Why do I need small amounts of Bitcoin to do things in Freewallet?

Counterparty builds directly on top of the Bitcoin network, and every Counterparty transaction is a Bitcoin transaction as well.

This means that Counterparty transactions are the same as Bitcoin transactions, with some information attached through the OP_RETURN function. Adam Krellenstein, co-founder of Counterparty, wrote about this functionality and labelled Counterparty as a 'metaprotocol' on top of Bitcoin in the Counterparty Whitepaper.

From: "Counterparty An Extension to Bitcoin by State-Machine Replication"

Because of this, Counterparty transactions using Freewallet MUST pay a small BTC fee to the Bitcoin miners for each Counterparty transaction. Beyond being a sign of commitment to the health of the Bitcoin network, this allows Counterparty transactions to be given a high priority and be confirmed quickly while maintaining the same security that Bitcoin has.

Every Counterparty transaction is a bitcoin transaction with more information encoded into the OP_RETURN function. Many internal Counterparty transactions such as asset creation, issuance change, token locking etc. are transactions “sent to yourself” with this Counterparty information on layered on top of it.

A Counterparty transaction with OP_RETURN data attached (representing a named token creation transaction)

The detailed OP_RETURN data can be seen on Counterparty block explorers, while all BTC transactions can be viewed on a BTC block explorer. Freewallet specifically shows the OP_RETURN data from the tokenscan.io Counterparty block explorer. On xchain, all Bitcoin addresses are linked to the BTC data on the Bitcoin network.

The same transaction as above, but viewed on tokenscan.io

If you are looking to save bitcoin it is recommended to use a Segwit addresses instead of Legacy if you plan to do many transactions.

To learn more about viewing accessing your different types of addresses in Freewallet, check out: Viewing, Creating and Importing Addresses.

If you are looking to get a function done quickly it is needed to use the recommended high fee (or even higher) for the Bitcoin network to confirm it quickly. In the event you are not sure what BTC fee to use, please reference the What BTC fee should I use? section of the user manual.