hdbuck
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October 18, 2014, 06:20:45 PM


In my understanding, miners are above the market. They are somehow the new Moneylords. But eh, as long as bitcoin rise..


Users place a transaction on the network, without or with a fee (of whatever value), miners can choose whether to process that transaction (and obtain the fee) or not. Competition should ensure that the fee is kept as low as reasonably possible (miner collusion would be quite hard to orchestrate and barrier to entry is fairly low due to lack of regulation)

Currently, miners are mostly mining for the block reward which dwarfs transaction fees but as that goes away, properly providing a transaction fee will become more important

Exactly, but as the large mining ops will also strenghten their position, centralizing the power of the network into a handful number of private corps (Bitfury, KNC, et al), they could eventually agree on a minimum fee, excluding other types of transactions, and then reajust such fee according to the margin they would aim.