Transaction fees

A Bitcoin transaction fee is the difference between a transaction’s inputs and outputs, claimed by the miner who includes it. Fees are priced per virtual byte (sats/vB), so what you pay depends on your transaction’s size and the current demand for block space — not on the amount you send. Moving $1 billion can cost the same as moving $10.

Long-term, fees are designed to replace the shrinking block subsidy as Bitcoin’s security budget — one of the system’s genuinely open economic questions.