Читать книгу Cryptocurrency Mining For Dummies - Peter Kent - Страница 58

Fees are often measured in Satoshi/byte and can range between 1 to over 2,000 Satoshi/byte (that is, the fee is based on the size of the transaction message your wallet sends to the blockchain, not the value of the transaction). The busier the network, the higher the fee required to incentivize miners to include your transaction in a block quickly. Bitcoin network fees per transaction on average fluctuate between 0.00001 BTC and 0.001 BTC, as shown in Figure 3-2.

FIGURE 3-2: A view at the time of writing of the average transaction fee as measured in Bitcoin on the network.

These fees on the Bitcoin network per transaction average about to less than a few dollars to about $50 when the network is congested with high demand for transactions (see Figure 3-3).

FIGURE 3-3: A view at the time of writing of the average transaction fee as measured in dollars on the network.

A Satoshi is the smallest unit of Bitcoin — one hundred millionth of a Bitcoin. If your wallet balance is 1.00000001 BTC, the last digit denotes one Satoshi. Your wallet software will probably suggest a fee, estimated on current rates and network congestion; some wallet software will pick the fee for you, while other software lets you set that fee manually for more precision and to avoid over spending. Pay too little, and the transaction may not go through or may take a long time; pay too much, and, well, you overpaid. Transactions with higher fees will get picked up by mining software quicker than those with lower fees, of course; the more high-fee transactions in a block, the more the winning miner will earn.

For our example, say that you decide to pay a 0.0004BTC fee. Now, say this is your address:

1x6YnuBVeeE65dQRZztRWgUPwyBjHCA5g

Remember, it has a balance of 1BTC. That’s what’s known as the input for the transaction.

Here’s Joe’s address:

38DcfF4zWPi7bSPkoNxxk3hx3mCSEvDhLp

That’s one of the outputs in the transaction. So far the transaction looks like this:

Input1x6YnuBVeeE65dQRZztRWgUPwyBjHCA5g - 1BTCOutput38DcfF4zWPi7bSPkoNxxk3hx3mCSEvDhLp - 0.1BTC

But wait, we need another output. We’re putting 1BTC into the transaction, giving 0.1BTC to Joe, so we have to decide what happens to the other 0.9BTC. Actually, the other 0.8996BTC, as 0.0004BTC is being paid to the miner as a fee. So, where does the 0.8996BTC go? It goes back to you, of course, as your change. So the transaction might now look like this:

Input1x6YnuBVeeE65dQRZztRWgUPwyBjHCA5g - 1BTCOutputs38DcfF4zWPi7bSPkoNxxk3hx3mCSEvDhLp - 0.1BTC1x6YnuBVeeE65dQRZztRWgUPwyBjHCA5g - 0.8996BTC

We’ve shown 0.8996BTC going back to the original address. (Imagine going into a store with a ten-dollar bill, and paying $1 for something. What happens? You take $10 out of your pocket, hand it to the clerk, the clerk gives you $9 back, and you put the $9 back into your pocket.)