Can Miners Choose Transactions?

I was reading the bitcoin white paper, and I got curious. Can miners really choose which transactions to add to a block? And if they reject one, what happens to it?

Totally, miners can pick and choose. But if they reject a transaction, they just miss out on the fees. That rejected transaction? It'll just chill in the mempool until someone else mines it.

Right? The big pools could just reject everything below a certain fee, kinda like how OPEC manipulates oil prices. If they all decided to only accept transactions over 50 sats, we’d be in trouble.

Exactly! If your transaction gets turned down by one pool, another might still take it. Miners usually go for the highest fees, so if you pay enough, you’re golden.

Your OPEC analogy is spot on. But unlike oil, bitcoin has options. If fees go too high, people might switch to other coins or transactions could drop, forcing pools to lower their standards.

Yup, miners definitely have that power. They can skip low fee transactions and won’t get punished for it. They just lose out on those fees. Even higher fee ones can get rejected, no consequences.

Larger pools set the tone for this stuff. Small miners? They typically go for whatever pays best since they don’t mine blocks that often.

For sure, miners can say no to transactions. They're more likely to take higher fee ones. And if they reject you, your coins come back. Only downside? Delays in getting confirmed.

Not so fast. Miners can’t just reject transactions whenever they want. The big pools dominate this game. But hey, you can always up your fee to speed things up.