Do Miners Really Choose Which Transactions to Process?

Can miners seriously choose which transactions to process? Like, if they see one with a higher fee, wouldn't they just pick that one and ignore the low-fee ones? What about the first-come, first-served thing?

Absolutely, miners pick transactions based on fees and size. They only have so much space in a block, so they want to fill it with the most profitable transactions. Low-fee transactions can take ages to confirm, or worse, might never get picked.

Yeah, but just to clarify: miners have full control over what they include in their blocks. As long as the transaction is valid, they can choose whatever they want. They could even add a zero-fee transaction if they really wanted to.

But isn't that mainly for solo miners? If you’re in a mining pool, you don’t get to choose the transactions. The pool decides, and you just help with the hashing.

True, they can skip including any transactions at all. If your transaction has low fees and gets buried under higher-fee ones, it could sit there for days. Pools usually prioritize their own rewards first.

I agree with that. If you’re solo mining, sure, you can choose transactions. But for smaller miners, it’s tough. They might wait ages to mine a block. There’s one pool that lets you push your transactions to be included, though.

From a technical standpoint, there’s no software that allows full transaction choice in general. You can tweak some settings to prioritize certain transactions, but it’s not straightforward.

Exactly! A lot of people forget that low-fee transactions aren’t necessarily invalid. They can still be included in blocks, but might not make it into the memory pool. You can adjust settings, but who really does that?

I heard about these mining wars between the US and China. Supposedly, miners can block transactions from certain addresses or blacklist them. Is that legit?

Yes and no. Miners or pools can blacklist transactions if they want. If they run a custom node, they can decide not to include certain transactions. They can block whatever they choose.

That’s kinda scary. If a miner blacklists my address, what happens? Can other nodes still confirm my transaction? Or can I just use mixing to hide it?

You can't really move BTC without spending it... That’s the bottom line.

So, it seems like there's a lot of power in the miners' hands, but it also depends on the setup and whether they’re solo or part of a pool.