Xapo starting to charge outgoing transaction fees

[magneto]

Hi,

We have an important announcement about your Xapo account that will affect you - so please read!

In the next couple of days, all Xapo users will begin to pay the miners fee themselves in order to send transactions out of Xapo.

No portion of this fee goes to Xapo, it is simply the fee that needs to be paid to miners in order for an outgoing transaction to be processed via the bitcoin network! This fee will be dynamically calculated based on the current network conditions and will be paid by you at the time of the transaction.

Due to the increase in transaction volume of the bitcoin network, we'd like to give our users some control over their transactions. That being said, Xapo will give you the ability to select which type of fee you'd like to pay - a standard or high priority fee - thus allowing you to choose how quickly you'd like for your transaction to be processed!

Please keep in mind that this will apply to outgoing transactions that touch the blockchain, but all Xapo to Xapo payments will still be free of charge!

Thanks for your understanding,
The Xapo Team

This is an email that I received from Xapo saying that from the next couple of days I cannot send transactions without any fee...

Do you agree with their decision? I personally believe that a big part of their business was from people wanting to do a lot of micropayments, because coinbase, coinjar and other online wallet giants have added fees and they were the only ones left yet to add a fee. But obviously that probably hurt them a lot and set them back on a lot of extra income as transaction fees skyrockets.

Your thoughts?

[paffie]

This is an email that I received from Xapo saying that from the next couple of days I cannot send transactions without any fee...

Do you agree with their decision? I personally believe that a big part of their business was from people wanting to do a lot of micropayments, because coinbase, coinjar and other online wallet giants have added fees and they were the only ones left yet to add a fee. But obviously that probably hurt them a lot and set them back on a lot of extra income as transaction fees skyrockets.

Your thoughts?

It's just a business decission. Miner's fees have always existed, but xapo was so kind to pay the fee for their users. They probably did the math, and found out the could maximise their profit by no longer paying the fees for their users. Sure, they'll lose business, but i'm pretty sure they would have done sufficient calculations to know their net income will rise with this decission.

Like you said, since the mempool is so full lately, fees have skyrocketed, so i suppose it's costing them to much money in the end.

[mattermaster]

Today i got an email from xapo anouncing that they will not charge any fees but bitcoin network has to take transaction fee on every transfer hereafter.
I was happily using xapo since past three years but alas! They changed their terms!

[Graphics]

Today i got an email from xapo anouncing that they will not charge any fees but bitcoin network has to take transaction fee on every transfer hereafter.
I was happily using xapo since past three years but alas! They changed their terms!

I also got the email, but I find it like a logical business decision. You can't expect from them to carry all the weight of fees. Because 3y ago, transaction fee was ~1c and now it's nearly $1. Which is insane! If segwit get enough support soon and lower the fees to reasonable level, they may revoke it.

[gribble]

Today i got an email from xapo anouncing that they will not charge any fees but bitcoin network has to take transaction fee on every transfer hereafter.
I was happily using xapo since past three years but alas! They changed their terms!

I also got the email, but I find it like a logical business decision. You can't expect from them to carry all the weight of fees. Because 3y ago, transaction fee was ~1c and now it's nearly $1. Which is insane! If segwit get enough support soon and lower the fees to reasonable level, they may revoke it.

I have received the announcement from xapo too, yes it is business service of bitcoin wallet
if the xapo doesn't apply the fees transaction on their service,
they will not survive for long time because there are not peoples who pay their bill monthly​
 their service will not run without pay webhosting and other.

[MMysterious]

I think a few months back they already had to charge fees for withdrawal amount less than 50k, not really sure if that was the right amount so I was expecting in time it'll charge fees for every transaction you make whether into Xapo or outside. I just hope the transaction fees wouldn't be that much though.

[dustboy]

I got the same email as well, and I think it is reasonable why they decide to charge sending fee. If they do not do it, it may give so bad financial problem for their business.

[olushakes]

I got the mail for the notification to that effect and I was not surprised because whether they like it or not, they just cannot continue to pay for it from their revenue if any or else they will just run down. Other free wallet providers have even implemented the fee when receiving and if Xapo is now implementing now, I don't see any thing wrong only that they should try and keep it to the minimum after all you will still wait several hours before confirmation.

[sana54210]

I got the mail for the notification to that effect and I was not surprised because whether they like it or not, they just cannot continue to pay for it from their revenue if any or else they will just run down. Other free wallet providers have even implemented the fee when receiving and if Xapo is now implementing now, I don't see any thing wrong only that they should try and keep it to the minimum after all you will still wait several hours before confirmation.

I am not sure how Xapo is generating revenues other than buying/selling bitcoins services because I am not seeing any advertisements within their services like blockchain.info is doing. Xapo was a crowd fundded start up and they are processing out going transactions in stage hence paying tx fees was under feasible for them as per my assumptions.

But it is time for them too to start collecting network fees from users as high priority fees are peaking like 400 satoshi per byte it would be unpractical fees and I am afraid people will use bitcoins as before.

[RamBahadur.Gurung]

I don''t think that we can blame them on this. Right now, there is a huge backlog of unconfirmed transactions, and the minimum tx fee needed for instant (i.e within 3 blocks) confirmation is around 400 Sat / byte. Xapo didn't had any other option.

[alyssa85]

As long as it's the basic miners fee, it's perfectly OK. It's what you should have paid all along.

However, if they suddenly hike the fees to something like 0.001 btc (10 x the basic fee), then you know they're in trouble. One of the signs Cryptsy was in trouble was the high withdrawal fees, as they sought to clawback money and prevent withdrawals.

[FLoving]

I heard about this for the first time as I am using xapo from my android phone and on that app I not received any message or any announcement from them and today I used their wallet and I think they not charged any fees from my wallet. I think they not reached to me yet.

[Snorek]

Today i got an email from xapo anouncing that they will not charge any fees but bitcoin network has to take transaction fee on every transfer hereafter.
I was happily using xapo since past three years but alas! They changed their terms!

I also got the email, but I find it like a logical business decision. You can't expect from them to carry all the weight of fees. Because 3y ago, transaction fee was ~1c and now it's nearly $1. Which is insane! If segwit get enough support soon and lower the fees to reasonable level, they may revoke it.

There is no way that any company which offers online wallet services will be able to pay current transaction fees.
Current standard fee for 226 bytes/tx is more than 80k satoshi (according to: https://bitcoinfees.21.co/)
It is more than $1.5 fee for each on-chain transaction, it's insane.

[FLoving]

Today i got an email from xapo anouncing that they will not charge any fees but bitcoin network has to take transaction fee on every transfer hereafter.
I was happily using xapo since past three years but alas! They changed their terms!

I also got the email, but I find it like a logical business decision. You can't expect from them to carry all the weight of fees. Because 3y ago, transaction fee was ~1c and now it's nearly $1. Which is insane! If segwit get enough support soon and lower the fees to reasonable level, they may revoke it.

There is no way that any company which offers online wallet services will be able to pay current transaction fees.
Current standard fee for 226 bytes/tx is more than 80k satoshi (according to: https://bitcoinfees.21.co/)
It is more than $1.5 fee for each on-chain transaction, it's insane.

But after reading the OP not found that they have provided the reason that they are charging the fees because of the current fees increase. I think they have now started their business till now it was their promo to their users and now they have decided to finish the promo.

[Nagadota]

No one should see this as a bad thing.  It would be extremely suspicious if they didn't do this and I would question what they were doing with their users' money behind the scenes, since a lot of people using Xapo will be sending and receiving small transactions with large actual sizes and Xapo would be running at a significant loss.

[shield132]

Currently price of bitcoin is rised and transaction fees are also extremely high. So I highly thing there were some users which were using bitcoin for sending 50$ or lower, so xapo had to pay fees and so much fees logically affected their business. Their income would be nothing if we conpare how much they had to pay in fees. That's also why so many gigant online wallet companies stopped paying fees on their own. Xapo did their best until they could, so we can't beat them for this.

[mobnepal]

begin to pay the miners fee themselves in order to send transactions out of Xapo.

Xapo have just followed coinbase on this, coinbase have already introduced fee on sending out bitcoin from coinbase account to other bitcoin wallets/addresses.

Their internal transactions (off-chain transactions, xapo to xapo address) is still free so I don't think this will make significant effect to their users. It is quite good for sustainability of their business as well as users can now have little control over their fees to get faster confirmation.

[BitHodler]

begin to pay the miners fee themselves in order to send transactions out of Xapo.

Xapo have just followed coinbase on this, coinbase have already introduced fee on sending out bitcoin from coinbase account to other bitcoin wallets/addresses.

Their internal transactions (off-chain transactions, xapo to xapo address) is still free so I don't think this will make significant effect to their users. It is quite good for sustainability of their business as well as users can now have little control over their fees to get faster confirmation.

It depends. I wouldn't be surprised to see a whole load of people leaving Xapo just because they don't allow free external transactions anymore.

Don't forget that there are a lot faucet farmers that have been using Xapo only for that reason. I hope that they quit farming faucets now it's basically not worth the hassle anymore.

In order to spend worthless dust accumulated through faucets, the fee will top the earnings of these people in case they look to spend them. Less faucet farmers means less overall complaints.

[shinratensei_]

Hi,

We have an important announcement about your Xapo account that will affect you - so please read!

In the next couple of days, all Xapo users will begin to pay the miners fee themselves in order to send transactions out of Xapo.

No portion of this fee goes to Xapo, it is simply the fee that needs to be paid to miners in order for an outgoing transaction to be processed via the bitcoin network! This fee will be dynamically calculated based on the current network conditions and will be paid by you at the time of the transaction.

Due to the increase in transaction volume of the bitcoin network, we'd like to give our users some control over their transactions. That being said, Xapo will give you the ability to select which type of fee you'd like to pay - a standard or high priority fee - thus allowing you to choose how quickly you'd like for your transaction to be processed!

Please keep in mind that this will apply to outgoing transactions that touch the blockchain, but all Xapo to Xapo payments will still be free of charge!

Thanks for your understanding,
The Xapo Team

This is an email that I received from Xapo saying that from the next couple of days I cannot send transactions without any fee...

Do you agree with their decision? I personally believe that a big part of their business was from people wanting to do a lot of micropayments, because coinbase, coinjar and other online wallet giants have added fees and they were the only ones left yet to add a fee. But obviously that probably hurt them a lot and set them back on a lot of extra income as transaction fees skyrockets.

Your thoughts?

Or if they are still running the transaction without fees and it will obviously make their business to be bankrupt. I can imagine The transaction fees must be the user's responsibility.
it will not be hurting anyone. Do you want your transaction to get stuck on the network for several weeks?

XAPO already has taken a response for the bitcoin latest problem. Without any fee and it will be hurting his service. 

[angaper]

Xapo has gradually tightened his terms of service for a few months ago when they set a minimum amount to carry out a transaction, which made this company inconvenient for micropayments. I am no longer convinced at this point if the service of Xapo is so good as to continue to keep my coins there.