The fee should be optional - hopefully it will return to that state in the next release.

If you wait a little bit, your coins will age and you can send without a fee.

The fee goes to the miner who solves the block that your transaction is in.

You definitely need to read up more on bitcoin before you get all high and mighty and pointing out 'problems'.

"You definitely need to read up more on bitcoin before you get all high and mighty and pointing out 'problems'."

Let's try to be civil to newcomers asking questions. 

You're running into the "very low priority transactions require a fee" rule.  Priority depends on the value of the transaction (fewer bitcoins == lower priority) and how long ago you received the bitcoin(s) (older == higher priority).

That rule was in place for 0.3.20.2, but only for most miners.  Most would not include very-low-priority transaction in blocks until they were old enough to have a high priority.  The result was a big backlog of very-small transactions starting to build up.

With 0.3.21, the rules are the same for miners, for relaying transactions across the network, and for the user interface-- if your transaction is very-low-priority, it won't get relayed and the user interface will insist that you pay a fee if you really want it transmitted RIGHT NOW.

If you really really really need to send 0.01 bitcoins right now, then you'll have to pay the fee.  If you're willing to wait a while, you'll find you can send it without a fee after it is old enough and has enough priority.

All of this is to discourage people from "penny flooding" -- constantly sending pennies back and forth to themselves without a fee just because they can.

Footnote:  if you don't upgrade, you can send that 0.01 bitcoins without a fee.  But as everybody else upgrades, you'll find that it will take a long time for that transaction to get confirmed.

The fee needs to be substantially reduced otherwise micro-payments (and soon any other payments) will not be viable in BTC.

Yes, let's criticize people heavily who point out legitimate issues. 

That fee was instituted when a bitcoin was less than a cent.  The growth has been far faster than we anticipated and this is being worked on presently.

 

You are correct. An unajustable thirty cents fee per transaction is too high.  Ignore the trolls and fanboys, they are fanatical idiots.

The client I use has an optional 30 cents fee per transaction, that i obviously turned off. I would have set it to 3 cents or 0.3 cents if I had the option, but it isn't there. I'm using 0.3.20.2, maybe you could try downloading this version so you can at least turn the fee off?

no risk to be taken, just save the wallet.dat file and you will not lose anything.  I have reinstalled so many times already because I cannot connect and download blocks 85% of the time.  So just backup that file.

Thanks guys. I uninstalled the old and installed the new. Coin still showing and no mandatory fee when sending to TradeHill. Now it gets more exciting..