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Good evening everyone. I've been out of the cryptocurrency scene for a couple of years and I've stumbled into a minor issue. I've been trying to figure out if it will be viable to move some Bitcoin from one wallet I own to another without a fee. Specifically, I'm trying to send 0.2BTC from an Armory wallet to an Electrum wallet (latest stable versions of each client). The 0.2 BTC is all I have in that Armory wallet at the moment and I'd ideally like to get it to Electrum intact if possible and thus without fee.

When I try to send at 0 fees with Armory, it warns me I need 0.00012407 "for the size and priority" of the transaction. I am not sure how it calculated this or if it is a baseline estimate (which is pretty close to the default 0.0001 fee.), but it will allow me to send at 0 against its advice.

Reading over the description of how transaction fees are calculated my transaction seems to miss some of the "gotchas" that the protocol requires a fee (ie 0.2 BTC is not small enough to require fees), the coin itself is definitely old enough as the transaction that granted it to me was from 2014 and I haven't moved it from Armory since then etc.. but when I read over a variety of articles and posts there is a lot of variety in the confidence that such a transaction would be actually be validated sans-fees. Some older posts from 2013/2014 don't seem to be of use any longer, as it seems that transactions were more likely to be processed without a fee back then compared to now. Others suggest that at the value I still shouldn't have much trouble or to just give it a try and see

So given the current state of Bitcoin in 2016, should I attempt to send the 0.2 BTC to myself without any fees and have a reasonable expectation of timely (within a few days ) processing? Should I send without fees and my transaction goes unconfirmed for days, what would be the best way to "cancel" it and try again? Is there another way around the problem that I've not yet considered?

Thank you in advance

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    Miners, who create blocks are more likely to include transactions which pay higher fee, thus maximizing their profit, therefore if one creates transaction without any fee, miners might not include the transaction in a block for a while. The priority of the transaction is based on its age and transaction fee. Currently there's transaction fee of 0.0001 BTC per 1000 bytes (transaction size).
    – G B
    Jan 6, 2016 at 14:20
  • If you have time (days/weeks) you could simply try it without fees and see what happens. I'm not sure how reliable it is these days, but in general old coins may go with lower of 0 fees. If it fails, your Armory wallet might stay in a confused state for a while and not allow you to create a new transaction, but at some point it should allow that again. (I don't know the details on Armory, you might need to use some command.)
    – Jannes
    Jan 6, 2016 at 14:24
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    As for canceling a transaction which is not yet included in a block chain, read this: bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/4514/…
    – G B
    Jan 6, 2016 at 14:25
  • Thank you for your input thus far. Gigi Butbaia - How do I know the size of my transaction in bytes? Does that mean if my transaction is smaller than 1000 bytes I don't require a fee at all or is the expected fee (for the miners to process etc) prorated (ie if you have a 500 byte transaction than it will insist on a 0.00005 BTC fee?). How does this differ from a year or two where it was likely a single larger transaction would be processed without fees? Jannes - How do I know when "enough" time has passed and what do I do if it appears to fail? I read conflicting suggestions etc.
    – CryptoQueryGuesting
    Jan 7, 2016 at 3:22

3 Answers 3

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0.2 BTC to myself without any fees and have a reasonable expectation of timely (within a few days ) processing?

There are no miners today who confirms free transactions.

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If you want to send the funds from one your wallet to another, i.e. to switch wallet provider - you should check if there is "import" option in Electrum and "export" in Armory. I've just did the same when were migrating from Core to Blockchain

PS: I've also asked a friend to send me 0 fee transaction few days ago and it arrived in few hours; although seems that it can also take a couple of days and there is no way to be sure...

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You can safely have a try

If the transaction never get confirmed it never really happened from the network point of view. You can retry the spending with a small fee and get it confimred. There's no such "limbo" on the bitcoin protocol. Either it's done or it's not done

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