Thanks again for the time you took to answer my questions!!
Unfortunately, I don't quite understand this last part of your reply yet. Is defining inputs = ALL previously received outputs to a certain wallet?)
From what I understand, if we have to calculate the sum of all inputs (=all btc ownership values that were transferred to the wallet?) minus the sum of all outputs (=all btc ownership values that were transferred away from the wallet),
then the transaction fee can only be calculated after the transaction has taken place. But that can't be right :-), so I guess it will get more clear to me, once I've finished the whitepaper.
The transaction defines inputs. These are previously received outputs that have not yet been spent. Each input is fully spent adding its entire value to the transaction to be reassigned in the outputs of the transaction.
The transaction defines outputs. Each newly created output assigns some of the total input value to an address.
If the sum of the value of the outputs is larger than the sum of the value of the inputs, then the transaction is invalid and will be rejected by the entire network. Properly working wallets will never create such a transaction.
If the sum of the value of the outputs is equal to the sum of the value of the inputs, then the transaction has no transaction fee.
If the sum of the value of the outputs is less than the sum of the value of the inputs, then the difference between the sum of the value of the inputs and the sum of the value of the outputs is the transaction fee.
By the way,.. starting to read Satoshi's whitepaper..the first question that pops to my mind is in regards to the
Timestamp Server.
Won't the transaction size increase, depending on how many Timestamps have been added to the chain? Wouldn't this mean
at one point, every transaction will be subject to higher and higher transaction fees, simply because the timestamp chain is getting larger and larger? Each timestamp includes the previous timestamp in
its hash, forming a chain, with each additional timestamp reinforcing the ones before it
Is the following true?
1. Miners' nodes are needed to confirm transactions
2. At one point, all Bitcoins are mined
3. So at some point, miners need to make money just by confirming transactions, because they can't mine Bitcoins anymore.
4. The process of confirming transactions increases in difficulty depending on amount of transfers of the bitcoin-ownership (therefore the difficulty just increases, it's not self-regulated), as opposed to the difficulty to mine Bitcoin, which increases in difficulty depending on how much total CPU power is trying to mine the Coins at a given point (self-regulated: less cpu power mining >easier mining for the remaining clients)