<p>Miners also get a 12.5 BTC reward per block, which is roughly $7,500 at current prices. This is the main reason miners are willing to spend so much to mine a block. The transaction fees themselves don't add up to very much when compared to the actual block reward, usually. </p>

<p>The mining subsidy slowly fades away, however. Every 4 years, the amount of new bitcoins created in a block gets cut in half. At a certain point, either there will be more transactions paying fees, more fees in the same amount of transactions, or mining will become less expensive (or some combination of the three). </p>

<p>I should note that the cost of a transaction is not really $14. The actual cost to send the transaction bytes to peers and save the data on disk is fairly minimal for any individual miner. </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-09-15T02:35:02.097Z
2016-09-15T02:41:26.557Z
2016-09-15T02:41:26.557Z
morsecoder
<p>According to <a href="https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/11/how-do-ethereums-transaction-fees-compare-to-bitcoin">https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/11/how-do-ethereums-transaction-fees-compare-to-bitcoin</a> current BTC transaction fees vary anywhere <strong>from $0.01 to $0.09 USD</strong>.</p>

<p>But according to <a href="https://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per-transaction" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per-transaction</a> and <a href="https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/32286/can-it-really-be-true-that-the-bitcoin-system-consumes-almost-1-000-000-in-elec">Can it really be true that the Bitcoin system consumes almost $1.000.000 in electricity per day?</a> BTC costs <strong>$14</strong> per transaction.</p>

<p>That's a huge difference, 3 orders of magnitude. Shouldn't be the same (or similar at least) transaction cost and transaction fee? What I am doing wrong?</p>

<transaction-fees><mining-profitability><energy-consumption>
BTC transaction cost vs fees
Juan Ignacio Pérez Sacristán
# BTC transaction cost vs fees

(Asked by: username_0 on 2016-09-14)

According to <https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/11/how-do-ethereums-transaction-fees-compare-to-bitcoin> current BTC transaction fees vary anywhere **from $0.01 to $0.09 USD**.

But according to <https://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per-transaction> and [Can it really be true that the Bitcoin system consumes almost $1.000.000 in electricity per day?](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/32286/can-it-really-be-true-that-the-bitcoin-system-consumes-almost-1-000-000-in-elec) BTC costs **$14** per transaction.

That's a huge difference, 3 orders of magnitude. Shouldn't be the same (or similar at least) transaction cost and transaction fee? What I am doing wrong?

**Tags:** transaction-fees, mining-profitability, energy-consumption


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2016-09-15. Score: 2

Miners also get a 12.5 BTC reward per block, which is roughly $7,500 at current prices. This is the main reason miners are willing to spend so much to mine a block. The transaction fees themselves don't add up to very much when compared to the actual block reward, usually.

The mining subsidy slowly fades away, however. Every 4 years, the amount of new bitcoins created in a block gets cut in half. At a certain point, either there will be more transactions paying fees, more fees in the same amount of transactions, or mining will become less expensive (or some combination of the three).

I should note that the cost of a transaction is not really $14. The actual cost to send the transaction bytes to peers and save the data on disk is fairly minimal for any individual miner.


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