Gas fees.
In plain English
A gas fee is what you pay a blockchain, most famously Ethereum, to include and process your transaction. The network has limited capacity, so users effectively bid for space: when many people transact at once, gas fees spike, and when the network is quiet they fall. The fee is paid in the network's own coin, not dollars, and it applies whether the transaction succeeds or fails. Simple transfers cost less than complex ones that run smart contracts. For small transactions, gas can be a large share of the amount you are moving.
01Why it matters
Gas fees can quietly eat a big slice of small transactions and pile up for active users, so they are a real cost that changes whether a crypto move is worth making.
02The math, step by step
Suppose each transaction costs 20 dollars of gas and you make 40 in a year, or 800 dollars. At a 7 percent long-run return, that 800 dollars a year would grow to roughly 75,000 dollars over 30 years.
03What this is NOT
Gas fees are NOT charged by an exchange or a company. They are paid to the network itself to process the transaction, and they change with network demand, not with any single firm's price list.
04Receipts
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