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But with a 4 dollar transaction fee why would you use Bitcoin for such things?

mrweasel 9y ago
Why is there a transaction fee on Bitcoins? Who get the money? One of the argument for Bitcoin originally was no transaction fee, because there's no middleman.
- megous 9y ago
  It was not the original argument. Search the original bitcoin paper for a word fee, the first occurance explains it.
- apexalpha 9y ago
  Once all Bitcoin will be created the 'fee' will be what miners get for verifying transaction blocks. They also do now, but coupled with the creation of new bitcoins.
- testvox 9y ago
  No there are middlemen they just aren't centralized. The miners get the fee, it's their incentive to mine (well that and new coin creation but new coin creation slows down and eventually stops so fees are the long term incentive).
nrhk 9y ago
Say you wanted to transfer $100,000. That transfer fee stays the same.
- beefield 9y ago
  To be more precise, you want to transfer $100,000 worth (subject to value changes during the transaction) of BTC. If you want to transfer $100,000 using BTC, my current understanding is that you end up paying more (note also bid-ask spread in the market) and transacting more slowly than wire transfer all while taking exchange risk against BTC for a non-trivial amount of time.
  - nrhk 9y ago
    Depends on the state of the bitcoin network but the fee is the same. If you have 100k of bitcoin right now and needed to transfer it to someone, you can do it in one go with one flat fee that is the same regardless of your transaction amount. I pay no fee's to obtain bitcoin, ether but that shouldn't matter. We're talkign dollar to dollar transfers, btc to btc transfers, eth to eth transfers. Doing it in dollars is objectively worse. It takes more time, more money and raises more scrutiny. I've recently used ether to transfer over 5k to a friend with a fee a few cents and a transaction time of 40 seconds. You can't do that with dollars.

Why is there a transaction fee on Bitcoins? Who get the money? One of the argument for Bitcoin originally was no transaction fee, because there's no middleman.

megous 9y ago
It was not the original argument. Search the original bitcoin paper for a word fee, the first occurance explains it.
apexalpha 9y ago
Once all Bitcoin will be created the 'fee' will be what miners get for verifying transaction blocks. They also do now, but coupled with the creation of new bitcoins.
testvox 9y ago
No there are middlemen they just aren't centralized. The miners get the fee, it's their incentive to mine (well that and new coin creation but new coin creation slows down and eventually stops so fees are the long term incentive).

nrhk 9y ago

Say you wanted to transfer $100,000. That transfer fee stays the same.

beefield 9y ago
To be more precise, you want to transfer $100,000 worth (subject to value changes during the transaction) of BTC. If you want to transfer $100,000 using BTC, my current understanding is that you end up paying more (note also bid-ask spread in the market) and transacting more slowly than wire transfer all while taking exchange risk against BTC for a non-trivial amount of time.
- nrhk 9y ago
  Depends on the state of the bitcoin network but the fee is the same. If you have 100k of bitcoin right now and needed to transfer it to someone, you can do it in one go with one flat fee that is the same regardless of your transaction amount. I pay no fee's to obtain bitcoin, ether but that shouldn't matter. We're talkign dollar to dollar transfers, btc to btc transfers, eth to eth transfers. Doing it in dollars is objectively worse. It takes more time, more money and raises more scrutiny. I've recently used ether to transfer over 5k to a friend with a fee a few cents and a transaction time of 40 seconds. You can't do that with dollars.