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Topic: calculating fees to purchase BTC to match USD (Read 255 times)

legendary
Activity: 2730
Merit: 7065
Im working on my second bitcoin transaction.  I'm using Electrum 323.  
This part caught my attention. Are you saying that your are using Electrum version 3.2.3?
You will not be able to connect to Electrum servers with that version and you are potentially exposed to phishing messages if connected to a bad server. You need to update your wallet to the newest 3.3.5 version > https://electrum.org/#download

Make sure you verify the signatures and download only from the official site.

Regarding the difference in price. I would suggest you try a different site or one of the better exchanges around where you get more bitcoins for your money. Also, anyone can put up any buy order he wants for any price. It is up to you if you are going to accept it or not. 
hero member
Activity: 1820
Merit: 515
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Working with BTC is hard for newbies because fees are unknown until the end.  If we want to buy something that costs $450usd all the fees have to be calculated in advance.  I found an offer on wall of coins, for example....I asked for $450, got an offer for .06618674 btc which comes to $397.15....im $53 short.  This does not include the miners fee which they take out at the end, causing another shortage. Lastly, we have to transfer USD to the seller, which is complicated usually requiring a trip to a bank to do a moneygram or western onion.  Any rule of thumbs to help in calculations?
$53 dollar for a transaction is insane with the current blockchain network traffic which wallet did you use to send the transactions?

Better use wallet for sending bitcoins when you make transactions from exchanges you need to pay huge fee,if you are just a beginner you can use electrum which has custom fee as well as recommended fee structure.

i think the 53$ is not for the blockchain fees maybe the seller use a higher bitcoin price for that transaction,
As you know that blockchain transaction fees usually just take around 0.2$
Maybe if he calculated the value from exchange wallet where prices will be extremely high on few occasions and also they will collect withdrawal as well as network fee more that $20.
hero member
Activity: 882
Merit: 595
Working with BTC is hard for newbies because fees are unknown until the end.  If we want to buy something that costs $450usd all the fees have to be calculated in advance.  I found an offer on wall of coins, for example....I asked for $450, got an offer for .06618674 btc which comes to $397.15....im $53 short.  This does not include the miners fee which they take out at the end, causing another shortage. Lastly, we have to transfer USD to the seller, which is complicated usually requiring a trip to a bank to do a moneygram or western onion.  Any rule of thumbs to help in calculations?
$53 dollar for a transaction is insane with the current blockchain network traffic which wallet did you use to send the transactions?

Better use wallet for sending bitcoins when you make transactions from exchanges you need to pay huge fee,if you are just a beginner you can use electrum which has custom fee as well as recommended fee structure.

i think the 53$ is not for the blockchain fees maybe the seller use a higher bitcoin price for that transaction,
As you know that blockchain transaction fees usually just take around 0.2$
hero member
Activity: 1820
Merit: 515
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Working with BTC is hard for newbies because fees are unknown until the end.  If we want to buy something that costs $450usd all the fees have to be calculated in advance.  I found an offer on wall of coins, for example....I asked for $450, got an offer for .06618674 btc which comes to $397.15....im $53 short.  This does not include the miners fee which they take out at the end, causing another shortage. Lastly, we have to transfer USD to the seller, which is complicated usually requiring a trip to a bank to do a moneygram or western onion.  Any rule of thumbs to help in calculations?
$53 dollar for a transaction is insane with the current blockchain network traffic which wallet did you use to send the transactions?

Better use wallet for sending bitcoins when you make transactions from exchanges you need to pay huge fee,if you are just a beginner you can use electrum which has custom fee as well as recommended fee structure.
hero member
Activity: 882
Merit: 595
Working with BTC is hard for newbies because fees are unknown until the end.  If we want to buy something that costs $450usd all the fees have to be calculated in advance.  I found an offer on wall of coins, for example....I asked for $450, got an offer for .06618674 btc which comes to $397.15....im $53 short.  This does not include the miners fee which they take out at the end, causing another shortage. Lastly, we have to transfer USD to the seller, which is complicated usually requiring a trip to a bank to do a moneygram or western onion.  Any rule of thumbs to help in calculations?

why not you just use localbitcoin to buy or sell bitcoin?
with localbitcoin you can easily buy/sell bitcoin with people near you and maybe with a low fee than wallofcoins
hero member
Activity: 2268
Merit: 669
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Yes, They are looking for newbie fools like me to take it and run.  When does the miner fee come out, when btc leaves the wallet?
The miners fee is in the transaction fee you have paid when sending a btc. The miners will confirm your transaction which they will get a reward from the fee you have paid. The higher the fee the higher the chance that your transaction of sending or receiving btc will be faster the same as other cryptocurrencies. My suggestion is do not take that offer where you will pay $450 and receive btc which it's $53 short. There are exchanges you can use where you can buy bitcoins for fiat like coins.ph, binance and more.
legendary
Activity: 3668
Merit: 6382
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Any rule of thumbs to help in calculations?

The fees are already hard to calculate because the amount you pay depends on how busy the network is and how much you are in a hurry too.
Then the exchanges have some fees, some pretty big, but they are written down, you have only to read.
Then there's the volatility. Bitcoin may worth 5000$ when you buy it and 4000$ or 6000$ when you do the purchase with Bitcoin.

So the first rule is to always get some extra, because although some components can be calculated, some not.
The second rule would be to read carefully all the fees (and rules!!) of the exchange you are using; it could avoid some later headaches.
hero member
Activity: 1232
Merit: 738
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Working with BTC is hard for newbies because fees are unknown until the end.  If we want to buy something that costs $450usd all the fees have to be calculated in advance.  
I assume you want to buy an item that will cost you $450 in BTC, so you need to buy BTC first
it would be easier to (make) deal with the item seller in term of bitcoin amount, instead of $ amount
so you can lock in the amount of bitcoin and not be tied to value in $ anymore

I found an offer on wall of coins, for example....I asked for $450, got an offer for .06618674 btc which comes to $397.15....im $53 short.  This does not include the miners fee which they take out at the end, causing another shortage. Lastly, we have to transfer USD to the seller, which is complicated usually requiring a trip to a bank to do a moneygram or western onion.  Any rule of thumbs to help in calculations?
this is what I would call buy-sell price spread, the seller quotes a different exchange rate than you expected
in your case you were using a rate of ~$6000 * 0.06618674 btc = ~$397  
while the seller was using a rate of ~$6800 * 0.06618674 btc = ~$450
so basically you've bought btc at a premium price of around +13% Sad

note: all these are under the assumption that on may 9th the price of bitcoin is at ~$6000
legendary
Activity: 2632
Merit: 1094
In your case, as per your need you wish to ask more as you are offering USD via moneygram or WU and it should incur all the expenses and make it clear to the buyer (who is selling you BTC). I am not sure of the commuting costs and so on so you might want to add $50 extra which means $500 worth BTC for your USD and calculate the price using preev.com. Since these payment methods can be reversed and BTC is irreversible, you could find trouble in getting buyers but you could try.

My advise is BTC's price currently is increasing so even accepting $53 less would be profitable for you as you'll eventually get the amount in a day or two. You can check now that 0.06618674 BTC is already $418.
newbie
Activity: 4
Merit: 0
Yes, They are looking for newbie fools like me to take it and run.  When does the miner fee come out, when btc leaves the wallet?
full member
Activity: 504
Merit: 127
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I found an offer on wall of coins, for example....I asked for $450, got an offer for .06618674 btc which comes to $397.15....im $53 short.
That's a big fee on your part. If I were you, don't take that offer. If you have 450 dollars, you might get 420 dollars probably if you'll buy on coins.ph. Or much better, buy at bittrex. Bittrex has a nice volume of coins and having a big volume could make you get more btc.
hero member
Activity: 1806
Merit: 672
Well in crypto buy and sell or trading there is really no rule of thumb as long as you are satisfied in what he/she is offering. You must ask yourself if you are satisfied with a 53$ deficit or you think yourself that you are getting lowballed by his offer. In my own opinion and if I was offered by that amount I'll try to close it in to as much as I can to go near to the 450$ I have let say around 420-430$ worth of Bitcoin which I think would be a good offer since it's just around 5-7% loss in value, 53$ is in the pricier and for me as its above 10%.
newbie
Activity: 4
Merit: 0
I am not understanding the above sentence, Did you paid $450 to get .06618674  BTC?  This does not make sense to me that you purchase BTC to pay for a service that in the end paid by you by using combination of both.

His statement says "I found an offer on wall of coins" I believe he's trying to say he wanted to buy $450 worth of bitcoin but the seller gave him 06618674 BTC and when he checked the value in USD in his wallet he's seeing $397.15 which is $53 short and he's confusing that for miners fees when a possible conclusion for that short in USD value could be as a result of differences in 1 BTC to USD on different platforms or the $53 was the profit of the site selling the BTC for his cash i.e their charged fee


Right! It was just an offer.  Im working on my second bitcoin transaction.  I'm using Electrum 323.  I thought I remember seeing a miners fee coming out at the very end of the transaction which made me short, had to go back to buy more from wall of coins. There might be easier places to purchase from.  Two trips to the bank.  It appeared the total fees last time I calculated to be about 16%.  Maybe I got took.   I fumble around, but made it work.  Figure Im making this harder than it needs to be.  Love to find a local one stop solution.  We have BTC atm's local, but I would guess they are expensive.
legendary
Activity: 2450
Merit: 4295
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I am not understanding the above sentence, Did you paid $450 to get .06618674  BTC?  This does not make sense to me that you purchase BTC to pay for a service that in the end paid by you by using combination of both.

His statement says "I found an offer on wall of coins" I believe he's trying to say he wanted to buy $450 worth of bitcoin but the seller gave him 06618674 BTC and when he checked the value in USD in his wallet he's seeing $397.15 which is $53 short and he's confusing that for miners fees when a possible conclusion for that short in USD value could be as a result of differences in 1 BTC to USD on different platforms or the $53 was the profit of the site selling the BTC for his cash i.e their charged fee
sr. member
Activity: 742
Merit: 395
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I asked for $450, got an offer for .06618674 btc which comes to $397.15....im $53 short.  This does not include the miners fee which they take out at the end, causing another shortage.

I am not understanding the above sentence, Did you paid $450 to get .06618674  BTC?  This does not make sense to me that you purchase BTC to pay for a service that in the end paid by you by using combination of both.
legendary
Activity: 2450
Merit: 4295
eXch.cx - Automatic crypto Swap Exchange.
That's no miners fees, miners fee don't cost that much. That's just the gain of the site offering you that service. The $53 short on you purchase is their profit sometimes the difference could be much due to the volatile nature of bitcoin. You get less coins especially when transaction are process few minutes late.

As of press you can pay around $1.26 (+/-) thats if you want your transactions to be confirmed faster (next block) although you can pay less and your transaction will still be confirm but it might take some time. You can use this site for checking the daily average bitcoin transaction fee; https://bitcoinfees.info
newbie
Activity: 4
Merit: 0
Working with BTC is hard for newbies because fees are unknown until the end.  If we want to buy something that costs $450usd all the fees have to be calculated in advance.  I found an offer on wall of coins, for example....I asked for $450, got an offer for .06618674 btc which comes to $397.15....im $53 short.  This does not include the miners fee which they take out at the end, causing another shortage. Lastly, we have to transfer USD to the seller, which is complicated usually requiring a trip to a bank to do a moneygram or western onion.  Any rule of thumbs to help in calculations?
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