Danny,
Thank you. I found the coinbase, the 0 position tx_id in the blockchain. So as I understand your explanation is there is an unassigned tx quantity that has an originating address, and no destination address. This sum is then claimed by the miners and divided per the rules of the pool.
There are no "originating addresses" in bitcoin, only originating outputs (more specifically, unspent outputs) that are used as inputs into a transaction.
What I am still not clear about is that is it possible to go back and access the information in the chain to see the path of the fees in the block chain, or does the inclusion of the fee in the coinbase wipe its history?
Depends on what you mean by "history". You can subtract the block subsidy from the coinbase transaction, and the remaining value is the total of the transaction fees. This value "comes from" the total of the fees of all the transactions in that block. You can therefore calculate what percentage of the total fees for the block came from each transaction.
It would seem that this is not different than a transaction that has multiple inputs and multiple outputs. If I create a transaction that spends 4 unspent outputs:
- unspent output A: 1 BTC
- unspent output B: 1.5 BTC
- unspent output C: 0.25 BTC
- unspent output D: 2 BTC
And creates 3 new unspent outputs:
- unspent output E: 1.5 BTC
- unspent output F: 1.5 BTC
- unspent output G: 1.5 BTC
Clearly there is a 0.25 BTC transaction fee, but can you tell me the "path" of the output D? how about the "path" of the output A?