Chapter · Master Bitcoin
Fees and the mempool
When you send bitcoin, your transaction first lands in the mempool, a shared waiting room of pending payments. Block space is limited, so miners tend to pick the transactions offering the highest fees first. When the network is busy, fees rise and low-fee payments wait longer. Fees are paid per unit of data, not as a percentage, so moving a large amount can cost the same as a small one.
Free to play. No ads, no token, no account needed to start.
What you get asked
A pending transaction waits in the ___ until a miner picks it up for a block.
The mempool is the pool of unconfirmed transactions. Miners choose from it, usually favoring the ones paying higher fees.
When the network is busy, what usually happens to fees?
Block space is scarce. When many people want in at once, they bid higher fees to be picked sooner, so fees climb.
Fees on Bitcoin are mainly based on what?
Fees depend on how much block space, measured in data, a transaction uses, not on the amount of value being sent.
You want a payment to confirm quickly during a busy time. What helps?
Miners sort by fee. A higher fee moves you toward the front of the line, so your payment confirms sooner.
How many satoshis make up one whole bitcoin, in millions?
One bitcoin divides into 100 million satoshis, the smallest unit. That fine divisibility lets people send tiny amounts and pay small fees.
The rest of this chapter
Learn what Bitcoin is, how it works, and how ordinary people buy, hold, and secure it safely.