Trends, Tips, Tolls: A Longitudinal Study of Bitcoin Transaction Fees

Möser, Malte; Böhme, Rainer

Trends, Tips, Tolls: A Longitudinal Study of Bitcoin Transaction Fees

2nd Workshop on Bitcoin Research, affiliated with the19th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, Puerto Rico, January 30, 2015

16 Pages Posted: 26 Nov 2014 Last revised: 27 Apr 2015

See all articles by Malte Möser

Malte Möser

Princeton University - Department of Computer Science

Rainer Böhme

University of Innsbruck; University of Münster - Department of Information Systems; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - MIT Media Laboratory; ICSI Berkeley; TU Dresden

Date Written: October 26, 2014

Abstract

The Bitcoin protocol supports optional direct payments from transaction partners to miners. These “fees” are supposed to substitute miners’ minting rewards in the long run. Acknowledging their role for the stability of the system, the right level of transaction fees is a hot topic of normative debates. This paper contributes empirical evidence from a historical analysis of agents’ revealed behavior concerning their payment of transaction fees. We identify several regime shifts, which can be largely explained by changes in the default client software or actions of big intermediaries in the ecosystem. Overall, it seems that rules dominate ratio, a state that is sustainable only if fees remain negligible.

Keywords: Bitcoin, Virtual Currencies, Payments Innovations

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Möser, Malte and Böhme, Rainer, Trends, Tips, Tolls: A Longitudinal Study of Bitcoin Transaction Fees (October 26, 2014). 2nd Workshop on Bitcoin Research, affiliated with the19th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, Puerto Rico, January 30, 2015, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2530843