| A transaction fee is something you add to a transaction to give it priority over other transactions. A transaction is sending bitcoins from your address to another address. I send 5 bitcoins from my address xyxabcii2342sdfhasd to 88IUuudsadkfjehhGGHh2344. This transaction gets published to all the computers in the network. These computers aka miners will take a number of transactions and try to create a valid block. But they can select from all the transactions they are likely to take the transactions that include a transaction fee. When I create the transaction to send 5 bitcoins I have to select the coins from unspent transactions. So I can send 5.5 coins out and 5 goes to 88IUuudsadkfjehhGGHh2344 and .4 goes to xyxabcii2342sdfhasd which is my address. There is .1 bitcoins unaccounted for. This unaccounted value is the transaction fee. I just view a chart showing the fees at $41 on Dec. 26, 2017 The transaction fee is the amount not accounted for in a BTC transaction. An example I have 10 bitcoins from a previous transaction and I want to send someone 8 BTC. I create a transaction with 8 BTC to their account and 2 BTC to myself. If I forget the 2 BTC to myself it becomes the transaction fee. Whichever miner completes the block gets the 2 BTC and they're gone forever. |