Killer transaction fee

[evoorhees]

that's my point, the lower the transaction the higher as a percentage is the fee... hence why people need to move to ewallets...

Ewallets are a horrible idea and throw away the most important aspect of Bitcoin, that it is decentralized.  All so that you can, what, avoid a .0005 BTC fee on some transactions?  You realize that's less than a USD cent right now?

Ewallets are not a horrible idea. They are a necessary part of the Bitcoin economy. As secure, trusted ewallet services spring up, more "normal" people can get involved with Bitcoin. The fact that Bitcoin allows decentralization and true ownership of your own money is fantastic, but that doesn't mean that it's efficient or proper for every single user to keep his coins on his own computer. Surely you can appreciate a diversity in storage options, right?

[ctoon6]

I think we need secure devices instead of secure online wallets.

[EhVedadoOAnonimato]

Who (by which mechanism) decides the size of fees?

It should be the sender (you), but with the standard client it isn't, and will probably remain like that until somebody implements a more decent way to avoid transaction spam propagation.

Until then, the client has some hardcoded fee policy that will take into account both the transaction value and the size of your transactions in bytes. Large transactions (in bytes) and small amounts tend to pay.

Who gets those fees? (I'm guessing some mining pool operator)

The miner which includes your transaction in a block.

Is there a way to NOT pay 10% when sending smallish amounts of BTC?

You don't get to choose with the standard client. And if you happen to find a client that allows you to choose, beware that standard clients won't even propagate your transaction if it doesn't abide to the hard coded fee policy. So be sure to at least try to connect directly to mining pools which don't follow the standard fee policy.

[TiagoTiago]

0.4BTC is too high to be caught by the spam filter; the other situation when tx fees are imposed are when you try to send coins that haven't been verified yet ( <=6 confirmations i think)

[Desolator]

ummmm I'm running 0.3.24 beta and if I open the options, by default, it's set at "pay transaction fee 0.00" and it says above that that 0.01 is recommended to make it get processed more quickly.  Am I the only one who had it default to that?  How badly delayed are transactions that you tack 0 BTC onto?  Is it to the point where it's delayed indefinitely or are there so many miners and so little transactions that you're going to get picked up by them regardless or the transaction percentage/flat fee you tack on?

by the way, if I want to pay someone 10.00000000 BTC and I say add a transaction fee of 0.1 BTC cuz I want it done really, really quickly, do I have to do some math and send a modified amount manually myself so it's not less than 10BTC when it gets there or will the software send 10BTC to the target and automatically take the extra 0.1 out of my wallet for me?

[jackjack]

ummmm I'm running 0.3.24 beta and if I open the options, by default, it's set at "pay transaction fee 0.00" and it says above that that 0.01 is recommended to make it get processed more quickly.  Am I the only one who had it default to that?  How badly delayed are transactions that you tack 0 BTC onto?  Is it to the point where it's delayed indefinitely or are there so many miners and so little transactions that you're going to get picked up by them regardless or the transaction percentage/flat fee you tack on?

It's 0 in the options but if you try to send a satoshi the client will refuse

[CurbsideProphet]

ummmm I'm running 0.3.24 beta and if I open the options, by default, it's set at "pay transaction fee 0.00" and it says above that that 0.01 is recommended to make it get processed more quickly.  Am I the only one who had it default to that?  How badly delayed are transactions that you tack 0 BTC onto?  Is it to the point where it's delayed indefinitely or are there so many miners and so little transactions that you're going to get picked up by them regardless or the transaction percentage/flat fee you tack on?

by the way, if I want to pay someone 10.00000000 BTC and I say add a transaction fee of 0.1 BTC cuz I want it done really, really quickly, do I have to do some math and send a modified amount manually myself so it's not less than 10BTC when it gets there or will the software send 10BTC to the target and automatically take the extra 0.1 out of my wallet for me?

A zero transaction fee is the default for the client.  You can leave it at zero, if you try to send coin you should receive a prompt stating you need to add a transaction fee and the amount.  You can then choose to continue or not.  Some have stated that the actual transaction fee has been different than what the client prompts you, but I haven't found that to be the case.  (although I haven't done many outgoing transfers)

[makomk]

I think we need secure devices instead of secure online wallets.

On my TODO list, and on several other peoples' too.