"no transmission fee" seems to be a lie. wtf?

[BorealBit]

 
So I have some BTC in a wallet on my phone and want to send a small amount to a friend who just set up a bitcoin wallet on his phone. I thought from watching a documentary on BTC (The Rise and Rise of the Bitcoin) that one of the great features of bitcoin was that there were no transmission fees, no processing fees. But as I go to send 1 mBTC (28 cents usd), the app wants to charge me "A small network fee of mBTC 0.10 will be paid" which amounts to 3 cents usd. wtf? 3 cents cost to send 28 cents? That is not a no processing no transmission fee, quite the contrary it is almost a 10% transaction processing fee. 10%?!  Granted, the 3 cents (.10 mBTC) processing fee is the same regardless of sending 1 mBTC or 100 mBTC but still I thought the great perk of Bitcoin was no transmission processing fees? So much for say charging a nickel in bitcoin to someone to read a blog article-- the processing fee would cost almost as much as the income, complete rip off. Am i missing something here? I feel really lied to in the documentary and getting into Bitcoin. I can of course just hold my Bitcoin and dump it at some point, but I wanted to send small amounts to friends also new to Bitcoin to try out the sending and receiving of Bitcoin-- but I did not expect the processing fees.

[subSTRATA]

why dont you stop for a second there, and compare that "high transaction fee" to fees of credit cards? last i remember, visa charges a flat 10 cents an 3% of the transaction amount as a fee to every transaction. if you feel "ripped off" that you suddenly faced a nigligible 3 cent fee, take that up with the documentary publishers. if the creators of that documentary had any idea what they wree talking about they should have mentioned the miner's fee was a standard 0.0001 BTC.

[shorena]

So I have some BTC in a wallet on my phone and want to send a small amount to a friend who just set up a bitcoin wallet on his phone. I thought from watching a documentary on BTC (The Rise and Rise of the Bitcoin) that one of the great features of bitcoin was that there were no transmission fees, no processing fees.

Yes, its possible to spend bitcoin without fee.

But as I go to send 1 mBTC (28 cents usd), the app wants to charge me "A small network fee of mBTC 0.10 will be paid" which amounts to 3 cents usd. wtf? 3 cents cost to send 28 cents?

The size of the fee has nothing to do with the amount of coins you transfer.

That is not a no processing no transmission fee, quite the contrary it is almost a 10% transaction processing fee. 10%?!  Granted, the 3 cents (.10 mBTC) processing fee is the same regardless of sending 1 mBTC or 100 mBTC but still I thought the great perk of Bitcoin was no transmission processing fees?

No, the great perk is not that there is no (or next to no) fee. This guy -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0mykANOMGQ
is pretty good in explaining what makes bitcoin such a big thing.

So much for say charging a nickel in bitcoin to someone to read a blog article-- the processing fee would cost almost as much as the income, complete rip off. Am i missing something here? I feel really lied to in the documentary and getting into Bitcoin. I can of course just hold my Bitcoin and dump it at some point, but I wanted to send small amounts to friends also new to Bitcoin to try out the sending and receiving of Bitcoin-- but I did not expect the processing fees.

Its been a while since Ive seen the documentary, but I doubt that was the only thing they mentioned about bitcoin. If you are here for "no TX fee" you will need big (in terms of BTC) and few (perfecably one per TX) inputs (previously received transactions) that have been confirmed for a while (~1 day worth of confirmation for 1 BTC and 1 input). Your typical wallet will probably instist on a fee anyway, because users tend to fuck that up and think they can send any small amount without a fee without understanding the underlying principles that make it possible (priority and a small fraction in blocks reserved for such TX) in the first place.

[BorealBit]

why dont you stop for a second there, and compare that "high transaction fee" to fees of credit cards? last i remember, visa charges a flat 10 cents an 3% of the transaction amount as a fee to every transaction. if you feel "ripped off" that you suddenly faced a nigligible 3 cent fee, take that up with the documentary publishers. if the creators of that documentary had any idea what they wree talking about they should have mentioned the miner's fee was a standard 0.0001 BTC.

Just saying I feel disillusioned (lied to? from what I heard in the documentary that got me interested in BTC in the first place) about the potentional of BTC for micropayments; like I said, if someone wanted to charge 10 cents for someone to read their full blog article for example (not me, just someone, anyone), the customer would incur a 30% (3 cents) transaction fee and would likely feel ripped off. So I feel sad that my notion of the use of BTC for micropayments seems to be an illusion.

Now for using BTC for say buying a taxi ride, or a hotel room for a night-- no problem on my end, as the small BTC network processing fee that I have now learned about is extremely minimal and is nothing like the fee a typical credit card would charge.

[odolvlobo]

A lot of people make incorrect statements about Bitcoin due to misinformation, ignorance, and even wishful thinking. Don't take it personally, and don't believe everything you read on the internet.

Micropayments are a possibility, but are not yet a reality.
Paying a transaction fee is optional, but you get what you pay for.

[jeroenn13]

If you dont want to pay a tx fee, that shouldn't be a problem it just takes more time to confirm. It's an incentive for miners to mine your transaction if you add tx fee.

[subSTRATA]

If you dont want to pay a tx fee, that shouldn't be a problem it just takes more time to confirm. It's an incentive for miners to mine your transaction if you add tx fee.

but weather or not the tx will be confirmed also depends on other factors as well, such as number of inputs/outputs, amount transacted, etc.

[jeroenn13]

If you dont want to pay a tx fee, that shouldn't be a problem it just takes more time to confirm. It's an incentive for miners to mine your transaction if you add tx fee.

but weather or not the tx will be confirmed also depends on other factors as well, such as number of inputs/outputs, amount transacted, etc.

Yup correct, but I wouldn't recommend it especially with the ongoing stress tests

[subSTRATA]

If you dont want to pay a tx fee, that shouldn't be a problem it just takes more time to confirm. It's an incentive for miners to mine your transaction if you add tx fee.

but weather or not the tx will be confirmed also depends on other factors as well, such as number of inputs/outputs, amount transacted, etc.

Yup correct, but I wouldn't recommend it especially with the ongoing stress tests

i think the stress tests might be over, i havent had any delays in my transactions getting confirmed in the past few days. however, it does seem that people are either testing or simply spamming the network quite often lately, and it can lead to transactions being dropped by the network if they have no fee iirc.

[PolarPoint]

You don't have to pay a transaction fee if your transaction size is less than 1k bytes and values over 1 btc. I think most clients allows you to set a zero fee. So the documentary is not wrong. For smaller amounts, you have to try your luck and wait.

The documentary was filmed in early 2014. The transaction volume was lower then, it was much easier to squeeze in a free transaction into the blocks.