This transaction is over the size limit

[ffuentes]

This transaction is over the size limit.  You can still send it for a fee of 0.0005, which goes to the nodes that process your transaction and helps to support the network.  Do you want to pay the fee?

What mean this?

[1714736958]

1714736958

[1714736958]

1714736958

[jackjack]

Not sure but I believe this happens when the coins used in the transaction were received from tiny transactions e.g. if they come from many 0.01 or 0.02 payments from a pool

[Stephen Gornick]

What mean this?

Because every transaction since the dawn of Bitcoin time (Jan 2009) are stored on every node, there is a network and storage cost for each transaction.  By imposing a fee, fewer "spam"-like transactions will be sent.   The current version of the client will ask for a fee if the transaction has certain characteristics.  0.0005 BTC is about a third of a penny, at current exchange rates.  PayPal, for comparison, charges a minimum of $0.30 per transaction for commercial purchases.

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees

[TiagoTiago]

The error msg is a tad misleading...

[deepceleron]

"This transaction is over the size limit. You can still send it for a fee of 0.0005, which goes to the nodes that process your transaction and helps to support the network. Do you want to pay the fee?"

The Bitcoin client is usually giving you an accurate message, but one that doesn't make sense unless you understand how Bitcoin works; that the fees are assessed based on how many kilobytes in size the transfer message is. It also will give this same message when it is not the size, but the newness of the coins or the smallness/spammyness of the payment or the sender's payment history that requires a fee, so in that aspect it could be clearer to just remove the "size limit" part of the fee message.

A better catch-all English translation:
"Due to the use of recently received funds, the size of this transaction in KB, or the transaction amount, a fee of 0.0xxx is required to ensure your Bitcoin transfer is reliably processed. Proceed?"

[JoelKatz]

This transaction is over the size limit.  You can still send it for a fee of 0.0005, which goes to the nodes that process your transaction and helps to support the network.  Do you want to pay the fee?

What mean this?

Most likely, it means that your transaction is 'gathering' a large number of small transactions or spending coins that you haven't had for very long. Because these types of transactions can be used to attack the bitcoin system, a small fee is required to process them.

The most common cause of this is receiving a very large number of very small payments. Don't do that, it places a totally unnecessary load on the bitcoin system.

[Sultan]

I just want to send 0.01 BTC to an address and I get this error message. I thought the whole point of BitCoin is not to have compulsory fees

[JoelKatz]

I just want to send 0.01 BTC to an address and I get this error message. I thought the whole point of BitCoin is not to have compulsory fees

This fee is needed because of something unusual about the situation in which you have placed yourself. It is possible to have no compulsory fees, but it's also possible to create a mess and have to pay someone to clean it up.

[Swapster]

This post is a little outdated in regards to the exact value of 0.0005 BTC.

With current prices at around $120/BTC... that is a $0.06 charge. That's a pretty nice fee.

[ISAWHIM]

There is a command you can give to remove the "forced" leeching fees. (Added down below)

The issue is that your 0.01BTC transaction may actually include "change" from your wallet. It is looking at the "change" not the "send amount".

EG... You are trying to send 0.01BTC but that is being sent from all these mini-transactions.
- 0.0000012312 (What you actually send, as "change")
- 0.0000322323
- 0.0000032123
- 0.0000223223
...
...
---------------
= 0.0100000000 (What you think you are sending as ONE tx)

Thus, if you have 40 change files, it is attempting to add 0.0005 x40 = 0.02BTC to your 0.01BTC, for a total of 0.03BTC expected to "send" the 0.01BTC

EG, poor code.
 CHANGE --------------Expected FEE to send this change
- 0.0000012312 + 0.0005 = 0.0005012312
- 0.0000322323 + 0.0005 = 0.0005322323
- 0.0000032123 + 0.0005 = 0.0005032123
- 0.0000223223 + 0.0005 = 0.0005223223
... (36x more times)
...
---------------
= 0.0100000000 + 0.02000000 = 0.03000000

Thus, "leeching" you of your funds, that you are not even aware of. It does not show you the "change". That, and the code stupidly "makes change" on most transactions that do not need to. (That is called job stability.)

Even though it IS actually merging them into ONE out (send), it is charging YOU as if they were 40 separate sends. (That is the "poor programming" the "leeching". The only one winning is the pool-operators who withhold the tx fees from the miners. Guess who imposed that minimum... the pool operators!)

The default fee policy can be overridden using the -mintxfee and -minrelaytxfee command-line options, but note that developers intend to replace the hard-coded fees with code that automatically calculates and suggests appropriate fees in the 0.9 release and note that if you set a fee policy significantly different from the rest of the network your transactions may never confirm.

EG add the commands -mintxfee=0.000001 and minrelaytxfee=0.000001 to your STARTUP-ICON, to make it more "realistic", but realize it may take a LITTLE longer to process those transactions with lots of change-files.

P.S. Version 8.2 will be only 0.0001 for minrelaytxfee and mintxfee, due to the MANY MANY MANY complaints... (Though they are not fixing the actual "poor code" that calculates the fee, so the fees are still going to be "wrongly calculated", as stated above.)
http://www.btcpedia.com/bitcoin-qt-0-8-2-lower-fee/
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees

[Swapster]

I just downloaded the 8.2 for OS X. It does indeed have the lower 0.0001 fee.