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I'm making some test for a bitcoin merchant webpage. I want to test different actions without paying transaction fees everytime, but I can't since I use the same few bitcoins for everything.

Sooo how long should I wait for my bitcoins to be transfered wihout fee?

gosuto
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user3418
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2 Answers2

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As the coins "age" they will have a higher priority.

I don't know the algorithm, but believe it is roughly like a day or so and then the age of the coin no longer is a factor.

So if you are seeing minimum fees for coins more than a day after you've received them, it is because of other reasons, such as having outputs at amounts below 0.01 BTC.

Stephen Gornick
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In the Bitcoin protocol, fees are totally optional. You can have a fee of 0btc or 10btc.

Once there are more transactions then what fits into a block, which isn't now, miners will choose what transactions to include into their block, and they will prefer transactions with a fee attached, because they get that fee.

Right now, fees don't help process a transaction any sooner or better, but in the future it's likely to make a difference. This totally depends on what happens in the future, and is very much up for debate.

Liquid5n0w
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  • Thanks Liquid5n0w. I think i didn't explain myself well, even if the transaction fees are optional right now, when you just receive bitcoins you can't re-send them inmediately without fee, bitcoind tells me to include a 0.005 fee because "i just received those bitcoins". I went and read about that, it seems to be that i have to wait for my bitcoins to be "old enough" to send them for free again. – user3418 Mar 18 '13 at 22:21