Why does it cost me a dollar to send 1 Bitcoin?

[QuantumQrack]

0.0001 fee is fine.  Works great.  No issues.  You can specify the default fee in Armory if you use that, which I do.  Might even get away with 0.000012 with no problems.  Haven't tried that yet though.  0.000012 is about 1 cent at the moment.

[Vod]

We certainly shouldn't be promoting that bitcoin is "zero fees" compared to the other processors.   

[Anon136]

Instead of 0.001 you should use 0.0001. thats about 10 cents and thats pretty much what it costs to have your transaction almost guaranteed to be included in the very next block. just look for something like advanced send or advanced options to manually set it to that value.

[BTCisthefuture]

0.0001 is the default fee i've alway used.  Which is about 8cents for 1btc at current prices.  While it's true the price of fee's have gone up, thats still a fraction of a % .

It's alo true though that developers are working on trying to make sure the fees stay low as bitcoin's price goes up.

[travel-trousers]

Thats incredibly cheap....

[KGambler]

The people saying it is needed to support the miners are not taking into account that we are still in the phase where the miners are being issued BTC rewards.  The fees are really a bonus.  10 cents should be plenty at this point in time.

[Nagle]

It depends on the backlog of unconfirmed transactions. The whole Bitcoin system has a limit of about 7 transactions a second. Usually the queue is short (under 1000 or so), but during periods of heavy activity, the backlog can increase. Miners take the transactions with the highest reward first, so, during busy periods, it costs more to get a transaction confirmed in a reasonable time. Most free transactions still eventually get processed.

Whether this will change is up to the big mining pools.

[5thStreetResearch]

You could always use Western Union

[U1TRA_L0RD]

That wouldnt be nice if you sent it without a fee, Because there is no guarantee.

[Foxpup]

With the evil, inferior, (soon to be destroyed by Bitcoin?) CHASE bank, I can transfer an unlimited dollar amount between my own bank accounts for free.

So? You can do that with Bitcoin-Qt too. Create multiple accounts (not to be confused with addresses) and you can transfer as many bitcoins from one to other as often as you like for free. The reason it's free is that in neither case are you creating an actual transaction. This may come as a surprise to you, but CHASE does not, in fact, initiate a wire transfer when you transfer your money from one of your own accounts to another. Why would they? You're not actually moving your money anywhere. But that's not what you're doing here. What you're doing is the equivalent of transferring money from your CHASE account to another account at another bank. It doesn't matter that you own both accounts, you still have to pay the usual fee.

[thdvmgbgjn]

With the evil, inferior, (soon to be destroyed by Bitcoin?) CHASE bank, I can transfer an unlimited dollar amount between my own bank accounts for free.

So? You can do that with Bitcoin-Qt too. Create multiple accounts (not to be confused with addresses) and you can transfer as many bitcoins from one to other as often as you like for free. The reason it's free is that in neither case are you creating an actual transaction. This may come as a surprise to you, but CHASE does not, in fact, initiate a wire transfer when you transfer your money from one of your own accounts to another. Why would they? You're not actually moving your money anywhere. But that's not what you're doing here. What you're doing is the equivalent of transferring money from your CHASE account to another account at another bank. It doesn't matter that you own both accounts, you still have to pay the usual fee.

And I fund my Ally account easily with my Chase or Bank of America account. I can easily fund my eTrade money market account through any of my bank accounts for free. Look, no one's trying to say fiat is better or whatever, and we're all Bitcoin fans here, but the fact is in its current state, Bitcoin is just not as consumer friendly as it should be. You're right, we shouldn't expect all these good things for free, but at the same time, when you can I can painlessly transfer my friends money using Paypal or and expect to cash out just as painlessly, I don't think it's unfair to expect the same for the Bitcoin network considering we're spending all our time sunshine pumping it to all our friends.

[franky1]

It is a super tiny fee that is paid to the miners for their work in veryifying your transaction.

NO!

the reward for solving the block is their payment. the transaction fee is simply a bonus, and a greedy bonus at that. transaction fees are not "required" as the block reward is adequate. only when the block reward halves a few more times, would it then be required. which is definetly not any time soon.

i find the transaction fee's becoming the biggest deterrent to bitcoin adoption.
no longer do we need to worry about silk road bad press.
no longer do we need to worry about many other things. but the transaction fee is just like bankers bonus... ridiculous and greedy.

a note to all pool miners:
if you did not realise it already but most pool owners keep the transaction fee total and only share out the block reward with you all. ontop of this they normally charge you a fee for using their pool too. so please to not defend transaction fee's as if it pays your bills. because infact it in the majority only pays for pool owners, whom already get a nice cut of your earnings anyways.

[The-Real-Link]

Sorry still never saw what the final number is but usually with QT I've managed 0.0001 fees plenty of times and have no problem with that.  I've set it to 0 and many times (not all) it's gone through fine; just takes forever to confirm.  Just my two bitcents.

[Rannasha]

With the evil, inferior, (soon to be destroyed by Bitcoin?) CHASE bank, I can transfer an unlimited dollar amount between my own bank accounts for free.

So? You can do that with Bitcoin-Qt too. Create multiple accounts (not to be confused with addresses) and you can transfer as many bitcoins from one to other as often as you like for free. The reason it's free is that in neither case are you creating an actual transaction. This may come as a surprise to you, but CHASE does not, in fact, initiate a wire transfer when you transfer your money from one of your own accounts to another. Why would they? You're not actually moving your money anywhere. But that's not what you're doing here. What you're doing is the equivalent of transferring money from your CHASE account to another account at another bank. It doesn't matter that you own both accounts, you still have to pay the usual fee.

And I fund my Ally account easily with my Chase or Bank of America account. I can easily fund my eTrade money market account through any of my bank accounts for free. Look, no one's trying to say fiat is better or whatever, and we're all Bitcoin fans here, but the fact is in its current state, Bitcoin is just not as consumer friendly as it should be. You're right, we shouldn't expect all these good things for free, but at the same time, when you can I can painlessly transfer my friends money using Paypal or and expect to cash out just as painlessly, I don't think it's unfair to expect the same for the Bitcoin network considering we're spending all our time sunshine pumping it to all our friends.

Just because you don't see the costs associated with your bank transactions, doesn't mean they're not there. Most banks charge a periodic account-fee for example. Additionally, banks use fractional reserves to lend out most of your money, sometimes to shady investments that go belly up and either cause you to lose your deposit or for the government to bail the bank out with tax-money.

Either way, these services cost money and you pay the money. Either through direct payments per transaction, a periodic fee or simply the fact that your money isn't fully secured.

Bitcoin at least is transparant in its price. You pay a small fee for a regular transaction and that's it. There's no monthly account fee and any coins in your wallet are truely yours.

[QuantumQrack]

It is a super tiny fee that is paid to the miners for their work in veryifying your transaction.

NO!

the reward for solving the block is their payment. the transaction fee is simply a bonus, and a greedy bonus at that. transaction fees are not "required" as the block reward is adequate. only when the block reward halves a few more times, would it then be required. which is definetly not any time soon.

i find the transaction fee's becoming the biggest deterrent to bitcoin adoption.
no longer do we need to worry about silk road bad press.
no longer do we need to worry about many other things. but the transaction fee is just like bankers bonus... ridiculous and greedy.

a note to all pool miners:
if you did not realise it already but most pool owners keep the transaction fee total and only share out the block reward with you all. ontop of this they normally charge you a fee for using their pool too. so please to not defend transaction fee's as if it pays your bills. because infact it in the majority only pays for pool owners, whom already get a nice cut of your earnings anyways.

I'm with this guy on this, fees should be zero right now.  Miners are already getting compensated 25 btc per block.

[howzar]

Well 0.001 is certainly expensive  . I usually send with 0.0001 fee only and it goes without much delay. the no-fee ones take a long time to pass since they aren't offering the miners anything.

[U1TRA_L0RD]

Well 0.001 is certainly expensive  . I usually send with 0.0001 fee only and it goes without much delay. the no-fee ones take a long time to pass since they aren't offering the miners anything.

So, Its like the IRS in the blockchain haha, I would send with smaller fees if its a smaller transaction, But if its over 50 I would spare 1 dollar I guess.

[Gabi]

a 10cent fee on a 10$ transaction is a 1% fee. Not high, but not exactly low. Definitely not "0 fee"

[Nova!]

It is a super tiny fee that is paid to the miners for their work in veryifying your transaction. I believe you can do it for no fee, but then there is no incentive to the miner, and therefore your transaction can take a super long time. From what I have seen, people who send with no fees are frequently back on this forum saying "the money i sent never arrived and it has been like 10 hours... Etc"

Ultimately you are supporting the community and its growth. Go take $20 out of an atm and see how much you are charged. Typically you are charged $2-$3 by the atm company itself, and then again by your own bank for using an outside network.  This price is doubled if you are at a strip club or casino lol.

Overall the fee is so tiny, that you shouldnt even really notice or worry about it

Of course there is an incentive for the miner.  The incentive is in finding the block.
Finding the block pays them 25BTC.  Now including the tx in a block based on the fee is a good idea to keep the miners in business, it's extra money.  Eventually when we run low/out of new BTC then the mining fee will be strictly nessecary.  Nevertheless please don't spout out that a fee is nessecary to keep the miners in business, it's false.  It helps them turn a bigger profit, that's all.

I say this as someone who has 5MH/s of scrypt and 10GH/s of SHA256 mining away right now.

[Cyberdyne]

Well 0.001 is certainly expensive   . I usually send with 0.0001 fee only and it goes without much delay. the no-fee ones take a long time to pass since they aren't offering the miners anything.

So, Its like the IRS in the blockchain haha, I would send with smaller fees if its a smaller transaction, But if its over 50 I would spare 1 dollar I guess.

The more you're sending, the lower the fee you can get away with. If you're sending 50 XBT, it's highly likely that you could still do that for free with very little delay.

My most recent free transaction was for 0.025 and even that got included almost immediately.

http://bitcoinfees.com