Bitcoin transaction Fee imposition

[vite]

Fees should be voluntary not imposed. If the trend keeps up people will feel that the cost was rolled to the end user. Similar to the complains I read about US businesses allowed to roll Card fees to consumers...

[Walter Rothbard]

Fees should be voluntary not imposed.

They are.  You can set up / custom code your client to not send fees.

What you can't do is make nodes relay your transaction, or make miners include your transaction in a block.  That's their decision, not yours.

This sets up a situation like today, where coinbase accidentally pyramided hundreds of transactions on top of two unconfirmed base transactions that were very large and did not have sufficient fees, and suddenly hundreds of people (including myself) are waiting more than 24 hours for confirmations.  You can volunteer for this any time you want by changing your client to not include transaction fees.

You can not tip your waiter, too, but if the service was good it's nice to pay for it, especially if you plan to keep coming back.

[pinger]

How can I do that? I use Bitcoin-Qt and Electrum and would be nice to move my little coins without pay more money than I have

[Walter Rothbard]

How can I do that? I use Bitcoin-Qt and Electrum and would be nice to move my little coins without pay more money than I have

I have to say I don't actually know.  I'm fine with paying the fees.

If it's not a feature you can set in the menus, you can recompile the client to just not include fees.  The point is that the protocol, in and of itself, doesn't require fees.  The catch is that individual miners may require fees.

I think there has been talk of making the fees more relative in the future, such that the client would observe how long it takes transactions to get included in a block based on fee, and suggest something appropriate relative to how quickly you want your transaction included.

[sounds]

There is also anti-spam protection. If you're trying to move small amounts of coin around, you need to wait longer between receiving the coins into a wallet and then sending them out of the wallet.

Electrum definitely allows you to set the transaction fee, including no fee. The default is just a preference in the Wallet tab of your preferences.