It costs $0.09 cents to send $0.24 cents of Bitcoin? Really?

[inBitweTrust]

Is this what they mean when they say Bitcoin can never be used for micro transactions?   

While 9 pennies is a hell of a lot better than 30 pennies +2.9% found with many traditional merchants your concern is somewhat valid and we should encourage lower fees for micro transactions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2q9pItnO0U&t=17m52s

Anonymous and trust less Payment channels facilitated by oracles could solve this concern.

[bitllionaire]

you can try electrum and set a 0 fee
but it may take some time to get received

[galbros]

Yes its the dumb ass like you dont understand the economic of bitcoin infrastructure. You can send btc with any amount as a fee. But that tx will not be confirmed for a very long time.

I know how Bitcoin works.  Im making a point.  I am able to send up to $5,000 completely free of charge from one Chase bank account to another persons Chase bank account, instantly.  With no miner fees or waiting time either.

What a dumbass I am.  And now you see another reason why consumers have zero incentive to use Bitcoin.  Because dumbasses like you think this is a "dumbass" thing to take issue with.   Rather than addressing it as a real issue for future consumer adoption.  Which it is.

-B-

I think the analogy with the Chase example would be sending from one Coinbase account to another, I agree, that should not require a fee.  As others have noted the standard fee is .0001, which may preclude micropayments but is better than Paypal would be.

[blossbloss]

While 9 pennies is a hell of a lot better than 30 pennies +2.9% found with many traditional merchants your concern is somewhat valid and we should encourage lower fees for micro transactions.

Is this the formula for a credit card?  That would mean that spending $0.25 would cost the merchant $0.31?  Or is there another credit card formula for micro transactions?

[xhomerx10]

While 9 pennies is a hell of a lot better than 30 pennies +2.9% found with many traditional merchants your concern is somewhat valid and we should encourage lower fees for micro transactions.

Is this the formula for a credit card?  That would mean that spending $0.25 would cost the merchant $0.31?  Or is there another credit card formula for micro transactions?

 There is an 848 page law in the US and tucked away in it somewhere it says that merchants can set a credit card minimum purchase of up to $10, as long as they treat all cards the same. It also allows the Federal Reserve to review and increase the minimum payment amount.
I don't imagine any merchant is going to let you charge any amount that would cost them more money than they would make on the transaction.

[Icon]

Or you could equate it to buying something on NewEgg that cost something like $2.50 and having to pay S&H like $6 to get it delivered 3rd day mail.

Like the Post office, they have different rates for overnight, first class/etc.

The "miners" are what move btc, not paying for their storage of the entire blockchain nor the bandwidth/power bill well.. you might as well put the quarter in an envelope and place a stamp "hint cost more then .25 cents" and mail the quarter.

Icon

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

Is it something else?

Yes its the dumb ass like you dont understand the economic of bitcoin infrastructure. You can send btc with any amount as a fee. But that tx will not be confirmed for a very long time.

Micro payments are all relative. 25cents are way too small and unrealistic.

Its not a problem for blockchain to fix but its a service for a 3rd party.

if mining pools would simply accept the fact that they are rewarded with 25btc right now for their work and that extra fee's are something only needed in atleast 2 decades time and not now. then YOU will realise that the fee is not needed right now. and are given/ required, purely for greedy purposes

then in the uptopian dream of zero greed, bitcoin can be used for microtransactions without a large cut.

if mining pools would simply just accept transactions into blocks instead of ignoring them all the time, there would be no issues.

i personally have a client thats in the advertising business and would love to be able to send amounts of under 20c to people as often as he liked, rather then having to set monthly payouts or minimal account balance before payout.. he thought bitcoin was the solution.. yet the tx fee due to mining pool greed is the cause of why he wont get involved in bitcoin

The block is not rewarded to the pool, it's split to the miners. Very little goes to the pool operator.

[Watsky]

This is one of the annoying things about Bitcoin and miners...greedy miners they are not required to charge a fee. the system is like capitalism and is prioritizing due to incentive something which is a flaw in our brains and basic philosophy.

[inBitweTrust]

While 9 pennies is a hell of a lot better than 30 pennies +2.9% found with many traditional merchants your concern is somewhat valid and we should encourage lower fees for micro transactions.

Is this the formula for a credit card?  That would mean that spending $0.25 would cost the merchant $0.31?  Or is there another credit card formula for micro transactions?

30 pennies +2.9% is what Paypal charges and is normal for many credit cards. Because of Interchange fees credit cards are at least 2% for Profit driven companies even if the Business is so large they own their own credit division or bank. With credit cards there is a perverse penalty where small businesses pay 3-8% per transactions and the large multi-national corporations drive the costs down to a little above 2% per transaction.

Bitcoin is already much better than credit cards, but has room for improvement. Payment channels will solve the 10min avg confirmation problem,  blockchain bloat problem, and the micro-transaction problem.

There are already multiple payment channels for bitcoin for micro transactions ... but they tend to focus on tips now.

[DannyHamilton]

Is this what they mean when they say Bitcoin can never be used for micro transactions?   

No.  This is what they mean when they say that Bitcoin is not designed to handle microtransactions on the blockchain.

Is this one of the 10 million things the Bitcoin dev team should have fixed 12 months ago, but has slated for "some time in the next 5 years" instead?

No.  This is something that entrepreneurs will provide a service for when there is enough of a market for it.

Meanwhile the entire financial industry sees Bitcoin as having major flaws and never incorporates it.

The financial industry is welcome to see whatever flaws they like.  They are welcome to hire programmers to fix whatever they like as well.  It's open source and decentralized.  If you don't like it, fix it.

And we never go ot the moon, because a bunch of developers have decided "we dont need that fixed right now.  we'll do it later" ?

Bitcoin isn't a "get rich quick scheme".  Get over it.

Or is this something else?

-B-

Definitely something else.

I know how Bitcoin works.  Im making a point.  I am able to send up to $5,000 completely free of charge from one Chase bank account to another persons Chase bank account, instantly.  With no miner fees or waiting time either.

And how long until that Chase transfer becomes 100% irreversible?  I suspect Bitcoin wins on that point.

I am able to send 10 BTC ($5,060 at the moment) completely free of of charge from my bitcoin wallet to another person's bitcoin address instantly with no miner fee as well.

Tell me this...

Can you open a brand new Chase bank account with a $0.01 deposit, with no monthly fees, regardless of minimum balance and regardless of the number of months with no activity on the account?

[blumangroup]

you can try electrum and set a 0 fee
but it may take some time to get received

If you were to use electrum, it would come instantly. It would not be spendable until it is confirmed, and most probably would jam up all your BTC, which is a pain in the ass.

Stick to fees, little fee is better than no fee.

[P33n]

Something tells me that the OP is using a purchased account. As it has been mentioned before the TX fee is based on how "big" the TX is measured in KBs or how much data is required to store it on the blockchain.

BTC is generally not very efficient for use in extremely small transactions however is still more efficient then most other payment methods even at this level.

[cryptoanarchist]

Coinbase, it's like MtGox but newer.

[inBitweTrust]

Examples of Bitcoin Microtransaction payment channels and their costs :

1)   Bitcoin Microcharity
www.bitcoinmicrocharity.org
https://coinbase.com/apps/533cf8ef7947a4153900001d
90% of the money raised will go to a designated charity
 0.24 Cent micro transaction costs 2.4 cents

2)   Tip Pal
https://coinbase.com/apps/53a3f40c547d5870ce000022
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tippal.app

fee = 0

3)   Coinbase
http://blog.coinbase.com/post/64708670240/how-to-send-bitcoin-on-reddit

http://blog.coinbase.com/post/57483182558/you-can-now-send-micro-transactions-with-zero-fees

Fee = 0

4)   Changetip
https://www.changetip.com/

Fees = none for transactions

5)   QuickCoin
http://www.quickcoin.co
Fees = 100 bits
24 cents  micro transaction costs 5 cents

The cost of Micro transactions with Bitcoin is therefore nothing.

[Razick]

This is one of the annoying things about Bitcoin and miners...greedy miners they are not required to charge a fee. the system is like capitalism and is prioritizing due to incentive something which is a flaw in our brains and basic philosophy.

It's not exactly a flaw, resources, including space in Bitcoin blocks, are limited and the capitalistic system allows the people who need/want something, including space in a block, to pay more than people who want/need it it less in order to ensure they receive it. Greed is a flaw, but there is a difference between greed and participating in a market.

[franky1]

if mining pools would simply just accept transactions into blocks instead of ignoring them all the time, there would be no issues.

The amount of tx's that can go in a block is limited right now (well its by MB but thats essentially the same). Additionally full blocks DO take noticeably longer to propagate the network and do increase the risk of the block orphaning. Some miners take the risk and include free tx's for altruistic reasons, but most miners are running a business and they are not going to risk their 25BTC reward for free.

seriously.. your going to roll with that sheeple excuse passed down from a miner trying to hide their greed.
blocks are NOT 100% full, there is plenty of space in all blocks to accept all transactions that appear in the period between each block. no one should be waiting more than 30 minutes to have a tx accepted. and on the very smallest of occasions, a few people may have to wait 20 minutes. (very few occasions)

secondly the reward is the reward. end of. they should not be compensated for ignoring transactions. the reward should be for allowing transactions(the whole point of making blocks(infact the whole point of what a blockchain/bitcoin is)). saying that miners should get a bonus for preventing the loss of a reward.... that is the weak and pathetic excuse miners give.

no one should get a bonus for only doing half their job.

again bitcoin is a ledger system, the point of the ledger is to have details of transactions in them. if miners want to have a blockchain of no transactions per block because they are in the belief that blocks should be empty to get paid.  and that entering a transaction should be a 'premium' then they need to seriously realise that they are not part of the community and simply greedy selfish people that dont care about bitcoins usefulness, and only care about their own wealth.

[bigasic]

if mining pools would simply just accept transactions into blocks instead of ignoring them all the time, there would be no issues.

The amount of tx's that can go in a block is limited right now (well its by MB but thats essentially the same). Additionally full blocks DO take noticeably longer to propagate the network and do increase the risk of the block orphaning. Some miners take the risk and include free tx's for altruistic reasons, but most miners are running a business and they are not going to risk their 25BTC reward for free.

seriously.. your going to roll with that sheeple excuse passed down from a miner trying to hide their greed.
blocks are NOT 100% full, there is plenty of space in all blocks to accept all transactions that appear in the period between each block. no one should be waiting more than 30 minutes to have a tx accepted. and on the very smallest of occasions, a few people may have to wait 20 minutes. (very few occasions)

secondly the reward is the reward. end of. they should not be compensated for ignoring transactions. the reward should be for allowing transactions(the whole point of making blocks(infact the whole point of what a blockchain/bitcoin is)). saying that miners should get a bonus for preventing the loss of a reward.... that is the weak and pathetic excuse miners give.

no one should get a bonus for only doing half their job.

again bitcoin is a ledger system, the point of the ledger is to have details of transactions in them. if miners want to have a blockchain of no transactions per block because they are in the belief that blocks should be empty to get paid.  and that entering a transaction should be a 'premium' then they need to seriously realise that they are not part of the community and simply greedy selfish people that dont care about bitcoins usefulness, and only care about their own wealth.

I don't think miners should get paid the extra miners fee until there is no reward, but then it would be a shock if we didn't have tx's and all of a sudden started them.. but I say they should get rid of them. when I used to mine, .01bts was considered a big transaction fee (all of them) but I have seen much larger ones, when we went from 50 coins to 25 coins, I think the tx's fees were as much as the 25btc reward, if not more, people wanted to be a part of "history"...

[ForgottenPassword]

blocks are NOT 100% full, there is plenty of space in all blocks to accept all transactions that appear in the period between each block. no one should be waiting more than 30 minutes to have a tx accepted. and on the very smallest of occasions, a few people may have to wait 20 minutes. (very few occasions)

I didn't say they were 100% full.

Lets say we time how long it takes a 1KB block vs a 500MB block to propagate the network. Lets say it takes 1 minute longer. That means that there is a 10% increased chance of an orphaned block if it is 500MB in size vs 1KB, because until it fully propagates another miner could publish a block causing theirs to orphan (this happens a lot more often than you think). An orphaned block will cost the miner 25BTC, so the miner is risking on average 2.5BTC for a full block vs an empty one. Why would they risk that for free? They are a business, they don't do things that cost them money for free.

secondly the reward is the reward. end of. they should not be compensated for ignoring transactions. the reward should be for allowing transactions(the whole point of making blocks(infact the whole point of what a blockchain/bitcoin is)). saying that miners should get a bonus for preventing the loss of a reward.... that is the weak and pathetic excuse miners give.

Not really. A lot of the blocks Satoshi mined are empty. They still add security to blocks below it. Transactions that are already in the blockchain will gain an extra confirm.

[Acidyo]

Weren't they going to change transaction fees from 10k satoshis to 1k? What happened to that?

Also, that site you posted your screenshot of is requiring you to pay 20k satoshis which is double than the normal amount.

I thought it wasn't mandatory to pay a transaction fee? I send coins to some of my cold wallets without a transaction fee every now and then cause I'm not in a hurry of when it shall get there.

[bocobit]

OP, make a pull request and propose a solution