bitcoin network fees

Quote Originally Posted by vanzack:

Bitcoin fees are determined by how fast you want a transaction to be confirmed.  There is no magic.  The higher your fees, the higher the likelihood that you will get a quick confirmation.When you send a transaction, you are just basically sending a message to the bitcoin miners.  You are not actually doing anything - it is kind of like a text that says "hey, I would like to transfer X to Y".The miners then pick and choose which of these requests they want to include in their confirmation blocks - and naturally they will take the higher fees first because they get to keep the fees.So your wallet software if simply going out to the mempool (the full list of open transaction requests) and looking to see what the current fees being offered - and sends your request based on how fast you want to get confirmed.This is a great site to get a view of how this works   https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/You will see how many "blocks" you will have to wait for how much in fees you include in your request at any given time - in real time. In very general terms, a block is about every 20 minutes - so if you have to wait 3 blocks - that is an hour.To further complicate things - fees are measured in "satoshis per byte".  Fees are not determined on how much you send - you could send 100 bitcoin for less fees than you send .001 bitcoin.So....  If you want to make sure that your transaction goes in the first block - the first 20 minutes or so - you have to go to the website above and include the appropriate fees.If you dont care how fast it gets there, you can include very low fees and it will get there eventually.Feel free to ask any further questions.