Bitcoin’s transaction fee crisis is over—for now

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That's how much it'd cost me to send 0. And this is actually quite cheap compared to a few days ago, when transaction fees were even bitcoin to bitcoin transfer fee, making Bitcoin barely usable for microtransactions. And cheap transactions, especially for small amounts of BTC, are supposedly one of Bitcoin's biggest advantages. Yes, you can now tip strippers with Bitcoin. The transaction fees are raging due to several factors. One is the size of the block in Bitcoin's blockchain, which is limiting the number of transactions that can go through at any given time.

Bitcoin's network is powered by miners, people and companies who use a tremendous amount of computing power to create new bitcoins. And when there's too many transactions to process—which currently happens very often—miners will prioritize transactions that pay a higher fee. The situation improved with the recent SegWit upgrade of the Bitcoin software, but it will take a while—weeks or months—before bitcoin to bitcoin transfer fee start seeing benefits of SegWit.

Another reason is Bitcoin Cash, a competing cryptocurrency that split off from Bitcoin on August 1. Since the bitcoin to bitcoin transfer fee cryptocurrencies are similar, it's simple for miners to switch from mining Bitcoin to Bitcoin Cash. And for reasons bitcoin to bitcoin transfer fee heresometimes it's more profitable to mine Bitcoin Cash than Bitcoin. Whenever miners start switching to Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin's network becomes slower, bitcoin to bitcoin transfer fee transaction fees rise; we've seen this swing happen a couple of times before and it's likely to keep happening for a while.

This is not good for Bitcoin. A few bucks or even a few dozen bucks per transaction isn't a deal breaker for investors, but for someone who wants to use Bitcoin as payment—which is bitcoin to bitcoin transfer fee of the point of Bitcoin in the first place—that's far too expensive.

The good news is that the fees are likely to get better. The bad news is that it won't happen very soon. SegWit has paved the way for a further upgrade called the Lightning Networkwhich should vastly reduce fees, but the software, or even its specifications, aren't ready yet. This will reduce strain on the network and make transaction fees lower, but switching to SegWit2x requires a so-called hard fork, meaning that Bitcoin is once again splitting into two, which could bring new trouble.

Luckily, Bitcoin users aren't completely without options right now. One thing you can do is wait until the network is less strained bitcoin to bitcoin transfer fee night, during the weekendwhich is when transaction fees will go down. You can also check this service to see which transaction fees are currently the most economic for you. At the time of this writing, a Bitcoin fee of satoshis per bitcoin to bitcoin transfer fee will be enough for your transaction to bitcoin to bitcoin transfer fee through in about 30 minutes Bitcoin transaction fees are expressed in satoshiswhich is one hundred millionth of a Bitcoin, per byte size of the transaction, which is typically a little over bytes.

Have in mind that fee estimators aren't perfect; an alternative service that shows you the currently optimal fee is this one. Paying a fee that's too high is bitcoin to bitcoin transfer fee, as it doesn't carry any additional benefit. But paying too small a fee means your transaction won't go through fast, or at all. This information won't help you much if you use a wallet that doesn't let you change transaction fees, so maybe it's time to switch to a different wallet.

For example, a mobile Bitcoin wallet called Mycelium offers several possibilities for Bitcoin transaction fees: If you choose the low-priority fee, your transaction might take longer to go through but it will be cheaper. Conversely, a high priority transaction will almost surely go through quickly but it will be expensive. For even more control, you could try out the Electrum walletwhich lets you set any fee for your transactions, though you need to enable the option manually in the settings.

If you choose too small a fee, your transaction might forever stay in Bitcoin's backlog. Coinomi is another mobile-only wallet which lets you customize your transaction fees. There are other things you bitcoin to bitcoin transfer fee do to make transaction fees lower, though it requires a slightly higher level of knowledge.

If you've received a lot of small transactions to a Bitcoin address, and then send bitcoins from that address, the transaction will be larger in bytes and thus more expensive. If you enable the "Coins" tab in the desktop version of Electrum you can minimize the number of inputs for your transaction, which will make it cheaper.

If you're moving bitcoins from an exchange and not a wallet, you likely won't be able to set a fee, and many exchanges have very high fees set up. Exchanges mostly don't do that because they're evil; they do it because they want to make sure the transaction went through, or else they'll need to deal with support tickets. Unfortunately, at this point there's little you can do about this besides find an exchange that is a bit more reasonable with this regard than others.

Have in mind that, on top of transaction fees, exchanges will likely charge their own additional fees, so you should focus on the total costs. Bitcoin fees are currently very expensive, but this will likely get better in a few months. But even right now, by choosing the right wallet and making sure you use the optimal fee, you'll do a lot better than just paying whichever fee you're offered. We're using cookies to improve your experience.

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Blockchain wallet support bitcoin cash

While that is true in some cases, sometimes a transaction fee is required. The fee, when it is required, is usually worth a few dollars. The fees go to the miners to incentivise them to keep mining, which in turn keeps the Bitcoin network secure.

They already get a reward of The plan is that as the block reward diminishes over the time, it will be replaced by transaction fees. Well, like everything else in Bitcoin, the fee structure is built into the network rules , which are defined as "what the reference client does".

When you attempt to send coins using bitcoin core the current reference client , it goes through the following steps:. The client has to decide which of your coins to use to make up the payment amount.

Each time you receive a payment, the payment goes into your wallet and stays there until you spend it. They don't "merge" into a single 5 XBT coin. Over time you'll build up a collection of differently sized amounts in your wallet, and the client needs to decide which ones make the best fit for the amount you're trying to spend.

These amounts are known as the "inputs" of your new transaction, and the amounts you are sending including any change that gets sent back to your own wallet are known as the "outputs". If any of the outputs including any change of your transaction are less than 0.

The coin selection algorithm is careful to avoid selecting coins that result in a change amount of less than 0. If the coins you're spending are too small or too new then your transaction won't qualify as free. Each transaction is assigned a priority, determined by the age, size, and number of its inputs. Specifically, for each input, the client calculates the value of the input in XBT multiplied by the age of the input in blocks.

It sums these products over all inputs and divides the total by the size of the transaction in bytes. If this gives a number less than 0. If step 3 caused a transaction to require a fee when it was originally sent, it's possible that as time passes, and new blocks are found, the transaction's inputs will age, its priority will increase, and as a result step 3 may no longer cause it to require a fee.

The size depends on the numbers of inputs and outputs, and is roughly:. If this size is less than 10, bytes and step 3 found that the transaction's priority was high enough to qualify as free, then the transaction still qualifies as free, otherwise a fee is required.

The fee is charged per bytes or part thereof. The amount charged per bytes defaults to 0. If you set the "fee per kB" to less than 0. When it applies, this fee per kB replaces any fee from step 2, rather than adding to it. All these rules are visible in the reference client's source code. You want to buy something for 2. The coin selection code has no choice; it has to select both coins to get a big enough total to make the transaction.

That means the change will be 0. As a result your transaction will fail, because the amount you're sending plus the fee is more than you have. What this means is that there's no way of spending 2. You could send the full 3 XBT to the vendor without a fee assuming the outputs are sufficiently old to satisfy step 3 , but some vendors ask you to send the exact amount they specify.

Once, someone got lucky and turned 0. When the site paid out the winnings they didn't have a single XBT input lying around in their wallet. Instead what they had was a whole bunch of various sized outputs from other players' losing bets, as well as a lot of change from paying other winners. Being over bytes, this required a fee of 0. That's more than the player bet in the first place. Who says Bitcoin transactions are free! Note that the dice game actually included a fee of 0.

That's probably because they don't use the standard satoshi client to create their transactions, and the client they used got it slightly wrong. It's bytes long, which is the biggest a transaction can be without requiring a fee. Notice also that all but one of the inputs are only 10 nXBT 0.

Incidentally, the concept of "required fee" isn't strictly enforced. Some miners don't follow the rules about what fees are required, and will include a transaction in their blocks even if it doesn't follow the fee rules.

Using the "raw transactions" interface of the reference client it's possible to create transactions with less than the required amount of fee. Such transactions may eventually be included in a block by a maverick miner who doesn't enforce the fee rules, although this could take 24 hours or even much longer. So it's all pretty complex, but hopefully this gives you a better understanding of how and why the client decides when and how much to charge you.

When you attempt to send coins using bitcoin core the current reference client , it goes through the following steps: Pick which coins to spend The client has to decide which of your coins to use to make up the payment amount. Discourage "dust" spam If any of the outputs including any change of your transaction are less than 0. Prioritize old and high-value coins If the coins you're spending are too small or too new then your transaction won't qualify as free.

The size depends on the numbers of inputs and outputs, and is roughly: When Too Much is Not Enough The Big Dice Winner Once, someone got lucky and turned 0.

Are "required" fees really required?