2 ways to avoid transaction fees

[mai77]

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 




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  

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[Sage]

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?

[kjj]

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.

[JordanL]

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.

[the founder]

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.

[Dabs]

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.

[DannyHamilton]

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

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.

[DannyHamilton]

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?

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?

[Sage]

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?

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?

[DannyHamilton]

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?

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".

[Dabs]

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?

[DannyHamilton]

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.

[sgravina]

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

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.

[Tacticat]

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.

[mai77]

Just set fees to 0.0001 on your client.

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

settxfee 0.00001

is that really enough ?

[prezbo]

Just set fees to 0.0001 on your client.

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.

[mai77]

well that cuts fees to a fifth.

however small, thats a start 

[deepceleron]

Just set fees to 0.0001 on your client.

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.

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.

[mai77]

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"

[prezbo]

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.