but when I did withdraw while ago, I saw on the blockexplorer, that fee amount was lower than 400 bits. Why's that ? I really don't suppose, that Ryan use fees (partially) for profit, so there would be some another reason, correct ?
There has been in the past, some withdrawals that had 0.05 - 0.1 BTC of mining fee on them, as it needed to source a lot of inputs. As you can imagine, it would obviously be extremely unfair to pass this cost onto customers (as this is something users have no control of). So if the mining fee is less than the flat fee we charge, than I don't think that's too unreasonable either. The 400 bits you pay is the fee to withdraw, rather than the exact amount we put on a transaction itself (who's byte-size can widely vary).
On a side note: the mining fees you see on the block-explorer don't actually reflect our true costs (which are actually higher than 400 bits per withdrawal). For instance, you'll probably notice that your withdrawal only sourced a single input -- and has 1 change output.
One of the big reasons we do that is to help with your privacy in withdrawals, but as we get a lot more deposits than withdrawals (2-3x) it also means that over-time we accumulate a lot of unspent transactions outputs (to the tune of ~500 a day) which we need to clean up during off peak times.
In any case, here's my suggestion, which shouldn't affect Bustabit code too much (it could be just few changing lines in the code, I assume) and would help small players, they aren't in hurry too much. I mean something like "dynamic fees", and choice possibility by each player himself. E.g. something like table select :
* 100 bits (means: Yeah, I'm happy with long or very long wait until my withdrawal transcation is completed, it's really fine).
* 250-300 bits (means: Maybe I'll be in luck and it will be fast, but I'm ready to wait long [or very long]. )
* 400-500 bits (means: I suppose my transaction would be fast, or at least not-so-slow).
* 750+ bits (means: I need my (busta)bits NOW !
).
Or just to make some field with numeric value range, e.g 100-1000 (bits), and let enable to each player to choose the fee (of his withdrawal transaction) dynamically by him.
So, what do you mean about it, Ryan (or people here in discuss forum) ? Last, but not least - thanks Ryan for all your support and development of Bustabit game, I'm pretty sure we all highly appreciate it!
It's a good idea. Actually the new version of bustabit which should be ready in a couple of months (you can try an early preview: dev.bustabit.com) has a great withdrawal system that accurately models our costs exactly, and makes some heavy optimizations (patched bitcoind coin selection, batching withdrawals) that allows us to give the best rates for customers. There will be a significant discount offered to customers who don't need their withdrawals immediately (as we'll batch it inside the transaction of the next person who needs it immediately).
For reference: based on current market conditions, a non-instant withdrawal in bustabit v2 will only cost about ~100 bits right now. I expect this will make a lot of users happy, I just need to hurry up and finish it off =)
