Coin ageing & mining fees

[BitcoinBoss]

Can anyone please explain to me how coin ageing affects mining fees paid when money is transfered? For example I have a wallet that has about 100 received transactions and zero sent transaction. The amounts are very small and I wish to transfer in bulk to a seperate wallet, making them a single transaction. The btc are fairly aged with lots of confirmations, will this help reduce mining fee? Also what order would the btc be taken if not sending entire balance? (e.g. would the oldest coins be sent first). Hope these questions make sense, many thanks

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[Birdy]

If a fee is necessary or not depends on prioty and transaction size.
If you bundle up more than 5 transactions you will always have to pay a fee due to transaction size.
The priority is calculated with the value of coins and the number of confirmations (age) and the size of the transaction
priority = sum(input_value_in_base_units[satoshis] * input_age)/size_in_bytes
Priority of >57600000 is free

It takes ~1 day for a transaction of 1 BTC to be free, but ~2 days for a transaction of 0.5 BTC
If you have amounts of 0.0000xx Btc it will take years...
There is another way to send them without fee:
Bundle them with bigger transaction.
If you have an one week old amount of 1 BTC, you can add up to 4 small amounts without fee.

To be able to choose what Coins are used I use Coin Control:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=144331.0

[BitcoinBoss]

Thanks for the advice, very helpful. One thing I don't understand is how you work out the size in bytes of an individual transaction. Is it something I can view in my wallet or do I work the figure out with a mathematical equation? I'm using Bitcoin QT wallet.

[Birdy]

Thanks for the advice, very helpful. One thing I don't understand is how you work out the size in bytes of an individual transaction. Is it something I can view in my wallet or do I work the figure out with a mathematical equation? I'm using Bitcoin QT wallet.

If you have Coin Control installed, you can see it. It's a bit less than 200 bytes for every transaction included.

[BitcoinBoss]

Thanks for the advice, very helpful. One thing I don't understand is how you work out the size in bytes of an individual transaction. Is it something I can view in my wallet or do I work the figure out with a mathematical equation? I'm using Bitcoin QT wallet.

If you have Coin Control installed, you can see it. It's a bit less than 200 bytes for every transaction included.

Thank you, I will do some research into Coin Control, sounds really useful. This forum has been so useful in helping me learn about BTC and cryptocurrency. Each time I have had a question that might seem simple to some and make me me sound like a novice, forum members have come back with helpful advice in such a friendly way. I really appreciate it.

[Birdy]

Thanks for the advice, very helpful. One thing I don't understand is how you work out the size in bytes of an individual transaction. Is it something I can view in my wallet or do I work the figure out with a mathematical equation? I'm using Bitcoin QT wallet.

If you have Coin Control installed, you can see it. It's a bit less than 200 bytes for every transaction included.

Thank you, I will do some research into Coin Control, sounds really useful. This forum has been so useful in helping me learn about BTC and cryptocurrency. Each time I have had a question that might seem simple to some and make me me sound like a novice, forum members have come back with helpful advice in such a friendly way. I really appreciate it.

There are a lot of scammers out there though, be careful ^^

[Dansker]

Man I wish someone could automate this process with a program or script...

[reich]

Interesting points i agree

[DannyHamilton]

Man I wish someone could automate this process with a program or script...

I think I saw a thread where someone had automated it with a script, but I didn't bother to bookmark it.  Don't waste too much time searching for it though, my memory may be faulty on the matter.  It's possible someone was talking about the possibility of creating a script and hadn't actually created one.

[DannyHamilton]

Can anyone please explain to me how coin ageing affects mining fees paid when money is transfered? For example I have a wallet that has about 100 received transactions and zero sent transaction. The amounts are very small and I wish to transfer in bulk to a seperate wallet, making them a single transaction. The btc are fairly aged with lots of confirmations, will this help reduce mining fee? Also what order would the btc be taken if not sending entire balance? (e.g. would the oldest coins be sent first). Hope these questions make sense, many thanks

Age of the inputs is only used to determine if a 0.0005 BTC fee will be required.  If the age of the coins is the only thing triggering a fee, then the fee will be 0.0005 BTC

Note that a 0.0005 BTC fee is also required if any output of the transaction is less than 0.01 BTC).

Those two fees are not added together.  If your inputs aren't old enough, you have a 0.0005 BTC fee.  If you have an output less than 0.01 BTC, you have a 0.0005 BTC fee.  If you have an output less than 0.01 BTC AND your inputs aren't old enough, you still only have a 0.0005 BTC fee.

Fees only grow larger than 0.0005 BTC due to transaction size (in terms of bytes).  The fee will not increase unless the transaction is larger than 10 kilobytes.  Once it is larger than 10 kilobytes, you'll pay a fee of 0.0005 BTC per kilobyte.

[DeathAndTaxes]

That is not correct Danny.  Close but a couple misconceptions.

There is only one mandatory fee and it is on low priority txs.  It is 0.0005 per KB (round up).  This will be going to 0.0001 per KB in 0.8.2.

To avoid a the min mandatory fee your tx must meet ALL the criteria:
a) priority of inputs higher than "one bitcoin day"
b) all outputs >= 0.01 BTC
c) tx less than 10KB.

If a tx doesn't meet ALL THREE criteria it must pay the min mandatory fee which is always per kb (0.005 in prior to 0.8.2 and 0.0001 in 0.8.2+).

[DannyHamilton]

That is not correct Danny.  Close but a couple misconceptions.

If a tx doesn't meet ALL THREE criteria it must pay the min mandatory fee which is always per kb (0.005 in prior to 0.8.2 and 0.0001 in 0.8.2+).

Really??

Wow!  I've been giving some bad advice.  I thought I finally understood this pretty well.  Has this changed since 0.7.x?  I'm going to have to go back and look at the code again.  I thought for sure that the fee was 0.0005 BTC for any transaction that triggered a fee, and 0.0005 BTC for any transaction that triggered a fee AND was over 10 kilobytes.

I apologize to anyone I've mislead.  I'm going to go back and look at the source right now.  Thanks for the "heads up" D&T.  I guess I've still got more to learn.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I am sure.  I have observed fee behavior being per KB on tx less than 10KB.  All fees (even optional ones) are per KB.  Remember space in the blockchain (KBs) is the critical resources.  I am not sure if it always (i.e. 0.3 or earlier) has been this way but it has been this way for a long time.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees

Sending
A transaction will be sent without fees if these conditions are met:
It is smaller than 10 thousand bytes.
All outputs are 0.01 BTC or larger.
Its priority is large enough (see the Technical Info section below)
Otherwise, the reference implementation will round up the transaction size to the nearest thousand bytes and then add a fee of 0.0005 BTC per thousand bytes. Users may override the default 0.0005 BTC/kb fee setting, but cannot control transaction fees for each transaction. Bitcoin-Qt does prompt the user to accept the fee before the transaction is sent (they may cancel the transaction if they are not willing to pay the fee).

0.8.2 will use the same system as the quote above except the min fee is reduced to 0.0001 (~$0.01).

[DannyHamilton]

I'll have to search the forum for all my posts that talk about fees and correct them all before someone else gets confused by my bad advice.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Don't feel bad it happens to everyone ... well except maybe Satoshi.  Bitcoin is information dense and a lot is buried in the details.

[DannyHamilton]

Don't feel bad it happens to everyone ... well except maybe Satoshi.  Bitcoin is information dense and a lot is buried in the details.

My guess is that the code has changed so much and by so many people since Satoshi released it, that there are probably even areas that he doesn't fully understand any longer.

[DannyHamilton]

D&T,

I just looked at the code.  Now I'm even more confused than when I started.  Can you or someone else point out what I'm missing here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=207686.0

[BTCoder]

So if I age a coin it will be worth more ?

yes

[BTCoder]

Interesting thread, thank you.

[minerone2]

Birdy has a good point