Miners mine because they receive an incentive to do so.
Currently, the 25 BTC block reward is the primary incentive. The transaction fee will only become an issue when the block subsidy approaches zero. This won't happen for several decades. However, when it does, transaction fees will need to provide enough incentive for miners to continue mining. By this time, it is assumed that Bitcoin will have grown to the point that there will be millions of transactions with small fees attached to them, and the sum of these fees will provide an incentive for miners to continue mining (e.g. one billion 1-cent transaction fees total $10 million in incentives for miners).
And, even if BTC becomes so valuable that .0005 BTC is worth a lot relative to fiat, the transaction fee can be reduced. All that matters is that a balance is achieved wherein miners are happy with the incentives they are given for their work, and users are happy with the low transaction costs.
uh oh I thought bitcoin was decentralized, so now we can lower the transaction fee, who's behind all that? who controls that?
something doesn't seem to be THAT transparent about bitcoins, how come some people liek MTGOX can transform real currencies to bitcoins and I can't do that myself? something's not right here
I herd this story of the guy who was caught by the feds cos he was using bitcoins, he went to the smaller for that
Transaction fees are voluntary on the part of the person making the bitcoin transaction, as the person attempting to make a transaction can include any fee or none at all in the transaction.
Exactly. You actually never have to pay a transaction fee, and you will probably never be required to do so. However, including a small fee such as .0005 BTC provides extra incentive for miners to include the transaction within a block.
WAIT WHAT? so I was paying for phantom "mandatory" transaction fees? how the hell do I NOT pay these transactions.
seriously there are like alreayd 11 million bitcoins in circulation, I don't want to pay a single penny for mining.
Pretty sure your posting is causing permanent brain damage. We are all dumber for having read it. I award you no bitcoin. May God have mercy on your soul.
try to be more imaginative, this will help you the day your bitcoin wallet gets erased