Early Bitcoin Transaction Fees

[mvdheuvel1983]

Last week, I wrote about the first bitcoin website in 2009. I mentioned that during that time, money could be sent either through the recipient's IP address or their Bitcoin wallet address. For those who used it back then, can you recall if there were any transaction fees? For example when Laszlo Hanyecz  paid 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas back in 2010 was there a transaction fee? Also, has the maximum number of transactions per day always been 100?

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[Clark Anderson]

I wasn't really a user of Bitcoin until recently, but  from my research, transaction fees were not actually compulsory and you could actually do transaction without including fee. It only recently became necessary to make sure transaction were concluded on time.
As of Laszlo hanyecz, there was no mention, weather the transaction fee was included.

Also, has the maximum number of transactions per day always been 100?

The maximum number of transaction, has actually evolved over time and was not always 100. It was primarily dependent on the networks capacity and number of participants using the Bitcoin network at that specific time.


 

[hosseinimr93]

For example when Laszlo Hanyecz  paid 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas back in 2010 was there a transaction fee?

Here is the transaction made by laszlo for buying two pizzas.
a1075db55d416d3ca199f55b6084e2115b9345e16c5cf302fc80e9d5fbf5d48d
As you see, laszlo paid 0.99 BTC as transaction fee.

Also, has the maximum number of transactions per day always been 100?

There has been never a maximum number for transactions that can be made per day.

[franky1]

Last week, I wrote about the first bitcoin website in 2009. I mentioned that during that time, money could be sent either through the recipient's IP address or their Bitcoin wallet address. For those who used it back then, can you recall if there were any transaction fees? For example when Laszlo Hanyecz  paid 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas back in 2010 was there a transaction fee? Also, has the maximum number of transactions per day always been 100?

first of all people did not have the ability to choose between paying by address or paying by IP. it was always address based payment.
the confusion is this
the IP feature was not about payment destination inside a tx data.. it was about communicating with someone directly via their IP to get their bitcoin address from their node using a communication connection in the node. to then input the bitcoin address into a transaction.

secondly the fee was fixed at a low amount in the initial years. and it stepped down when there were halving cycles and a and large bitcoin market price changes..
people paying random amounts to outbid each other did not come about until much later
where the fee market game began

which is where the first fee wars started. where fees extended above a $0.20 range and have not really gone back down since.. even with years of promises that new features will bring fee's down, we have yet to see bitcoin (yes i speak of the bitcoin network and not other networks pretending to be bitcoin) offer fees below $0.20 for 8 years now


thirdly
a bitcoin block holds about 2500 tx per block on average. and there are about 144 blocks a day so theres normally atleast 360k transactions a day...

fourthly the fee back in 2010 was about 0.001-1btc which was at the time, the price of one whole bitcoin was ~$0.004, making the fee then not even 1cent because the price of a whole bitcoin back then was not even 1 cent and the fee was below 1btc

[serjent05]

fourthly the fee back in 2010 was about 0.001 which was at the time, the price of one hole bitcoin ~$0.004 a btc, making the fee then not even 1cent because the price of a whole bitcoin back then was not even 1 cent and the fee was below 1btc

I still think the transaction fee today is still cheaper in terms of BTC spent and not as converted value to USD.  1 Bitcoin is always equal to 1 Bitcoin so whether the fee today is much more expensive than the fee before can be answered by the amount of Bitcoin required to pay for fee and not the equivalent USD value of the transaction.

Besides during those times segwit and taproot are yet to be implemented, meaning the data isn't compressed yet for the minimum possible transaction fee.  This thought might result in an argument so to clear the issue I am only speaking about Bitcoin spent for transactions fee and not its equivalent value to fiat currency.

[Yatsan]

Last week, I wrote about the first bitcoin website in 2009. I mentioned that during that time, money could be sent either through the recipient's IP address or their Bitcoin wallet address. For those who used it back then, can you recall if there were any transaction fees? For example when Laszlo Hanyecz  paid 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas back in 2010 was there a transaction fee? Also, has the maximum number of transactions per day always been 100?

I think transaction fee would depend on the platform you use in order to transfer an amount. Also with Laszlo's case, I think it wasn't much of a fee given that it was more likely a p2p transaction and given that the market price before was still low. Until today, fees on decentralized exchanges is lower than our normal transaction fees with fiat and the only problem is just its adoption. No matter how we would want to pay in BTC, if the merchant does not accept such mode of payment, then it won't be as useful as it should be. Same reason I guess why people of this industry prefer using it as an asset more than a currency aside from profit potential but also with limitations on its usage.

[dzungmobile]

I think transaction fee would depend on the platform you use in order to transfer an amount. Also with Laszlo's case, I think it wasn't much of a fee given that it was more likely a p2p transaction and given that the market price before was still low. Until today, fees on decentralized exchanges is lower than our normal transaction fees with fiat and the only problem is just its adoption.

Bitcoin transactions are on Bitcoin blockchain which is Proof of Work. Confirmations must be done by miners that only confirm your transaction if they see yours gives them good transaction fee.

Transaction fee was cheap in the past, if you compare it to nowadays. However, I don't think it was too expensive for early transactions when Bitcoin was something very new, vague in people minds and bitcoin price was very low.

In 2023, we can discuss about fee rate as satoshi/vbyte but what was discussed in 2010? I don't know but perhaps I will get back to check it.

I guess in the past, the standard fee rate for discussion would be bitcoin/ byte. That's insane but understandable. 

[Alisha-k]

Last week, I wrote about the first bitcoin website in 2009. I mentioned that during that time, money could be sent either through the recipient's IP address or their Bitcoin wallet address. For those who used it back then, can you recall if there were any transaction fees? For example when Laszlo Hanyecz  paid 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas back in 2010 was there a transaction fee? Also, has the maximum number of transactions per day always been 100?

Bitcoin was still struggling to get into the minds of the masses, so yes, the where transaction fees, majorly dependent on the platform you use, some do not charge, some charged but their charges where really low compared to what we're charged now.

[Mttewndew]

You're taking me back to the prehistoric times of Bitcoin! Transaction fees? Pff, who needed 'em? It was a time of pioneers, sending digital currency into the unknown. As for the max transactions per day, I think it was more like, 'We're lucky if we get a handful of transactions today!' But hey, it laid the foundation for what we have now, so kudos to those early pizza buyers and their hunger for crypto!

[Z390]

You're taking me back to the prehistoric times of Bitcoin! Transaction fees? Pff, who needed 'em? It was a time of pioneers, sending digital currency into the unknown. As for the max transactions per day, I think it was more like, 'We're lucky if we get a handful of transactions today!' But hey, it laid the foundation for what we have now, so kudos to those early pizza buyers and their hunger for crypto!

I do, because this is a good example that in future the transaction fee of Bitcoin will never be the same as today, the higher the value of Bitcoin skyrockets the transaction fee will follow, many people don't know this, so sharing something like this will either get them prepared or make them think twice about Bitcoin, which is stupid, hating Bitcoin because of transaction fee is stupidity, you can't always have two things happening at the same time, Not a high value price on Bitcoin and less or cheaper transaction fee from Bitcoin.

Do you know that many crypto newbies screamed about high transaction fee from Bitcoin and Ethereum in last bull market? They don't understand that you can't have high price action and less transaction fee together, it's not possible.

[Bitcoin_Arena]

This is where most of our problem is. Looking at bitcoin transaction fees in USD value instead of looking at the fee rate. The optimal fee rate varies, but you can choose any fee rate you want depending on how quick you want the transaction to confirm.

Laszlo could have used 1 sat/vB, but he instead chose to use 4,191 sat/vB over paying in transaction fees by 4191 time because in that particular block which contained only his transaction and the coinbase transaction.

[348Judah]

Last week, I wrote about the first bitcoin website in 2009. I mentioned that during that time, money could be sent either through the recipient's IP address or their Bitcoin wallet address. For those who used it back then, can you recall if there were any transaction fees? For example when Laszlo Hanyecz  paid 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas back in 2010 was there a transaction fee? Also, has the maximum number of transactions per day always been 100?

Bitcoin was still struggling to get into the minds of the masses, so yes, the where transaction fees, majorly dependent on the platform you use, some do not charge, some charged but their charges where really low compared to what we're charged now.

There has always been a transaction fee for sending bitcoin including the bitcoin pizza payment made, what i just see and wish was to have the little part of the the experience whereby the bitcoin website like bitcointalk will be the only platforms through which bitcoin can be sent or received which means you will still have your bitcoin address generated once you created a bitcoin account here and other exchanges will only have to deal with alts.

[hosseinimr93]

Laszlo could have used 1 sat/vB, but he instead chose to use 4,191 sat/vB over paying in transaction fees by 4191 time because in that particular block which contained only his transaction and the coinbase transaction.

laszlo could make that transaction even without paying any transaction fee.

I just checked transactions included in blocks 56000-58000.
561 (non-coinbase) transactions were included in those blocks. 560 out of 561 transactions have been made with zero fee and laszlo's transaction was the only one paying fee.

[Blitzboy]

The year 2009, a time when Bitcoin was a baby, crawling its way into the world. My friend, transaction fees were like the Loch Ness Monster - there were rumors, but no concrete proof. At least not till the network became more populated.

Concerning the great Laszlo Hanyecz and his infamous pizza purchase, I can affirmatively state that there were no transaction fees involved. But look on the bright side, at least he didn't tip the pizza delivery guy in Bitcoin!

As for your claim about the maximum number of transactions per day being 100, that's a fine piece of misinformation. The actual number depends on the block size, which was originally 1MB, and could hold around 2000 to 4000 transactions. The daily limit thus can theoretically exceed several hundreds of thousands. I hope this insightful yet amusing message enlightens you on your quest for Bitcoin knowledge.

[lassdas]

fourthly the fee back in 2010 was about 0.001 ...

Well... might be that some people in 2010 paid a fee of 0.001, but there was no need to pay any fee at all.

I just took a glance at my tx-history,
started using bitcoin in 2010, the first time I ever paid a fee was in 2016.

[NotATether]

I think transaction fee would depend on the platform you use in order to transfer an amount. Also with Laszlo's case, I think it wasn't much of a fee given that it was more likely a p2p transaction and given that the market price before was still low. Until today, fees on decentralized exchanges is lower than our normal transaction fees with fiat and the only problem is just its adoption.

Bitcoin transactions are on Bitcoin blockchain which is Proof of Work. Confirmations must be done by miners that only confirm your transaction if they see yours gives them good transaction fee.

Transaction fee was cheap in the past, if you compare it to nowadays. However, I don't think it was too expensive for early transactions when Bitcoin was something very new, vague in people minds and bitcoin price was very low.

In 2023, we can discuss about fee rate as satoshi/vbyte but what was discussed in 2010? I don't know but perhaps I will get back to check it.

I guess in the past, the standard fee rate for discussion would be bitcoin/ byte. That's insane but understandable. 

The standard fee rate has always been satoshis/byte (the Bitcoin Core client expresses this metric a bit weirdly as satoshis/KB but luckily it is an anomaly) until recently when Segwit addresses were introduced (in particular P2W[PKH/SH] outputs), the fee calculation changed to exclude some obsolete fields to make the fee cheaper, and this resulting metric was just named satoshis/vbyte. Which is what we use today except for legacy addresses.

[franky1]

The standard fee rate has always been satoshis/byte (the Bitcoin Core client expresses this metric a bit weirdly as satoshis/KB but luckily it is an anomaly) until recently when Segwit addresses were introduced (in particular P2W[PKH/SH] outputs), the fee calculation changed to exclude some obsolete fields to make the fee cheaper, and this resulting metric was just named satoshis/vbyte. Which is what we use today except for legacy addresses.

the standard fee rate has not always been sats per byte
there was a min fee rate of 0.001 no matter the bytes used. so it never "always" started at 1sat.byte

also there was later introduced a fee formulae that had a score rating where the age of the coin and the amount spent rated at a score and if you had a good score you had priority witohut paying a fee. if you had a bad score you had to pay a fee to multiply the score to reach that score..

that fee formulae was later removed

it was only after the "core take over" that things changed again.

and for your information core did not do the miscounting of byte to make fees cheaper.. if you read the code its actually made the original formats(legacy) 4x more expensive. yep was a X4 not a /4

the measurement not actually sat/1kvb or plain 1kb.. the cludge of miscounting bytes is where legacy gets a x4 rating of weight units
yep when a block of pure legacy transactions, which only take up 1mb of REAL blockspace of REAL bytes stored in blockdata and hard drive. they are treated as 4mb of weight and given a fee price 4x more

have a nice day checking out block data to see segwit does not get a discount. but its that legacy that gets the premium.. there is a difference

fees have not become cheaper since 2016. they are actually more expensive as you have learned this year with blocks spending over $1 per tx and even upto $70 per tx.. yet the fees in 2023 have been the highest fee's ever paid in the whole history of bitcoin.. thanks to taproot

yep a exploit of taproot allowed fee mania to cause bloat and misuse of the network to make fees the highest fiat cost EVER.. so try not to pretend that taproot caused fees to be cheaper than history

and try to remember taproot was meant to be invented with the pretend promise of a new scripting standard of one signature length.. but again as we all know taproot actually allowed longer scripts.. and junk data be added.. not less

[Fivestar4everMVP]

For example when Laszlo Hanyecz  paid 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas back in 2010 was there a transaction fee?

Here is the transaction made by laszlo for buying two pizzas.
a1075db55d416d3ca199f55b6084e2115b9345e16c5cf302fc80e9d5fbf5d48d
As you see, laszlo paid 0.99 BTC as transaction fee.

Haha 😂
It's indeed very interesting to see that the 10,000 sent was altogether worth $100 at the time, so it means each of those pizzas cost $50 each, still a very expensive pizza 🍕 at that price though..

And also, 0.99 bitcoin spent as fee for the transaction was worth $0 at the time as well, and how exactly should feel knowing that that same 0.99 bitcoin is now worth $25,000+ whooping dollars 


Who owns a time machine please? I wanna go back to 2009 🙏🙏😁

[franky1]

For example when Laszlo Hanyecz  paid 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas back in 2010 was there a transaction fee?

Here is the transaction made by laszlo for buying two pizzas.
a1075db55d416d3ca199f55b6084e2115b9345e16c5cf302fc80e9d5fbf5d48d
As you see, laszlo paid 0.99 BTC as transaction fee.

Haha 😂
It's indeed very interesting to see that the 10,000 sent was altogether worth $100 at the time, so it means each of those pizzas cost $50 each, still a very expensive pizza 🍕 at that price though..

nope it was actually $41 total worth of pizza.

[DooMAD]

also there was later introduced a fee formulae that had a score rating where the age of the coin and the amount spent rated at a score and if you had a good score you had priority witohut paying a fee. if you had a bad score you had to pay a fee to multiply the score to reach that score..

that fee formulae was later removed

Clearly franky1 needs to do more research:  https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/54583/why-is-the-transaction-priority-removed

1.  It wasn't a consensus rule.
2.  Miners were ignoring it anyway.
3.  You are a complete moron and you understand nothing.

If you want to add completely redundant code to your client, you are free to do so.  The rest of us have more sense.