Bitcoin Stats website, fee-paid vs. no-fee paid confirmation times/values

[Johnathan]

The Bitcoin Stats website at:

http://bitcoinstats.org

...has a view of transaction confirmation times, distinguishing between fee-paid and no-fee paid transactions.  I can't link to an image as the display is dynamically generated, but along the x-axis is the confirmation time in linear scale, and the y-axis is transaction amount in logscale.

Two things appear non-intuitive.  First, there doesn't seem to be any discernable difference in confirmation time if a transaction fee is included.  This may just be a result that transaction fees are such a small portion of the block generation award that miners aren't prioritizing them much.  Still, I would have expected there to be at least an observable gradient.

Secondly, the BTC amounts for the no-fee paid transactions are almost all bunched up above 10 BTC, while the fee-paid ones are pretty uniform across five orders of magnitude.  Is there some default bitcoin client behavior that would cause this?

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[DeathAndTaxes]

Well

1) The chart doesn't break the fee amount down.  1 satoshi for a giant spammy piece of garbage going to lag your block and probably cause an orphan is more likely to be passed over than a free "normal" tx.

2) The chart doesn't break down required fees vs optional fees.  tx with required fees (paying the absolute min) tend to be "junk" for lack of a better word.

3) The reason why free tx are punched up above 10 BTC is that the min fee rules require 1 Bitcoin - Day to avoid being considered low priority and thus require a fee.  It would make sense that most large tx are not low priority (due to coin age rules) and thus don't need to include a fee.

TL/DR the chart is interesting but it needs a lot more stratification to draw any meaning.

[crypto_trade]

It's hard to analyse something as large as BTC with a two hour snap shot of such limited data. However I would would disagree that there is not a decernable difference between conformation times with fee paid vs not. Your chances of a longer transaction look to be much greater with no fees paid and that gets even more true once you pass about the 35 min mark.

[Johnathan]

1) The chart doesn't break the fee amount down.  1 satoshi for a giant spammy piece of garbage going to lag your block and probably cause an orphan is more likely to be passed over than a free "normal" tx.

2) The chart doesn't break down required fees vs optional fees.  tx with required fees (paying the absolute min) tend to be "junk" for lack of a better word.

Agree it would be useful to further break down the transactions by required vs. optional fees, or even shade them in some way to indicate how much above the minimum they are, if any.

3) The reason why free tx are punched up above 10 BTC is that the min fee rules require 1 Bitcoin - Day to avoid being considered low priority and thus require a fee.  It would make sense that most large tx are not low priority (due to coin age rules) and thus don't need to include a fee.

Ah, this seems obvious now in retrospect.  The bulk of the no-fee transactions confirmed right away are the higher amounts that exceed the low priority threshold.  The no-fee transactions beyond a block or two do seem as spread out in value as the fee-paid ones.

TL/DR the chart is interesting but it needs a lot more stratification to draw any meaning.

Maybe I could get in touch with the site author and offer a small bounty to add more detailed analysis.