Update text on FAQ & Innovation pages

[harding]

This PR continues the work started in aborted pull #972. It is split into two commits:

1. No text changes; just wrap existing text to allow word diffing the next commit.
2. Actual text changes.

Advantages of Bitcoin from FAQ

Confirmations and fees from FAQ

Micro payments from Innovation

[saivann]

@harding How about:

Transactions can be processed without fees, but usually will require them for faster and
more reliable confirmation of your transactions and to remunerate miners.

(I feel current text fails to mention that user experience and security that comes with fast confirmations usually doesn't come without fees, so fees aren't only encouraged as a benevolent action for the network)

[saivann]

@harding How about:

Your Bitcoin client will display what it think is an appropriate fee.

I feel like the current text suggests wallet will pay whatever fee they please in the background without informing the user. In reality, wallets typically show the transaction fee somewhere in the UI before the user clicks "Send".

[saivann]

@harding I thought some previous analogies and examples were still useful, how about re-including them along with your other changes:

Transaction fees are used as a protection against users sending transactions to overload the network.
The precise manner in which fees work is still being developed and will change over time. Because
the fee is not related to the amount of bitcoins being sent, it may seem extremely low or unfairly
high. Instead, the fee is defined by attributes such as the number of bytes in the transaction and
transaction recurrence. For example, if you are receiving a large number of tiny amounts, then fees
for sending will be higher. Such payments are comparable to paying a restaurant bill using only
pennies. Spending small fractions of your bitcoins rapidly may also require a fee. If your activity
follows the pattern of conventional transactions, you shouldn't have to pay unusually high fees.

[harding]

the fee is defined by attributes such as the number of bytes in the transaction and
transaction recurrence.

I think this is misleading. Miners tend to use Bitcoin Core's fee/priority evaluation code, which I believe works like this:

• Fees are evaluated purely based on fee-per-byte. The age and value of the input (priority) plays no role here.
• If the transaction doesn't qualify for inclusion in the block based on its fee, its priority is evaluated. Here the fee plays no additional role.

In other words, fee and priority are considered separately, but this sentence makes me feel like they're averaged together to allow high-priority transactions to pay lower fees for the same processing speed as lower-priority transactions.

Such payments are comparable to paying a restaurant bill using only pennies.

I see where this analogy was going, but it breaks down for me. I have personal experience refusing a transaction paid in an excessive number of pennies from when I worked at McDonalds in high school, 17 years ago. I think that would be the usual response to that situation; I don't know of any business besides a bank that would charge more to process loose change.

Spending small fractions of your bitcoins rapidly may also require a fee.

I think this could confuse people about how small "small fractions" are or how rapid "rapidly" is. According to my node's estimatepriority, getting a free transaction confirmed within the next 25 blocks requires 331411429.8671501 priority. So to send a 250-byte transaction with an input worth 0.1 BTC (10,000,000 satoshis) requires that input be 8286 blocks old: 331411429.8671501 / 10000000 * 250

I wouldn't describe $30 USD worth of bitcoin as small or two months worth of waiting as rapid, so I think this sentence should be removed and that we should generally treat free transactions as something for experts and curious people only.

transaction recurrence.

In case you revise, I'd suggest using a different term. Recurrence is meant to be applied to similar events separated by time. I get that receiving one Bitcoin transaction seems similar to receiving another Bitcoin transaction, but people tend to think of transactions based on what was exchanged---not the medium the exchange occurred through---so selling a pocket knife for 0.1 BTC in one transaction and a flashlight for 0.2 BTC in a different transaction doesn't seem like recurrence.

---

My suggestion would be to use the text in the commit, which does include examples, but I'm happy to continue working on revisions of this part of the paragraph. (I'll be pushing updated text in a moment based on the rest of your commit comments.)

[saivann]

Except for my comments above, LGTM up to 8fac92a. Thanks!

[harding]

@saivann made changes in 7b8e26f addressing all but one of your comments, and left a reply to the un-addressed comment. Thanks!

[saivann]

LGTM 7b8e26f, thanks!

[harding]

@saivann thanks for your review!

In the absence of critical feedback, this pull will be merged on Tuesday.