Fees are going insane

Shire Cryptocurrency Community
#1

According to this, the best fee to send is now .0018 per kB, which is nearly twice as much as what I’d been using, which I’d already considered out of control. I’d been using .001 per kB.

https://bitcoinfees.21.co/

This is getting insane. I wish something would happen to bring fees back below $0.05 per transaction. I really love doing bitcoin outreach to business, but who the hell besides a bitcoin evangelist like me would ever pay $0.50 just to buy a $1 soda at Corner News?

I love bitcoin, but the behind the scenes endless debate over how it should move forward into the future is really hurting the ability to propagate the currency, IMO. We can talk all day about how great it is, but for small transactions it’s become totally unusable for anyone on a budget.

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#2

What is currently happening is that China has been eyeballing bitcoin as a way for the masses to maintain their spending power, in order to prevent (more) riots. Currently, they’ve imposed some fees on exchanges, which has caused a bit of a slowdown in transactions in china, which has lowered the global transaction frequency, which means fewer fees, which means that miners are probably taking time to tweak their software to ensure they’re getting the highest amount of fee they can get per block.

#3

I did a quick transaction last night, and jaxx was talking about .0014 as the ‘average’ fee.

#4

i agree this is greatly disturbing. seems to be that bitcoin is destined to be more of a vehicle for conveniently transferring wealth, large purchases, perhaps it’ll lose its relative volatility and become a crypto for more of a store of value, etc. it’ll have a place. i’m positive that the market will find an alternative for a daily use case crypto, there will be something developed to fill this demand. so no worries Ian, this is an opportunity to profit from this insight and find a crypto that fills this demand :slight_smile:

#5

This is always something that I see, and it bothers me. People conflate ‘bitcoin’ with ‘crypto’ in a way that sort of implies that any issue with bitcoin is an issue with cryptocurrencies in general, which is not true. There are lots of other crypto currencies with different ways and fees for transactions. Also, there always seems to be some kind of push to get bitcoin out of the ‘everyday spending’ category. The fees are a problem right now, absolutely. Will they -always- be a problem? No. There’s an easy solution, and the only reason it’s not been adopted is because of some reluctance on the part of miners to accept a new codebase. They’ll get over it, eventually. I don’t know how long it will take, but yes, eventually, they’ll get over it.
Dynamic block size is practically a certainty. As soon as that happens, the problem is solved.

#6

We’ve got a LONG way to go. SegWit only at 25% and BU less than that. https://coin.dance/blocks

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#7

mmhmm. Didn’t say it would happen tomorrow. although that would be awesome! :stuck_out_tongue:
But the key is, we -are- going. High fees equal lower utility, which creates downward price pressure. It’s probably a big sticking point that’s holding the price below $1300 right now. As soon as the bulk of the miners realize that, we’ll see a lot of support growing.

#8
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#9

Good sign, but still nowhere close to where we need to be. The question is, what do the other mining pool operators think about this?

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#10

who knows? But the point is, it’s moving. They NEED bigger blocks. They LIVE off of the value of bitcoin, and bitcoin is only as valuable as its use. if no one wants to use it because the fees are too high, the value is less. They’ll get there eventually. One or two more big pools go in, and it’s going to start doing the domino

#11

Also, it’s important to note that a hair over 65% of the miners think -something- needs to be done in regards to this issue, even if they don’t all agree on specifically what change is needed.

#12

Fees are up to a recommended 240 satoshis per byte now. I just sent some BTC with a fee of .002 BTC/kB, (totaling over .001 BTC for this tx) but that wasn’t enough. It’s stuck with no confirmation after 2 hours.

Crazy. :rage:

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#13

mmhmm. Still waiting for that kick in the pants to make the miners wake up. Do your own due diligence, but now is arguably a good time to buy btc for investment purposes, as it’s stuck yo-yoing around $1k. Absent this deadlock in the block size making it borderline unusable, it should be much higher than that at this point. So, if you believe that SOONER OR LATER they’re going to fix the block size, then buying now makes sence.
But do your own due diligence on that, i’m not a financial adviser.

#14

You could also argue the price will drop if the hard fork and split happens, in which case buying now could be a bad idea. I’m not in the market to get more BTC either way, but one thing’s for certain regarding its price: it’s uncertain.

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#15

I would say that even if the price dropped from a hard fork, buying now wouldn’t be a -bad- idea, simply less good than buying at the even -lower- price and thus losing some portion of your profit when the price gets to where it’s supposed to be.
But not everyone is as positive towards bitcoin as I am, so maybe I’m blinded by my enthusiasm.

#16

Ugh it’s so maddening, over 70% of the miners are ready for something to change. Would you guys PICK something arg.

#17

At this rate we’ll be lucky if something changes this year.

#18

Well, if the government doesn’t manage to do their borrowing cap increase before it’s “too late” the markets will react to that in a fairly predictable way, and then the transaction queue is going to get even WORSE.

#19

I find it interesting how it’s continuing on. The support from antpool really pushed unlimited up the ranks, but it basically stalled out and now segwit’s gaining. Hopefully, ONE of them will just take over, this is getting ridiculous. And bitcoin rises anyway.

#20

so what are the fees gonna look like now that they are doing the segwit 2mb fork or whatever?