Fees

[Bad Dogs]

New to Bit Coin and trying to wrap my hands around the fee structure.  An internet post, about a year old said 0.2 mBTC.  I searched the internet and nothing makes sense.  I looking into setting up an account to fund my on line poker account.

What is the fee for transferring $500 US dollars?

Thanks

[OmegaStarScream]

There is no flat fee. What you're paying depend on:

1. The network and whether it's congested or not.
2. The size of your transaction.

To simplify things, if you haven't been receiving multiple small inputs, your transaction size shouldn't be big and you'll only be paying a very small amount (with the network's current state); that clearly doesn't include any deposit fees the poker site might take.

[its-a-me-mario]

One of the innovative ideas with Bitcoin is that you get to decide how much you want to pay in fees. Miners choose which transactions they want to prioritize when processing transactions, so obviously they will take the transactions with the higher fees since they get the fees as a reward. So depending on how quick you need your transaction to be confirmed, you can decide how much to pay in fees.

If you need your transaction to go through immediately, you can look at the current fees being paid by other people and make your transaction's fee a little higher than average. If you don't care about speed you can technically even do a transaction with zero fees, or just a very small fee, and it should eventually make it through but it could take awhile.

Most wallet apps you use will try to estimate the best fee for you to include with your transaction, so a lot of ppl just use the default estimated fee instead of entering their own. Or some wallets will have something that says like "pay X to get it confirmed in 10 minutes, pay Y to get it confirmed in 1 hour".

The fee has nothing to do with the amount of the transaction's value. A 1 billion dollar transaction can use the same fee as a 1 cent transaction.

[ChrisPop]

Also just to add to OmegaStarScream's reply - most wallets show how much fee you are going to pay before sending the transaction. Nowadays it shouldn't be more than $1-2 bucks MAXIMUM when the network is congested(as far as I have experienced) - usually is just a few cents per transaction, but depends on how many blocks you want the transactions to arrive(tx speed).

[NeuroticFish]

There is no flat fee. What you're paying depend on:

1. The network and whether it's congested or not.
2. The size of your transaction.

It may worth also mentioning that if your transaction is a withdrawal from an exchange then you'll pay a flat fee imposed by the exchange (usually bigger than a normal transaction from a proper wallet).

[Em00n01]

You should mention the name of the site. It will be easy for us to help. I think the fee will not be longer than 0.0005 BTC If you are transferring from an external wallet.

[diazepam666]

For any Bitcoin payment you will need to ensure that you are sending along with the fees or else it will be depend from the sending amount what you are planning to send.
Particularly to speak about the every wallet providers will have different kind of fee structure to send the Bitcoin to other wallet. So no one can ask you that which is the exact value as a fee.

[arklan]

as others have said or implied, there's a bunch of details here that effect this.

there's the bitcoin network itself, which has fees varying as mario described.

then there's fees the poker site itself might charge to deposit.

then there's where ever you got the bitcoin in the first place. let's say coinbase, an exchange for trading one currency, say US dollars, for another, say, bitcoin.

what'll happen is this - you'll deposit money into your account on the exchange - likely incurring a fee from your bank and a fee from their bank.

then you'll trade the US Dollars for BTC - possibly another fee here.

then yu'll withdraw the BTC from the exchange - another fee - and send it to your poker site - here's where the bitcoin network itself comes in with it's fee.

then your BTC is deposited at your poker site and you're able to play as you please.

all told, it shouldn't cost very much - in a crazy horrible "everyone is charging huge fees" scenario you might be looking at 25 bucks or something, on a guess.

also, just case it needs to be said - if you are gambling as an american citizen on a website... it's almost certainly illegal at the federal level. choose wisely, or at least don't get caught.

[Rodeo02]

New to Bit Coin and trying to wrap my hands around the fee structure.  An internet post, about a year old said 0.2 mBTC.  I searched the internet and nothing makes sense.  I looking into setting up an account to fund my on line poker account.

What is the fee for transferring $500 US dollars?

Thanks

depend you have a choice if you want much faster you will need to pay much higher fees, but i suggest choose the normal fees.  There is an option how much you want to pay for the fees the option depend on you if you want it faster or not.

[Casdinyard]

What is the fee for transferring $500 US dollars?

Technically, it depends if you have that $500 on your wallet or it's on the exchange site since they offer a flat fee whatever amount you'll transfer. So it would be better if you provide where you store your bitcoin so we can give you exact answers.

But then, fee and confirmation still depend on the congestion of the mempool so try to consider those.

[Darooghe]

New to Bit Coin and trying to wrap my hands around the fee structure.  An internet post, about a year old said 0.2 mBTC.  I searched the internet and nothing makes sense.  I looking into setting up an account to fund my on line poker account.

What is the fee for transferring $500 US dollars?

Thanks

Each transaction occupies a certain space on the blockchain, the ledger that's distributed across nodes in the Bitcoin network. The more space you occupy, the higher fees you pay. The faster people want to get into that ledger, the higher fees they pay to get into that ledger. thereby, Fees aren't determined. you can select any fee you want and a miner can choose to include any transaction they want. Block space will always be a limited resource with competition for inclusion.

[piebeyb]

if you want to transfer using a blockchain wallet I think you will find an easy option for you to transfer your bitcoin, there also you can find options for cost, regular or priority, for even cheaper you can do manual settings, but recommend using regular, if you use a blockchain wallet, even if you don't use it, it seems like in any bitcoin wallet there is a fee setting if I'm not mistaken, if you hesitate you can send a bit of bitcoin then you can send all your funds, usually to prevent your first mistake

[Amel]

New to Bit Coin and trying to wrap my hands around the fee structure.  An internet post, about a year old said 0.2 mBTC.  I searched the internet and nothing makes sense.  I looking into setting up an account to fund my on line poker account.

What is the fee for transferring $500 US dollars?

Thanks

Each transaction occupies a certain space on the blockchain, the ledger that's distributed across nodes in the Bitcoin network. The more space you occupy, the higher fees you pay. The faster people want to get into that ledger, the higher fees they pay to get into that ledger. thereby, Fees aren't determined. you can select any fee you want and a miner can choose to include any transaction they want. Block space will always be a limited resource with competition for inclusion.

It looks like the fees charged by the exchange when making a withdrawal, it is not a transaction fee but it is a withdrawal fee which has been accumulated with transaction fees. Indeed, on average all exchanges provide a flat fee for each coin withdrawal and the fees also vary.

[iamaruf]

New to Bit Coin and trying to wrap my hands around the fee structure.  An internet post, about a year old said 0.2 mBTC.  I searched the internet and nothing makes sense.  I looking into setting up an account to fund my on line poker account.

What is the fee for transferring $500 US dollars?

Thanks

Which exchanger you are using? It depends on exchanger. Few exchanger ask for 0.0005btc and few ask for 0.0012btc. If you are holding your btc in personal wallet like electrum or bitcoin core.Then you can increase or decrease your trx fee.           

[cryp24x]

I think based on my own experience, every transaction has a fee. One of the reasons why it has fees is because we need the network and it is not cheap to maintain networks. The fee also depends on speed. It is up to you if you want your transaction to be processed immediately then you need to pay for a higher fee.

[seoincorporation]

There are some services like https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/ who help you to calculate the right fees for your transactions. If the transactions have lots of inputs and outputs that will make from it a big transaction with bigger fees, but if you only have 1 input and one output the right fees for today are 22 satoshis/byte.

[Lucius]

If the transactions have lots of inputs and outputs that will make from it a big transaction with bigger fees, but if you only have 1 input and one output the right fees for today are 22 satoshis/byte.

This is something that is generally very difficult to explain to someone who is a beginner, but I think it is a very important step in mastering the basic material. How many times have we heard someone complain that he paid a very large amount of the fee and eventually concluded that Bitcoin is actually too expensive for transactions? Too many times if you ask me, all because of unfamiliarity with the basics.

Accumulated dust transactions sometimes have such a high fee that the user has the problem of sending the transaction at all, but some wise guys even today advise people to make just such payments because they have no idea what they are really talking about or they don’t really care. In the end "Bitcoin is bad technology" just because some don't know how to use it.

By the way, I made one pretty big transaction today and only paid 16 satoshis/byte which was only 3568 satoshis, but only because I wanted confirmation in the next block.

[Aikidoka]

I think based on my own experience, every transaction has a fee. One of the reasons why it has fees is because we need the network and it is not cheap to maintain networks. The fee also depends on speed. It is up to you if you want your transaction to be processed immediately then you need to pay for a higher fee.

There's no bitcoin transactions can be confirmed immediately, even we pay a high amount of money we need to wait for the next block to be confirmed in probably just 10 mins according to the blockchain network right now, but as you said the highest fees you're paying the faster that your transaction be confirmed, everyone can check this site https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/ if they really care about their transactions rapidity to be confirmed.

[AicecreaME]

There is no flat fee. What you're paying depend on:

1. The network and whether it's congested or not.
2. The size of your transaction.

It may worth also mentioning that if your transaction is a withdrawal from an exchange then you'll pay a flat fee imposed by the exchange (usually bigger than a normal transaction from a proper wallet).

I agree, the transaction fee of all the exchanges when you are withdrawing bitcoin pumped up very high than before, that is why I can't help it but to convert it in Ethereum  so that I could lessen the fee, which is only a dollar compare to bitcoin that cost $4-$8, if I am not mistaken. High transaction fees in withdrawal is indeed fast but it would be great if all of the exchanges will offer options for us regarding about the transaction fee in the withdrawal process, since not all of us need that money instantly, I am willing to wait just to save couple of bucks.

[Bad Dogs]

I want to thank everyone for their comments on this.  It's more complicated than I thought, however it's little more clear now thanks to all the experts here.

I'm thinking of setting up an account with either Coin Base or Electrum.  Hope I'm not breaking any rules with this comment.