-snip-
This is not necessarily true.
Miners (or mining pools) can choose which transactions they will confirm. Some miners may feel that the orphan cost of increasing the size of their block is more than 0.0001 BTC per kilobyte, and may therefore choose not to confirm transactions unless they pay a slightly higher fee. -snip-
Thanks for the correction. I was aware that pools can choose which transactions they accept. I did not think that any pool would consider the default fee to low though. I guess the threshold would usually not be common knowledge, since there is no mention of it in the usual lists
1. Is there any pool out there that actually considers .0001 per KB to low?
[1]:
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https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/btc-mining-pools-list-104664-
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_poolsI don't know of any major pool which requires a fee higher than 0.1 mBTC per KB. In most scenarios (unless the tx has other issues) a fee of 0.1 mBTC will be sufficient for inclusion in the next block. If the next block is "full" (limit on size set by miner) then it is possible one would need to wait for the following block. Paying 500% of the "min fee" however is almost certainly just a waste of money.
The situaiton will become more complicated in the future. v0.90 allows relaying txs with a lower fee of only 0.01 mBTC per KB. To avoid fragmenting the network it doesn't allow creating txs with a fee that low when a fee is required. Once a majority of the network is using v0.90+ a new version of the client will be released that also allows creating tx at that fee level.
Will miners accept the 90% reduction in min fee? Will some of them insist of keeping the current fee? Will some adopt a fee between 0.01 mBTC and 0.1 mBTC? It will be interesting.
It would be nice if at least all the major pools publicly posted their tx inclusion policies. If you know even the policies of 60% or so of the hashrate you can make pretty good estimates on what fee amount is required based on how quickly you need a first confirmation.
