With bitcoins trading at near to $200 per bitcoin, the price of sending with the bitcoin wallet is close to 10 cents.
I suggest you use a different wallet, or avoid behaviors that load up your wallet with many, many tiny outputs.
That seems a bit pricy to me.
It is. The typical fee enforced by the reference client is 0.0001 BTC per kilobyte.
I remember when we used to be able to make phone calls for 10 cents. It wasn't that long ago.
Wasn't that long ago? I think it's been more than 30 years since payphone rates were $0.10 in the U.S.
And that 10 cents will really eat away at the money, if doing alot of sending.
So do less sending, or structure your sending in a way the reduces your fees. You have options.
Does anyone know if there are any plans to cut the price of sending bitcoins down?
They've been cut several times. The last time they were cut, the exchange rate was approaching $266. I suspect they won't be cut again until the exchange rate nears $1000.
I would like it, if it was about 1/100 of a penny to send.
Fees are voluntary. You can use a wallet that lets you pay a 1/100 of a penny fee if you like. Keep in mind, however, that relaying transactions and confirming transactions is voluntary as well. If you don't include a large enough fee, you may find that many of your transactions never leave your wallet or take a REALLY long time to confirm.
Pay 10 cents to send 2 cents? Doesn't make sense to me, so I aborted.
Sounds like a smart decision. Bitcoin isn't really designed to handle transactions that small very well.
I also thought that the nodes were actually people who are mining, so aren't they making money from
mining, and why charge so much to people sending?
Solo miners and mining pools do run nodes, but many other people run nodes as well. Anyone running the Bitcoin-Qt reference client is operating a full node. Miners do make money from mining, nodes don't make money from operating a node though. Nodes enforce a minimum fee to relay your transaction as a countermeasure against attacks against the bitcoin network.
Who is pocketing the 10 cents for each time someone sends bitcoins?
It's typically 2 cents. But, regardless, the fees go to the miner (or mining pool) that adds your transaction to the blockchain.