Is it bad form to be stingy on tansaction fees?

[ArcCsch]

I recently funded a paper wallet with coin I got from a faucet, here is the id:
b606ad986d7c16e0a8b13d6a5a5a58bbb938413b04c74bfcc32b711478ad43e1
I got it confirmed by 1Hash after 144min despite including a fee of only 0.01mBTC.

[achow101]

What do you mean by "bad form"?

If you are stingy on the transaction fee then your transaction will simply not confirm quickly. A higher fee means that the a miner is more likely to include your transaction sooner than if you have a lower fee.

[CryptoDatabase]

Right, it isn't bad form to include a low fee, it just determines how fast you want your transaction to confirm.

[ArcCsch]

I told someone about this transaction, and he said that 144 min is very long for a confirm and that "I deserve it for being cheap".

[CryptoDatabase]

I told someone about this transaction, and he said that 144 min is very long for a confirm and that "I deserve it for being cheap".

That guy is a douchebag. Realistically its the same thing as shipping a package at the post office. The more you pay the faster it will get there and vice versa.

[Kakmakr]

The bigger fees is there for your convenience, because the miners gives preference to these transactions and then they get confirmation quicker. If you are in a hurry, just pay a fee higher than the standard fees, and you should be fine. I have never had one instance where my transaction took longer than 20min to have 2 confirmations. < Guess I am just lucky >

The bigger the fee, the faster the confirmation. ^smile^

[franky1]

its not bad form
its just expected that if someone wants something done within an hour you try to make sure its paid ontime by outbidding the other transactions to get into the next block.

if however it was paying a landlord rent. that had to be paid by end of day then its less necessary to be the very next in line.

the issue is not that humans are of "bad form" for not paying enough of a fee. its that the fee rules themselves are biased and failing the community.

the banker contracted developers have botched a few things and instead of limiting spam using real code rules, they use economics.. they let the price act as an auction like mechanism. only offering ~5040000 slots every 2 weeks (~360000 a day(~2500 every 10 minutes))
where there is no selective way to guarantee it even gets in the very next block or no selective way to guarantee paying a certain fee to get into a certain block.

EG imagine
the recommended rate might be 0.0001, you outbid it 0.00011.. 3minutes go by and 3000 people paid 0.00012... 3minutes go by and 3000 paid 0.00013

now your tx is not getting in the next block but 2500 people paying 0.00013 do.
you think, ok only 2-4 blocks wait. but every 3 minutes new people are adding more transactions into the waiting list. now its at 0.00015 minimum and a list of 60000 peoples transactions have outbid you.

-imagine no new tx's get added on and the outbidding stops-(explanation waffles on if we continue adding more to waiting list)

your tx is not getting in the second block block but 2500 people paying 0.00015 do. even the 500 people at 0.00015 that didnt get into the first block, the same as the 3000 at 0.00014, the 500 at 0.00013 are getting frustrated and asking when is their chance

your tx is not getting in the third block but 500 people paying 0.00015 and 2000 paying 0.00014 do. again ur frustrated, the guys paying 0.00012, 0,00013 are frustrated.

now your tx is not getting in the fourth block but 1000 people paying 0.00014 and 500 paying 0.00013 and 1000 paying 0.00012 do.
still there are some paying 0.00012 getting frustrated as are you. but you think maybe you have a chance in the next block

-imagine new tx's get added on and the outbidding starts-
though transactions of 0.00012 have been added in fourth block. the average of 0.00015-0.00012 sets the networks estimate at 0.000135
and 3000 people pay 0.00014 to out bid the estimate.

now you and 0.00012 are really pi**ed your dropped to the bottom of the pile again

and although they just made their transactions. 2500 of them 0.00014 paying guys get in the fifth block


this auction of highest first. along with individual nodes also having mechanisms to not relay transactions unless they have a minimum fee does not help the price to be selective or reactive in respect of low demand times (averages dont drop instantly) but outbidding up is live reaction/selection.

such as the network of nodes are now using a pricing mechanism of an average of blocks pricing. meaning if one block had high demand. and the next block had low demand. the price does not instantly drop, instead this average delays any drops while the 'live auction' is reactive to push up the price quickly/instantly when demand rises. which has a bias of pushing the price up faster than down.

alot of people dont understand economics. and the devs trying to push a economic policy into a technology is already causing issues. there are technical ways to reduce spam, without resorting to economic policies. especially economic polocies that are not equally fair on the demand scales

alot of people dont understand that bitcoin is world wide. so when someone in usa's district of columbia treats 7cents as 30 seconds of minimum wage labour. someone in cuba sees it as 84 MINUTES of minimum wage labour. so some people dont understand that the fee actually affects people differently.

treating people from cuba, el savador, georgia, uganda, etc should be treated as spam if they dont want to pay more than an hours labour to use bitcoin... is bad
treating them as unimportant is arrogant. and only seeing bitcoin as something that should be used that can afford it. is where one of the many losses of bitcoins original ethos is disapearing to.

oh and if your reading this and about to defend banker paid devs decisions to use economics as a spam mechanism and then suggest third world countries wait for LN or sidechains. guess what. LN are conceiving a prepay of 0.006btc($4 right now) just to open a channel for 10 days
yep thats right upfront fee locked in thats the equivalent of cubas minimum wage of 84 hours.

as for side chains. them same banker paid devs are proposing demurrage (negative interest rate).

so inshort do not blame yourself for not paying enough. when its the devs that are doing all they can to add economic mechanisms to limit usability while pushing up the cost of use.

[~Bitcoin~]

looking at https://blockchain.info/tx/b606ad986d7c16e0a8b13d6a5a5a58bbb938413b04c74bfcc32b711478ad43e1
your transaction size is around 500 bytes and currently recommended fee per byte is 70 satoshi/byte so you should have included 0.00035 BTC but luckily even with only 0.00001BTC as fee your transaction went through you seem lucky in this case. Never include low fee try to use https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ to calculate recommended fee or go with the fee most of the web wallet suggest this days.

[manbitcoinlover]

It has nothing to do with  bad/good, it just simply has to do with slow/fast.  I do not like when people mess with my money, so if I am not in a rush
I would not mind adjusting a minor fee to very small amounts such as 0.01 mbtc, if I want a smooth and quick transaction, I guess i would pay more
as long as there is no problem with the servers. I do consider myself to be stingy, If you disagree, oh well..

[Yuuto]

It depends on how much you are sending and the size of your transaction. If your transaction amount is low and you pay a low fee for a large amounts of bytes in your transaction then obviously your transaction will not get confirmed as fast as if you paid more.

I'd say that 0.0001 for each transaction should work. If you are dealing with small amounts try coinbase or xapo.

[arcanaaerobics]

I call it freedom, you decide how much you want to pay(and wait of course)

And far I know, miners can choose the minimum fee to process the transactions or not.

[clickerz]

It depends on how much you are sending and the size of your transaction. If your transaction amount is low and you pay a low fee for a large amounts of bytes in your transaction then obviously your transaction will not get confirmed as fast as if you paid more.

I'd say that 0.0001 for each transaction should work. If you are dealing with small amounts try coinbase or xapo.

Before,when withdawing on exchanges 10,000  satoshi is enough. Now, the exchanges I use now charging 50,000 satoshi when you withraw. I know this is nfor effecient and fast transaction and its ok, still sending bitcoin is cheaper to other mode of transaction.

[amacar2]

More fees = fast confirmation
less fees = slow and sometime very slow confirmation

Miners will decide which transaction to be included in the block and looking at your fee it is more than ten times lower than recommended. 144 minute is less than normal time of waiting for this size-fee pair transactions.

[avatar_kiyoshi]

My suggestion is always used default transaction fees, because actually bitcoin fees is the cheapest than other payment processor, unless you have a priority to used small fees or even no fee.

looking at https://blockchain.info/tx/b606ad986d7c16e0a8b13d6a5a5a58bbb938413b04c74bfcc32b711478ad43e1
your transaction size is around 500 bytes and currently recommended fee per byte is 70 satoshi/byte so you should have included 0.00035 BTC but luckily even with only 0.00001BTC as fee your transaction went through you seem lucky in this case. Never include low fee try to use https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ to calculate recommended fee or go with the fee most of the web wallet suggest this days.

Looks like OP have a priority even used no fees, according to https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees

A transaction was safe to send without fees if these conditions were met:
It is smaller than 1,000 bytes.
All outputs are 0.01 BTC or larger.
Its priority is large enough (see above)

[TastyChillySauce00]

I call it freedom, you decide how much you want to pay(and wait of course)

And far I know, miners can choose the minimum fee to process the transactions or not.

having freedom such as being really stingy on transaction fees even it's for the sake of your transaction speed and sacrificing the speed for only a cent is really not worth it for the freedom you mentioned,you're making yourself unpleased by having some freedom which is useless in this case

[tiggytomb]

I recently funded a paper wallet with coin I got from a faucet, here is the id:
b606ad986d7c16e0a8b13d6a5a5a58bbb938413b04c74bfcc32b711478ad43e1
I got it confirmed by 1Hash after 144min despite including a fee of only 0.01mBTC.

I think it is bad form if the recipient is waiting for it and is expecting it after an agreement between the two of you, that would be bad form but any other situation it is up to you as the other guys have said, if you want it sent quicker you'll need to pay a little bit more.

[NorrisK]

Being able to choose a fee to your liking is by design of bitcoin. Therefore it is not bad form to include a low fee.

However, as with any service, if you pay little, expect little. In this case Low fees simply take longer to be processed. Nothing bad about that.

[ArcCsch]

Thanks for all the replies!
I started this thread because I was confused by the apparent implication of low-fee transactions being considered spam, apparently it is not quite so.
I hold nothing personal against him and would prefer not to have people insult him.

the fee rules themselves are biased and failing the community.

I agree, the priority system is intended to fix that by having users "wait for their turn," or pay to cut into the line, but it is turning into a war of attrition, and the "pay more" argument is flawed since the number of slots is limited and everyone cannot win. Also, miners have no incentive to honer the priority system and it is more profitable to prioritize transactions by fee density.
Would bigger blocks make anything better? I think they would end up with the same problem.

[unamis76]

I think that it's not cool to be "stingy" or "wierd" with transaction fees. Since I've started to use Bitcoin more I started including fees in all transactions. I let my mobile client figure them out for me and when I'm on my computer I usually see what would be the ideal fee and pay slightly more than that. It's good etiquette to support the miners and good for you because you'll be putting your transaction on top of others that paid less. And, to top it all, even if you pay more than average, the fee you paid will most likely be less than moving the same amount of money in fiat through regular banking systems.

[mindrust]

I hope we won't have to pay more and more just to get our transactions confirmed in the future. Because we are definitely heading that way.

We have an option to send bitcoins without a fee right now but it is only possible as long as the system isn't overloaded. That's ok, i can understand this but if this stays like that, the fees will increase over time, and considering bitcoin's own price is rising over time, not good.