Kraken, a Bitcoin exchange website, hit the news last week with the announcement of a substantial fee hike. After a sustained period of static fees, the company stated that rising miner fees would result in a higher withdrawal fee for Bitcoin customers on its site.
The company subsequently raised the fee to .0025 XBT, or approximately $7. Kraken announced that this number is the average cost per transaction it is paying for its services and was, therefore, passing this onto to users in order to maintain transaction speeds.
Kraken also announced plans to move to a more dynamic fee structure in the future where costs are passed directly onto users, rather than averaging the costs and charging the client a flat fee. This comes on the heels of statements by Hashcash creator Adam Back regarding $100 transaction fees, leaving many users nervous.
Saving costs
However, just today, Kraken has rolled back the transaction fees and reinstated per transaction pricing at .001 XBT, or about $3. The move comes as a response to client disapproval of the hike.
To make the pricing feasible, the company has announced to users via email that they will batch withdrawal transactions to save costs. This will slow the response time for each transaction, but save costs.
