Mandatory transaction fee?

[Strom]

I was running an old bitcoin client from february or something, but decided to update today (0.3.24-beta). Then I sent some bitcoins, and I have transaction fee set at 0.00.

Then I get this:

Code:

Debit: -25.99
Transaction fee: -0.00133919
Net amount: -25.99133919

Are transaction fees mandatory now? How is the amount calculated? It would also be nice if the send coins dialog warned me of this fee BEFORE I press send.

[the founder]

Honestly man that's a very very very tiny transaction fee...    regardless it shouldn't have behaved that way if it's set for zero then it needs to be zero.

[Meatpile]

Wahhhh I payed a tenth of a penny!!!

But I guess if it was a surprise $10 it would be a different matter... That is weird that it got added without your consent

[cepler]

Wahhhh I payed a tenth of a penny!!!

Actually 10x that, a whole penny at current exchange rate of $9/BTC.

[Prattler]

I was running an old bitcoin client from february or something, but decided to update today (0.3.24-beta). Then I sent some bitcoins, and I have transaction fee set at 0.00.

Then I get this:

Code:

Debit: -25.99
Transaction fee: -0.00133919
Net amount: -25.99133919

Are transaction fees mandatory now? How is the amount calculated? It would also be nice if the send coins dialog warned me of this fee BEFORE I press send.

That's a bug in the 0.3.24 client and I believe it has been already fixed.

[ArtForz]

Did you have >= 26.00 balance in your wallet at that time?
If yes... that's very odd (and worthy of further investigation).
If no... known bug (client throws away sub-cent change as fee if it can't add another input to make the change >= 0.01), will be fixed in 0.3.25.

[Strom]

Did you have >= 26.00 balance in your wallet at that time?

No, 25.99133919 was the total balance.

[silverchair]

I believe there's always a fee in every transaction.

[NothinG]

I believe there's always a fee in every transaction.

No. You can set it up to send a transaction, but will have to wait for the person who finds the blocks to accept the transaction as-is without the fee.
From what I've gathered...unless, I've lost the concept of transaction fees.

[Kansattica]

The transaction fees are mostly to prevent tiny transactions from flooding the system. Larger transations and/or rounder numbers (1 BTC usually) don't incur mandatory transaction fees.