Web wallets with no transaction fees charged, for how long?

[tee-rex]

Xapo and Coinbase are web wallets which allow transferring bitcoins free of charge. Maybe, there are a few other wallets that do the same and pay the transaction fees for their users. But what would happen if Bitcoin price rises manyfold and the fees rise proportionately in fiat terms? Will these wallets raise the transfer amounts above which the network transaction fees will still be paid by themselves or will they just begin charging their clients the fees in full?

To mods, if this thread doesn't belong here, please move it to its home board.

[pedrog]

Yes, you can be asked to pay fees at any moment:

Does Coinbase pay miner fees?

Aug 23, 2016  
Yes, Coinbase pays the miner fees on external transactions in order to ensure these transactions propagate throughout the bitcoin network quickly. For very small transaction amounts you may be prompted to pay the transaction / miner fee.

Miner fees are a small amount of digital currency that is included in transactions as a reward/incentive to the people who operate the network. They help the network continue to grow and provide an incentive for your transactions to be verified quickly.

Remember, Coinbase to Coinbase wallet transactions are always free of fees, no matter how much you are sending.

https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/815435

[longbob72]

Xapo and Coinbase are web wallets which allow transferring bitcoins free of charge. Maybe, there are a few other wallets that do the same and pay the transaction fees for their users. But what would happen if Bitcoin price rises manyfold and the fees rise proportionately in fiat terms? Will these wallets raise the transfer amounts above which the network transaction fees will still be paid by themselves or will they just begin charging their clients the fees in full?

To mods, if this thread doesn't belong here, please move it to its home board.

Ask them. Do you seriously expect us to know what some services would do in the future if the tx fee go higher?

[buxlover]

Those web wallets will get mining fee from users, But not fully i think. Because they don't send bitcoins from your address, they always come 2 or more transactions at a time and reduce their mining fee.

So in future they have some scheme like send bitcoins within 20 minutes or some different time frame and come more transactions. They ill collect mining fee if you want to send instantly.

They may fix percentage of mining fee according to the wait time like,

send bitcoins
within 24 hours  = Mining fee free
within 10 hours  = 10% mining fee
within 5 hours   =  50% mining fee
Instantly  = 100% mining fee

This is completely my guess, they may even continue free mining fee, if they have more profit from other services

[~Bitcoin~]

For transafering small amount to external address they still charge fees and the size they think are small enough and users has to pay fee can be easily modified by them in future if price of bitcoin rises so high. As well as they may charge fees for all withdraw to external address trasnactions, i don't see any benefits to them with paying transaction fees by themselves for users.

[tee-rex]

Xapo and Coinbase are web wallets which allow transferring bitcoins free of charge. Maybe, there are a few other wallets that do the same and pay the transaction fees for their users. But what would happen if Bitcoin price rises manyfold and the fees rise proportionately in fiat terms? Will these wallets raise the transfer amounts above which the network transaction fees will still be paid by themselves or will they just begin charging their clients the fees in full?

To mods, if this thread doesn't belong here, please move it to its home board.

Ask them. Do you seriously expect us to know what some services would do in the future if the tx fee go higher?

I'm not talking about tx fees going higher. I'm asking only about the case where the Bitcoin price rises a lot. The transaction fees would obviously stay the same in Bitcoin terms, but would rise in fiat terms. See the difference?

Yes, you can be asked to pay fees at any moment:

~snip~

But if the payment chain doesn't involve fiat, they should keep the transactions free regardless of Bitcoin price, right? My point is that the users of other wallets such as the Blockchain wallet or desktop vanilla wallet may not be quite happy paying grand fees and may want to start using the web wallets which won't ask them to pay the fees.

[Kprawn]

Xapo and Coinbase are web wallets which allow transferring bitcoins free of charge. Maybe, there are a few other wallets that do the same and pay the transaction fees for their users. But what would happen if Bitcoin price rises manyfold and the fees rise proportionately in fiat terms? Will these wallets raise the transfer amounts above which the network transaction fees will still be paid by themselves or will they just begin charging their clients the fees in full?

To mods, if this thread doesn't belong here, please move it to its home board.

Ask them. Do you seriously expect us to know what some services would do in the future if the tx fee go higher?

You do not have to ask, you only look at what Circle did... They offered the same deal in the beginning to draw in the crowds and once

they have done that and they got enough users they f$%^ed us over and turned business model. These companies are in this game to

make money, not to support Bitcoin. Those free tx's are being paid for by other extra features offered by these sites. Nothing in life is

FREE. 

[bitdumper]

xapo is using bank stratgys and i am supprised why they are not getting bandded by public because mtgox also hit that mistake i am sure most pf the prople hate less control over their wallets

[yayayo]

Transactions without fees are the honey trap of services like Coinbase. They want to suck in as many people as possible to become the biggest exchange/wallet provider. Once they have reached their goal they will start to charge fees.

People should know that storing Bitcoin at centralized entities such as Coinbase, that are eager to please the governmental surveillance freaks is against the original idea of Bitcoin. Bitcoin was not born with the promise to make transactions as cheap as possible. Bitcoin's promise is individual financial independence through decentralization.

It's sad to see that so many people seem to forget about the original idea of Bitcoin and just fall for the old banker tricks. If you use Bitcoin via Coinbase, you can directly use Paypal - there is no difference in terms of restricting the use of your funds.

ya.ya.yo!

[tee-rex]

Transactions without fees are the honey trap of services like Coinbase. They want to suck in as many people as possible to become the biggest exchange/wallet provider. Once they have reached their goal they will start to charge fees

And will people continue to use Coinbase after they start charging fees? Also, what would happen if Bitcoin surges in price a dozen times and the transactional fees grow proportionately in terms of fiat thanks to that? Methinks, wallets like Coinbase would attract even more clientèle, especially in the case the transactional fees should grow to a burdensome percentage in respect to amounts typically transferred.

People should know that storing Bitcoin at centralized entities such as Coinbase, that are eager to please the governmental surveillance freaks is against the original idea of Bitcoin. Bitcoin was not born with the promise to make transactions as cheap as possible. Bitcoin's promise is individual financial independence through decentralization.

That might well be the case, and horrible if it is. But this alone won't make people stay away from these wallets.

[BitcoinNewsMagazine]

If you are in US it is worth getting a Coinbase account just for the Shift card.

[erikalui]

The wallets do not look at the fiat prices as they know how to manage paying the transaction fee. They deal in bitcoins and not in fiat and hence, even if 0.0001 BTC is worth $1, it doesn't matter. Coinbase and Xapo don't give a user the wallet and withhold the private keys thus using their own funds when a user spends their coins. They also handle multiple transactions at a time to manage the fee and their own exchange too and the money we receive is saved in terms of their fiat price and not blockchain rates. They delay sending small transactions due to the fee being more than the amount.

[bitdumper]

wallets with no transaction fees is simply an danger indication i am not saying that they will run away but i want to say they just lost you privacy think and they are also using banks stratgys to transact money

[amacar2]

xapo is using bank stratgys and i am supprised why they are not getting bandded by public because mtgox also hit that mistake i am sure most pf the prople hate less control over their wallets

Even though public know xapo and coinbase are using same banking system to send fee less transactions between two accounts people will keep on using it being greedy. But i think the main objective of bitcoin is to remain anonymous when doing transaction and with such wallets privacy will be wide open to public.

[BingoDog]

xapo is using bank stratgys and i am supprised why they are not getting bandded by public because mtgox also hit that mistake i am sure most pf the prople hate less control over their wallets

Even though public know xapo and coinbase are using same banking system to send fee less transactions between two accounts people will keep on using it being greedy. But i think the main objective of bitcoin is to remain anonymous when doing transaction and with such wallets privacy will be wide open to public.

Unfortunately Bitcoin transactions in the future couldn't stay totaly anonimous. If we want use services like Xapo and Coinbase, so some added value to the Bitcoin, we should give up a part of our privacy. These services have to obey some regulations if they want to keep their business legitimate so there is a price to be paid. Price is privacy.

[tee-rex]

The wallets do not look at the fiat prices as they know how to manage paying the transaction fee. They deal in bitcoins and not in fiat and hence, even if 0.0001 BTC is worth $1, it doesn't matter. Coinbase and Xapo don't give a user the wallet and withhold the private keys thus using their own funds when a user spends their coins. They also handle multiple transactions at a time to manage the fee and their own exchange too and the money we receive is saved in terms of their fiat price and not blockchain rates. They delay sending small transactions due to the fee being more than the amount.

That's what I think myself. In such circumstances, even more people will start to use these free of charge wallets. Who would want to pay 10% of the transacted amount as transaction fees to transfer some $10 in bitcoins? Right now $10 equals ~0.016 BTC, and there should be a lot of such transactions as well as transactions with amounts less than that, while the usual network fee of 10k satoshi equals only ~0.6% of that amount.

[n691309]

Xapo and Coinbase are web wallets which allow transferring bitcoins free of charge. Maybe, there are a few other wallets that do the same and pay the transaction fees for their users. But what would happen if Bitcoin price rises manyfold and the fees rise proportionately in fiat terms? Will these wallets raise the transfer amounts above which the network transaction fees will still be paid by themselves or will they just begin charging their clients the fees in full?

To mods, if this thread doesn't belong here, please move it to its home board.

If they had only this service like the wallet service and paying the fees then this could be a little harder for them but since they have other sources to generate money like the exchange they are able to cover these fees, but everything is relative it doesn't mean they will change this one day.

[cpfreeplz]

Transactions without fees are the honey trap of services like Coinbase. They want to suck in as many people as possible to become the biggest exchange/wallet provider. Once they have reached their goal they will start to charge fees.

People should know that storing Bitcoin at centralized entities such as Coinbase, that are eager to please the governmental surveillance freaks is against the original idea of Bitcoin. Bitcoin was not born with the promise to make transactions as cheap as possible. Bitcoin's promise is individual financial independence through decentralization.

It's sad to see that so many people seem to forget about the original idea of Bitcoin and just fall for the old banker tricks. If you use Bitcoin via Coinbase, you can directly use Paypal - there is no difference in terms of restricting the use of your funds.

ya.ya.yo!

Exactly. Why would you deposit your bitcoins into some online shady bank for bitcoins? They try to look like normal everyday businesses but the harsh reality is, if you knew that a certain bank literally opened 5 years ago and is figuring it out as they go would you really trust your money with them? Now imagine you didn't have to trust anyone with your money (aka: what bitcoins are all about). Why the hell would you ever give them your money!?

[European Central Bank]

the transaction fee is a small proportion of what they're making on the spread or in fees when you're buying or selling from them.

if that's enough to entice you then maybe you should do some basic math and figure out whether it's worth it just for that. often it's still the cheapest option so it's a little bonus from them that might draw in more people.

[tee-rex]

Transactions without fees are the honey trap of services like Coinbase. They want to suck in as many people as possible to become the biggest exchange/wallet provider. Once they have reached their goal they will start to charge fees.

People should know that storing Bitcoin at centralized entities such as Coinbase, that are eager to please the governmental surveillance freaks is against the original idea of Bitcoin. Bitcoin was not born with the promise to make transactions as cheap as possible. Bitcoin's promise is individual financial independence through decentralization.

It's sad to see that so many people seem to forget about the original idea of Bitcoin and just fall for the old banker tricks. If you use Bitcoin via Coinbase, you can directly use Paypal - there is no difference in terms of restricting the use of your funds.

ya.ya.yo!

Exactly. Why would you deposit your bitcoins into some online shady bank for bitcoins? They try to look like normal everyday businesses but the harsh reality is, if you knew that a certain bank literally opened 5 years ago and is figuring it out as they go would you really trust your money with them? Now imagine you didn't have to trust anyone with your money (aka: what bitcoins are all about). Why the hell would you ever give them your money!?

Your analogy is evidently far from being correct. 5 years in Bitcoin is more like 50 years in the fiat world. Bitcoin itself is only some 7 years old. I'm more interested about what will happen to the Blockchain wallet if fees skyrocket. Will people transact less with bigger amounts, and the pains with the block size increase go away on their own? I'd like to hear the opinion of Coinbase and Xapo opponents on this.