[2017-08-30] How Bitcoin Fees Work and Why They’ve Been So High

[davey76]

Fees have been extraordinarily high this past week, and this article aims to clear up misconceptions and help users make smarter decisions in setting the right fees for their transactions. $3 fee for a $5 transaction? With the recent Bitcoin rally up into the mid $4,000’s there has been a huge influx of users that really don’t understand how Bitcoin works under the hood.

More: http://www.btcnewsweb.com/story/3143/how-bitcoin-fees-work-and-why-theyve-been-so-high/

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[1715574871]

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[Samarkand]

Fees have been extraordinarily high this past week, and this article aims to clear up misconceptions and help users make smarter decisions in setting the right fees for their transactions. $3 fee for a $5 transaction? With the recent Bitcoin rally up into the mid $4,000’s there has been a huge influx of users that really don’t understand how Bitcoin works under the hood.

More: http://www.btcnewsweb.com/story/3143/how-bitcoin-fees-work-and-why-theyve-been-so-high/

If you don´t care about a fast confirmation you can still get away with very cheap fees.
If you have few inputs to your transaction and you are fine with waiting 12-24 hours, it is still
very easy to send a transaction with sub 1$ fees.

A few days ago I sent a transaction with a single input and attached a ~0.26 $ fee. It confirmed
after rougly 14 hours.

[salfter]

Seconded on ultra-cheap fees.  Have a look at this transaction that I sent last week:

https://blockchain.info/tx/fefae7ed63cb5171f11ba32c82d1d68f313b8e6da34578eb478be145c82bde6a

It took the better part of 5 days to clear, but it only cost me a nickel (960 satoshis (5/byte), to be precise).

[Samarkand]

Seconded on ultra-cheap fees.  Have a look at this transaction that I sent last week:

https://blockchain.info/tx/fefae7ed63cb5171f11ba32c82d1d68f313b8e6da34578eb478be145c82bde6a

It took the better part of 5 days to clear, but it only cost me a nickel (960 satoshis (5/byte), to be precise).

Wow, that is even more impressive!
I think the problem is that new users of Bitcoin may not be aware of the benefits in terms of fees that
you get if you make a transaction with only 1-2 inputs (and have some patience to wait for confirmations).
Maybe it would be smart to include some kind of hint towards this in the more popular bitcoin wallets in
order to educate new users.

[hatshepsut93]

Seconded on ultra-cheap fees.  Have a look at this transaction that I sent last week:

https://blockchain.info/tx/fefae7ed63cb5171f11ba32c82d1d68f313b8e6da34578eb478be145c82bde6a

It took the better part of 5 days to clear, but it only cost me a nickel (960 satoshis (5/byte), to be precise).

A lot of newbies have some superstition that if they won't pay high enough fee to included in the next block, then their transactions will get stuck forever and lost. This pushes fees to ridiculous levels very quickly. The other problem is wallets, their recommended fee calculations are also too high, and newbies just don't know or scared to use manual fees. There is still much room for optimization of current software, and there's no need to rush blocksize hard forks until we have squeezed all capacity from current blocks.