Transaction Fees: How do I know the "transaction size" of a Bitcoin Payment?
According to my source quoted below, Bitcoin Payments may be subject to transaction fees.
Here are my questions:
1. How can I know the size of a transaction in bytes? How is the transaction size calculated? Is the only way to increase the transaction size by adding more recipients of coin? I.e. sending coins to multiple wallets in a single transaction?
2. According to the article, outputs that are lower than 0.01 BTC, might incur a transaction fee. -> let's assume 0.01 BTC is worth 4; then I cannot make Micropayments of less than 1 with Bitcoin without having a payment fee??? Is this correct?
3. According to the article, a payment fee would simply be a motivation for bitcoin miners to include my transaction in the next generated block. Does this mean I can "choose to pay the fee"? And if I don't the transaction might not be "immediate", because of lack of motivation for the bitcoin miner?
Please help me to grasp this more clearly
Thanks!
Source: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees
Here are my questions:
1. How can I know the size of a transaction in bytes? How is the transaction size calculated? Is the only way to increase the transaction size by adding more recipients of coin? I.e. sending coins to multiple wallets in a single transaction?
2. According to the article, outputs that are lower than 0.01 BTC, might incur a transaction fee. -> let's assume 0.01 BTC is worth 4; then I cannot make Micropayments of less than 1 with Bitcoin without having a payment fee??? Is this correct?
3. According to the article, a payment fee would simply be a motivation for bitcoin miners to include my transaction in the next generated block. Does this mean I can "choose to pay the fee"? And if I don't the transaction might not be "immediate", because of lack of motivation for the bitcoin miner?
Please help me to grasp this more clearly
Thanks!Quote
A transaction may be safely sent without fees if these conditions are met:
It is smaller than 1,000 bytes.
All outputs are 0.01 BTC or larger.
Its priority is large enough (see the Technical Info section below)
Otherwise, the reference implementation will round up the transaction size to the next thousand bytes and add a fee of 0.1 mBTC (0.0001 BTC) per thousand bytes[1]. As an example, a fee of 0.1 mBTC (0.0001 BTC) would be added to a 746 byte transaction, and a fee of 0.2 mBTC (0.0002 BTC) would be added to a 1001 byte transaction. Users may increase the default 0.0001 BTC/kB fee setting, but cannot control transaction fees for each transaction. Bitcoin-Qt does prompt the user to accept the fee before the transaction is sent (they may cancel the transaction if they are not willing to pay the fee).
Note that a typical transaction is 500 bytes, so the typical transaction fee for low-priority transactions is 0.1 mBTC (0.0001 BTC), regardless of the number of bitcoins sent.
It is smaller than 1,000 bytes.
All outputs are 0.01 BTC or larger.
Its priority is large enough (see the Technical Info section below)
Otherwise, the reference implementation will round up the transaction size to the next thousand bytes and add a fee of 0.1 mBTC (0.0001 BTC) per thousand bytes[1]. As an example, a fee of 0.1 mBTC (0.0001 BTC) would be added to a 746 byte transaction, and a fee of 0.2 mBTC (0.0002 BTC) would be added to a 1001 byte transaction. Users may increase the default 0.0001 BTC/kB fee setting, but cannot control transaction fees for each transaction. Bitcoin-Qt does prompt the user to accept the fee before the transaction is sent (they may cancel the transaction if they are not willing to pay the fee).
Note that a typical transaction is 500 bytes, so the typical transaction fee for low-priority transactions is 0.1 mBTC (0.0001 BTC), regardless of the number of bitcoins sent.
Source: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees