The below article looks at living off of bitcoin for one week in NYC, and found that prices were 40% higher! The reason given is volatility, but that would mean that she bought the bitcoin in advance and the price dropped. I am wondering, how much of these prices are due to that, as it seems like the main factors would be the cost of purchasing it (fees) from whatever site she is using, and transaction fees.
Can anyone estimate what the cost would be for these 2, especially given everyday purchases (eg, restaurants)? Eg, for a $9 meal, how much would that be increased due to transaction costs?
Recommended fees are currently about 360 satoshi/byte, or 81,360 satoshi.
If you were paying at a restaurant or for something else minor, you'd want to pay the recommended fee because you need the transaction to be confirmed in the next block. Zero confirmation transactions wouldn't be accepted in anywhere but the most amateurish places.
If they bought it on an exchange just before starting the week (which I assume they did since they pointed out the loss that volatility caused), they would have only had one input to their transactions so it would have been the median size of 226 satoshi.
So the
transaction cost would typically be $1.84 as of this post.
