When Bitcoin first came out, transactions were free. During the inscription era, transaction fees of tens of dollars made many people think Bitcoin was inherently expensive. Wrong. Satoshi Nakamoto's original design not only allowed for zero fees but even encouraged free transactions. How was that possible? Through 'coin age priority.' There was an early formula: the longer your coins sat in your wallet, the larger the amount, and the simpler the transaction structure, the higher the priority. Each block reserved 50KB of space specifically to package these 'old coins' for free. So why doesn’t it work like that anymore? - Block space is only 1MB, and as more people started using it, it got crowded. - The priority mechanism was scrapped after version 0.12. - Now it’s a pure bidding system—whoever pays more gets processed first. The so-called 'minimum fee rate' was never a protocol rule but rather an anti-spam strategy in node software. In theory, if you mine your own block today, you can still package zero-fee transactions. The high fees we see now aren’t Satoshi’s design—they’re the result of market supply and demand. Do you remember how much you paid in fees for your first Bitcoin transaction?