now, the price would be much higher which wouldn't have any difference as it being low fee. The main concern now is to increase block size, add more transaction and allow miners to earn more fees.

You are free to raise the minimum transaction fee that you pay. Just as I am free to raise the minimum transaction fee that I pay. Or not. If you do, your transactions will confirm promptly. If not, your transactions may languish waiting on some free block space.

Market mechanisms work. There is no problem here.

There is a problem if it's hard to know what transaction fee will guarantee inclusion in the next block.

It's not much of a market if none of the items on sale have a price tag.

It isn't about miner fees. Different miner accept different minimum fees and they mine block at different times. This would be impossible to predict. However, you can create a website to craft the average fee and set a higher than average fee for your transaction. Your transaction would at least confirm fine within the next few blocks.

[d4n13]

It's not much of a market if none of the items on sale have a price tag.

This is why you should pick your wallet app wisely.  Some wallets will do statistical analysis of the blockchain to do just that... predict proper acceptance fee.  Bitcoin Core does this.  The relevant commands are estimatefee and estimatepriority.  It even has a slick little slider bar you can use to adjust it.

[nickhiggins123]

And when  0.0005 BTC becomes worth $1.00?

[I E]

0.0001 BTC for extremely big amounts can be considered low...

[scarsbergholden]

0.0001 BTC for extremely big amounts can be considered low...

yea, most likley paying 2% of what would sending would be a good fee even 1% some people just want to pay dirty cheap fees and the current state of transaction volume it takes a while to get in line, we at lease have a choice, either pay a bit more to get it faster or auto fees and wait a bit for it.

[Borisz]

I don't see the solution in increasing the fees in a compulsory manner or the entire network. One of the advantages of bitcoins that is repeated over and over again is the low transaction fees compared to the traditional banking system. If we start implying artificial fees to fend off attacks, it can lead down a road where we might not want to go.

A problem with a fixed btc fee is the price of bitcoin. If the price would drop an attack could happen as it would be cheaper. If the price rises then legitimate users would be affected negatively. Percentage fees lead to a similar problem with bitcoin losing its edge over the banking system.

After all, wouldn't this problem be solved - at a cost of storage space - with increasing the block size?

[xDan]

It's not much of a market if none of the items on sale have a price tag.

This is why you should pick your wallet app wisely.  Some wallets will do statistical analysis of the blockchain to do just that... predict proper acceptance fee.  Bitcoin Core does this.  The relevant commands are estimatefee and estimatepriority.  It even has a slick little slider bar you can use to adjust it.

Oh, well, that's pretty good then if it actually works

Is there any list of wallets that do similar? Electrum afaik seems to have a fixed amount per Kb.

[d4n13]

Is there any list of wallets that do similar? Electrum afaik seems to have a fixed amount per Kb.

Yep, I've been watching the estimates, and it floats as blocks come in.

Most wallets have a fixed fee of 10,000 satoshi

Bitcoin-Qt will float the fee based on network traffic and the size of your transaction.

So on most wallets, a 500 byte transaction will cost 10,000 satoshi, on bitcon-qt, same 500 byte transaction would (as of this post) cost 166,612 satoshi if you ask for high priority, or 1442 satoshi if you ask for low priority.

I think fee prediction / suggestion is a MAJOR problem in most wallets out there today.  Fees should not be constant, they should have an economy of there own.  Cheap when the network is idle, expensive when the network is congested.  Know that will anger most of the bitcoin community, but it's free market economics... don't like it, use paypal.

[Borisz]

Bitcoin-Qt will float the fee based on network traffic and the size of your transaction.

So on most wallets, a 500 byte transaction will cost 10,000 satoshi, on bitcon-qt, same 500 byte transaction would cost 166,612 satoshi if you ask for high priority, or 1442 satoshi if you ask for low priority.

I think fee prediction / suggestion is a MAJOR problem in most wallets out there today.  Fees should not be constant, they should have an economy of there own.  Cheap when the network is idle, expensive when the network is congested.  Know that will anger most of the bitcoin community, but it's free market economics... don't like it, use paypal.

Ah so qt actually does this? Gives an advice on how much fee is advised given the current network situation? I should go back to using QT...

[d4n13]

Ah so qt actually does this? Gives an advice on how much fee is advised given the current network situation? I should go back to using QT...

If your current wallet allows to set the TxFee in any way, you can approximate this behavior without having to switch wallets.  Bit of a pain though... but here goes.

• Go to Statoshi.info Transaction page
• Pick a time frame (top right) to average fees over ( 1 day; 12 hours; 6 hours ; 1 hour)
• Scroll down to the Fees / TX and the Satoshi / KB and write the Avg for each displayed at the bottom
• If your wallet lets you set the Fee / KB, then set it at 2x the Avg from (3), note, it's in bits
• If your wallet only lets you set a one time TX fee, set it to 2x the Fee / TX from (3), note its in satoshis
• Remember the goal here is to set your fee ABOVE average

This will require math and the ability to convert from BTC to mBTC to uBTC to bits to satoshis.  It will also consume about 3 minutes of your time, but worse of all, this could convince you to pay upwards of $0.20 in TxFees .

Hopeful one of the SPV wallet makers will get on the ball and stop making fees static.

[d4n13]

Ah so qt actually does this? Gives an advice on how much fee is advised given the current network situation? I should go back to using QT...

Better: http://bitcoinexchangerate.org/fees

[Borisz]

Ah so qt actually does this? Gives an advice on how much fee is advised given the current network situation? I should go back to using QT...

Better: http://bitcoinexchangerate.org/fees

This is sweet, cheers!

Ahm, I use multibit at the moment and haven't found any option so far to change the amount of fees. I work something out. The site and the option in QT are both really nice, thanks again for the info.

[Kakmakr]

If we do this we will 1. Kill off the incentive to use Bitcoin for micro transactions and 2. Play into the hands of the people doing this. If they see this is working to increase the miners income, they will just do it again. In the end it's the users of Bitcoin, who would be taking the punches. One of the advantages of using Bitcoin over other payment methods was cheaper fee's. Now you are saying, let's increase the fee's and lose this advantage?

[wadili89]

the raise of the transaction fee to .0005 per transaction looks normal now because it will be around just 5 cents in USD but we all know bitcoin is not gonna stay at 300$ per bitcoins it ment to be rise if one day it is 5000$ per bitcoins and we are paying 0.0005 fee per transaction as you suggested then we are paying 5$ fee over per transaction which is i think to much

[S4VV4S]

the raise of the transaction fee to .0005 per transaction looks normal now because it will be around just 5 cents in USD but we all know bitcoin is not gonna stay at 300$ per bitcoins it ment to be rise if one day it is 5000$ per bitcoins and we are paying 0.0005 fee per transaction as you suggested then we are paying 5$ fee over per transaction which is i think to much

Yes, but as times and the price of Bitcoin changes, so will the transaction fees so long as they remain in balanced levels for both, the users and the miners.
So, I am guessing that when Bitcoin hits $5K the transaction fees will drop accordingly.

[Herbert2020]

the raise of the transaction fee to .0005 per transaction looks normal now because it will be around just 5 cents in USD but we all know bitcoin is not gonna stay at 300$ per bitcoins it ment to be rise if one day it is 5000$ per bitcoins and we are paying 0.0005 fee per transaction as you suggested then we are paying 5$ fee over per transaction which is i think to much

the fact that you can send a transaction with very small amount 0.0001BTC is one of the best qualities of bitcoin IMO. and i think it should not be changed.

you say rising it to 0.0005BTC looks normal now but you are forgetting about where it goes, to miners, and since the block reward is currently high enough and also the price of bitcoin is rising i say it is nothing normal about rising it.

[bitcoinmasterlord]

You are free to raise the minimum transaction fee that you pay. Just as I am free to raise the minimum transaction fee that I pay. Or not. If you do, your transactions will confirm promptly. If not, your transactions may languish waiting on some free block space.

Market mechanisms work. There is no problem here.

But he means to raise the minimum fee so that the spamming attack will cost more. When he raises his own fee then the attack isn't changed.

jbreher In case the attackers are a combination of big miners then they will earn from spamming because what they invest will come back and more on top. When the minimum fee would be raised then they would get what they want without having to pay for it. Though that only when really miners are spamming.

[d4n13]

But he means to raise the minimum fee so that the spamming attack will cost more. When he raises his own fee then the attack isn't changed.

jbreher In case the attackers are a combination of big miners then they will earn from spamming because what they invest will come back and more on top. When the minimum fee would be raised then they would get what they want without having to pay for it. Though that only when really miners are spamming.

I think your making the "Golden Ratio" argument, which was debunked...


When spammers spam, all miners REVENUE go up, but only the spammers have the added EXPENSE of the spam.  Therefore they get less PROFIT.

[knowhow]

I don't see the solution in increasing the fees in a compulsory manner or the entire network. One of the advantages of bitcoins that is repeated over and over again is the low transaction fees compared to the traditional banking system. If we start implying artificial fees to fend off attacks, it can lead down a road where we might not want to go.

A problem with a fixed btc fee is the price of bitcoin. If the price would drop an attack could happen as it would be cheaper. If the price rises then legitimate users would be affected negatively. Percentage fees lead to a similar problem with bitcoin losing its edge over the banking system.

After all, wouldn't this problem be solved - at a cost of storage space - with increasing the block size?

i agree with you bitcoin were made to take out those killing fees that banks takes for any thing we wanna pay or tranfer to others,if we raise it we will come to a point that bitcoin would loose all interest since use it or bank will cost the same,on those time bitcoin would be dead.