Bitcoin users send and receive coins over the network by inputting the public-key information attached to each person’s digital wallet. 


In order to incentivize the distributed network of people verifying bitcoin transactions (miners), a fee is attached to each transaction. The fee is awarded to whichever miner adds the transaction to a new block. Fees work on a first-price auction system, where the higher the fee attached to the transaction, the more likely a miner will process that transaction first.