Blockchain Wallet transfer fee

[jeffcooper]

I'm fairly new to trying to use my bitcoin, but I've been trying to accumulate a small amount over a year via the faucetts to add to my small purchased amount. I have managed to get 0.36 btc into my blockchain.info online wallet, and I wanted to transfer it to pay for something real - I can't believe it - blockchain say they want almost half of it to cover fees !!! so that's almost £25 in fees to move £50 - I though bitcoin was supposed to be a cheap way of transferring - can anyone tell me what could be happening, or help in any way, their customer support is not answering me !!

[Madness]

Lol ? Are you kidding ?
You are probably using a Phishing website or something . Bitcoin fees could never bee that big even if you are sending millions of dollars .
You can set the fees to 0.02$ and your money should be sent just fine .

~ Madness

[RodeoX]

Something is wrong? The Tx fee should be a few pennies at the most. Can you post more details?

From their website:

Are there any fees?

No, it is a free service. You may be asked to include a "miners fee" to help support the Bitcoin network, which is mandatory for the use of Bitcoins.

[Shogen]

I'm fairly new to trying to use my bitcoin, but I've been trying to accumulate a small amount over a year via the faucetts to add to my small purchased amount. I have managed to get 0.36 btc into my blockchain.info online wallet, and I wanted to transfer it to pay for something real - I can't believe it - blockchain say they want almost half of it to cover fees !!! so that's almost £25 in fees to move £50 - I though bitcoin was supposed to be a cheap way of transferring - can anyone tell me what could be happening, or help in any way, their customer support is not answering me !!

Does your 0.36 btc consist of thousands of very small inputs?
Bitcoin transaction fee depends on your transaction size in bytes, which essentially depends on the number of inputs and outputs.

[Blazr]

That is likely caused by a lot of "dust" transactions from faucets.

Bitcoin transaction fees are charged by the size of the transaction in kilobytes, the amount of Bitcoin isn't taken into account. For example, here is a transaction where $150 million (194,993 BTC) was moved and the transaction fee was 0 BTC:

https://blockchain.info/tx/1c12443203a48f42cdf7b1acee5b4b1c1fedc144cb909a3bf5edbffafb0cd204

Typically payments from faucets take up a lot of space and usually the fee to spend them is more than what they are worth. I'm not very familiar with blockchain.info, but what you need to do is make a payment that spends only the 0.36BTC input.

You could also try manually overriding the fee with a more reasonable fee like 0.0005BTC, it's likely a miner will accept it anyway.

[jeffcooper]

I do know that a good percentage of the amount will be lots of faucet payments, but surely even that can't explain such a huge fee percentage - I've tried sending the whole 0.36, but the system says that I've only around 0.15 available to send - I can't seem to attach a screenshot  - I've now also tried to override the fee, but that seems to make no difference.

However, I have used a bit of lateral thinking, and since my original wallet had a few different arrival addresses, I've sent what I could from those ones with very small overridden miners fees - but will these definitely arrive, or what could happen to them ??

[rivoke]

I do know that a good percentage of the amount will be lots of faucet payments, but surely even that can't explain such a huge fee percentage - I've tried sending the whole 0.36, but the system says that I've only around 0.15 available to send - I can't seem to attach a screenshot  - I've now also tried to override the fee, but that seems to make no difference

maybe you can share with us your address if you don't mind

...
You could also try manually overriding the fee with a more reasonable fee like 0.0005BTC, it's likely a miner will accept it anyway.

Yes, I agree. Most miner will accept that and it's include on High priority category

[jeffcooper]

My blockchain.info wallet is   1Cp1pcLPHRrTKknUC3paoVXxEUE6sDK3Cp

and I've just edited my last post a bit which I wouldn't mind some comments on !! especially since I made the fee 0.000005 I think !!

[SimplisticStu]

Almost half of BTC0.36 in fee's  Is that what happens when you try to move faucet earned BTC 

[jeffcooper]

It's certainly looking that way - I have managed to get some out at a low cost - presumably my original bought 0.2, but the sends haven't even started confirming, and who knows, maybe I'll have lost them because they never do. As for the rest, fees will appear to eat up everything, so the last years worth of faucet playing has been completely wasted.

I'm afraid bitcoin at this point has cost me nearly all of my original 300£ investment.

What is annoying though is that say BTC had gone upto 10000 each - my transfer of 3300 would cost 1500 !!!!!

[Pony789]

Almost half of BTC0.36 in fee's  Is that what happens when you try to move faucet earned BTC 

At default setting, blockchain.info wallet puts 0.0001 btc / KB (rounding up) as transaction fee.

If you have 36 pieces of 0.01 inputs, the transcation will have a size of roughly 6558 bytes and you will need to pay 0.0007 as fee.
If you have 360 pieces of 0.001 inputs, the transcation will have a size of roughly 64878 bytes and you will need to pay 0.0065 as fee.
If you have 3600 pieces of 0.0001 inputs, the transcation will have a size of roughly 648078 bytes and you will need to pay 0.0649 as fee.

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1195/how-to-calculate-transaction-size-before-sending

[Pony789]

It's certainly looking that way - I have managed to get some out at a low cost - presumably my original bought 0.2, but the sends haven't even started confirming, and who knows, maybe I'll have lost them because they never do. As for the rest, fees will appear to eat up everything, so the last years worth of faucet playing has been completely wasted.

I'm afraid bitcoin at this point has cost me nearly all of my original 300£ investment.

What is annoying though is that say BTC had gone upto 10000 each - my transfer of 3300 would cost 1500 !!!!!

That is why collecting satoshi from faucets is a bad idea. Not only it pays you a very low rate, it fills your wallet with dusts which will cost you a lot when you spend them in the future.

[SimplisticStu]

It's certainly looking that way - I have managed to get some out at a low cost - presumably my original bought 0.2, but the sends haven't even started confirming, and who knows, maybe I'll have lost them because they never do. As for the rest, fees will appear to eat up everything, so the last years worth of faucet playing has been completely wasted.

I'm afraid bitcoin at this point has cost me nearly all of my original 300£ investment.

What is annoying though is that say BTC had gone upto 10000 each - my transfer of 3300 would cost 1500 !!!!!

That is why collecting satoshi from faucets is a bad idea. Not only it pays you a very low rate, it fills your wallet with dusts which will cost you a lot when you spend them in the future.

Now that is information worth knowing, I didn't know this before but I'm glad I do now, thanks 

[koelen3]

It's certainly looking that way - I have managed to get some out at a low cost - presumably my original bought 0.2, but the sends haven't even started confirming, and who knows, maybe I'll have lost them because they never do. As for the rest, fees will appear to eat up everything, so the last years worth of faucet playing has been completely wasted.

I'm afraid bitcoin at this point has cost me nearly all of my original 300£ investment.

What is annoying though is that say BTC had gone upto 10000 each - my transfer of 3300 would cost 1500 !!!!!

That is why collecting satoshi from faucets is a bad idea. Not only it pays you a very low rate, it fills your wallet with dusts which will cost you a lot when you spend them in the future.

Correct me if am wrong but i don't think it matters if you collect your btc through dust or bunch , when you want to spend it the fees is default

[maurya78]

Indeed, I didn't know this either - thanks very much, very useful info

[jeffcooper]

So are we saying then that with the way bitcoin works, if everyone really did start using it, and getting small amounts of change after buying coffees and cakes, that the fees would start to get bigger and bigger, making the whole thing a complete waste of time and money - and if so, have we just witnessed another huge scam being implemented?

and who exactly gets my "miners fees" - surely the miners get the btc that they mine don't they (no rewards without risk) - if they're getting paid to do the mining then that's mad as well !

[odolvlobo]

Another factor is the age of the inputs. If the dust is unspent for a long enough time, then miners will process the transaction for free.

Jeff, miners get the transaction fees. That is their compensation for processing the transactions. They also get a subsidy, which is much more than the transaction fees, but that won't last forever.

[jeffcooper]

Well interesting - I've experimented in sending smaller amounts, with custom fees, and although I'm left with .016 in my blockchain.info wallet, which I can't send because only 0.0004 is available, I have essentially managed to send most of my money at a much more reasonable fee percentage - it's almost as if trying to send the whole lot penalised me over and over again, whereas each smaller amount was allowed - I don't understand it, but it worked, and I hope if anyone else gets to this problem, they find my solution !!!

[dothebeats]

The address 1Cp1pcLPHRrTKknUC3paoVXxEUE6sDK3Cp has too many dust inputs, which in turn qualifies your account for a much larger fee. Well I too, am confused with this kind of fee determiner.

[dothebeats]

Well interesting - I've experimented in sending smaller amounts, with custom fees, and although I'm left with .016 in my blockchain.info wallet, which I can't send because only 0.0004 is available, I have essentially managed to send most of my money at a much more reasonable fee percentage - it's almost as if trying to send the whole lot penalised me over and over again, whereas each smaller amount was allowed - I don't understand it, but it worked, and I hope if anyone else gets to this problem, they find my solution !!!

Good thing to hear that you've found a way to send your money without paying for such a high fee. However, your solution is time-consuming, and might cause hassles to future users who might encounter the same problem as you are.

Well whatever the case, congratulations for solving your own problem hahaha!