[lucaspiller]

I paid ~$0.60 to transfer ~$900 of Bitcoin the other day. For that amount it's not too bad, but you'd pay basically the same if you are paying for a $3 coffee.

The transaction fee is based on the byte size of the transaction, not the monetary amount, so in it's current form it doesn't make sense to use Bitcoin for low-value transactions.

[Marazan]

I paid £0 to transfer £10000 the other day. I had to split it into two transfers of £5000 but otherwise it was free to transfer between two completely separate financial institutions.

[Marazan]

Oooh, I forgot to mention the transfer time was approximately 3 seconds.

[protomyth]

Here in the US, we might get a visit from the IRS and our account frozen. https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2017/04/05/91-of-irs...

[mahyarm]

Now do that to a bank account in Canada and to exchange GBP to CAD.

[Marazan]

Hmm let's see, bank of Scotland to Royal Bank of Canada would be about 30 Canadian dollars of transfer fees.

[vertex-four]

On the other hand, they fund that ability off significant fees whenever you buy something with a debit/credit card. You rarely see those fees, but the shop does, meaning the shop has to increase prices of everything by a couple of percent to cover it - and usually don't provide a discount when you're paying by cash.

[drewmol]

I don't have the time for sources at the moment, but I'm pretty sure there are regulations to make it illegal to offer cash discounts in most states, as it helps both credit card processors and tax collection enforcement, it was very easy to lobby for

Edit: I'm wrong, it's complicated.

[resf]

At least in the UK, merchants pay very low fees to process debit card payments, to the extent that some merchants (e.g. budget airlines) do not accept or charge a penalty for using credit cards.

[vertex-four]

Merchants pay up to 1.75% (Square) to process in-person payments. Whether this cost is embedded into the prices of what you buy or whether it's made clear to you is irrelevant to that point - that you're paying this. And even when credit cards are more expensive to process - do you ever get a discount for using a debit card at the supermarket? Cash?

[QML]

How long did the transfer take? I have Bank of America, and a transfer to another. And would take 3 business days.

[sqeaky]

> fee is based on the byte size of the transaction

Aren'y all bitcoin transaction really close to the same size? The amount being transferred doesn't change the size an integer contain 1 and another container 1,000,000,000 take the same amount of space (32 or 64 bits) because the spec says so.

I thought transaction fees encouraged miners to include your block in a transaction.

[annabellish]

Yes, but also no. The trick here is that if you're paying for your £1,000,000 space rocket by transfering the bitcoins from one address, it's a small transaction.

If you're paying for your £3 coffee by transfering small amounts from many addresses, it's a big transaction.

Address fragmentation happens when your coins are distributed across many addresses, and can be caused by things like spending coins, because all transactions actually spend everything at an address and just route the "change" elsewhere. Buy two cups of coffee too close to each other and your next transaction is going to cost twice as much in fees, whoops!

[simias]

The size of the transactions is mostly a factor of how many addresses are included. So moving 1BTC split across hundreds of addresses ("dust" in the jargon) is a lot more expensive than moving 1000BTC from a single address for instance.

Unfortunately it's generally advised to use a new receiving address for every bitcoin transaction to make it harder to trace how much money you have and how you earn and spend it (most wallet craft a new address for every receive transaction) so it's very common to end up with your assets split up across dozens or even hundred of addresses.

[vel0city]

The size of the transaction can vary a lot, depending on how the source of the BTC is structured.

Imagine two wallets each with a total of 1 BTC. One wallet just received a single transaction with 1 BTC and the other is funded with 10 transactions of 0.1 BTC. The wallet with 1 BTC as an input only needs that single proof to send the whole BTC, while the wallet with 10 0.1 BTC inputs needs to submit all of those proofs to transfer the 1 BTC, effectively 10x the data.

[droidist2]

I think you're both saying the same thing