Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin fees are skyrocketing!!!

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/bitcoin-fees-are-skyrocketing/

The fees are going to continue to rise


Is it possible that the fee to send .001-.01 BTC will become higher than the actual BTC is worth?  :o




*** confirmed update: 12/12/2017 the cost to send .001BTC is now more than it is actually worth!!!!

In theory, it could be. But only if there are that many transactions that have to be first in a block. But practically speaking, a good number of BTC users would prefer to wait and pay for a cheaper fee or wait for the unconfirmed transactions to go down.

Having said that, I wouldnt worry about it.

Right. But lets say, hypothetically, the price of BTC starts to crash. And so many people are cashing out that the fees to cash out .001 BTC - .01 BTC are more than the BTC is worth. Couldn't that become a problem with liquidity and cause addresses with small investments to lose it all? Keep in mind I am speaking in hypothetical terms of there being some type of crash or major sell off.

While feasible it is almost impossible in practice because no one would pay such a fee unless there were some really extreme and unusual circumstances. As a norm it will just never be the case. Fees will probably decrease over time as bitcoin advances and scalability measures are introduced. Fees only get large when there is a mad rush of investment etc.

Lets say you have 1BTC = $17000

But the fees get so high that to send 1BTC it cost 2BTC. That means you would only be able to send .33BTC after fees. If fees keep growing this will cut directly into profits.

I think we need 12mb blocksize so that transaction will confirm faster to avoid this high fees....but i think when the block reward is over..the fees will be more higher as miner will only depends on this fees for income to their service

Yes it is possible that transactions fees can get higher than bitcoins price but i don't think so that if this ever happen people would stop using bitcoins and wuld swift to other crypto currency like ethereum as it has fast transactions speed with low fees.

it will never be that high because you are forgetting about the "willingness" of people who are paying these fees. people are not going to pay $12 to make a bitcoin transaction, how are you expecting them to pay $34,000 to do it :D

at some point, it will be high for most people who will stop paying it. they will either pay a lower fee and wait or stop sending bitcoin all at once. this will lead to fees coming down or at least stay at some level.

Actually it could. There will be a technology called "lightning" that will hasten the transaction fees regarding bitcoins. With that said, transaction fees will increase but its not a big deal because one can always wait for a better transaction.

True. But don't forget about the "special" category of bitcoin users: the people that are also unwilling to pay high fees, but pay the high fees anyway as they are unaware about the blockchain being currently congested (Coinbase users, usually). They send bitcoin to a non-coinbase wallet then they get shocked why they only received far less bitcoin than the amount they sent. We see them usually complaining about it here and on Reddit. :D

I fear the fees will get so high that people will stop using bitcoin altogether

The rise in transaction fees is just ridiculous. I am pretty sure the fees are being increased just to deter bitcoin holders from selling. The fees were around $25 yesterday to send $100. And today the fees around $35! Wake up people, fees are going to continue to rise as prices rise. And since you need to pay the fees to send, it will start to cut into profits or at least represent some of the price rise.

I was just explaining in another thread that my fees in fact did reach a level that was almost the price of the bit coin I was sending in the first place. There’s got to be a way to circumvent some of these fees or this is a huge turn off for the bitcoin community. Some of the smaller community members are not able to freely move the bed going around the fees being This high.

This really sucks and the fee will eventually hinders bitcoin if not fixed. Recently the fee has increase 3-4 folds and it becomes ridiculous.

The fees are so high that Bitcoin will only become an investment instrument and not as it was planned for payment method.
However, I'm sure, that the developers will soon introduce updates to change this - I personally look forward to the Lightning Network. Time will show where it will hit..

Btc cash and other coins who claim a strong place in market are having a strategy to reduce the fees to minimum and I guess it will affect also btc by making it to consider a decrease in fees.

if this problem is not fixed, maybe the fee of sending bitcoin to another wallet will worth 0.001 or more.
Everytimethe price higher, the fee increase. So i think our income just ready to pay the fee. Our effort to trade bitcoi  is nothing when we pay high fee. I hope this fee problem can be solved soon because i love bitcoin anyway.

This is scary for small investors...  :'(

It seems like all the small investors are going to get "wiped out". Because the fees to transfer such small amounts of $1-$50 worth of BTC is now becoming more than the actual bitcoin is worth. BTC is becoming more like a Western Union (high fees to transfer money) for criminals and a value storage for people with large amounts of BTC. But it is no longer a feasible currency for the millions of people who own small amounts and have supported the growth. It is quite sad to see

So if the fees went up $10 in just one day...

$24 to $34.

How much are the fees going to be next week? I fear the fees will reach $1000s of dollars and it will force all the small investors out. No one will be able to sell their bitcoin because it will cost too much to do so

Great damage that makes the bitcoin ecosystem these high fees, the good thing is that there are some alternatives, if this is triggered we can use other crypto that in time the bitcoin fee will have to decrease.

the less supply the more difficult to be mined and the fee will be more expensive in my opinion,

Use Segwit - there are alternatives.

Yes Segwit appears to be one of the better solutions as of right now. The problem with that is it could still take approximately 15 hours and cost $5 at this point. That is more than the average fee of an ATM and there is a waiting time of 15 hours. For that reason I believe the current solutions aren't very effective for overcoming the $35 fee. It appears the fees will continue to go up. Not just because of congestion, but because it will cost more to mine bitcoin, and the fees need to cover that. What happens when the fees reach $100s of USD...

My guess would be the fees get up to $100s or even $1000s.

It was $10 a few days ago, $25 yesterday, $35 today... It appears to keep getting higher and higher as bitcoin prices go up

I dont think thats possible. Transaction fees are measured in satoshis per byte. The smaller the transaction amount and therefore the size, the smaller the fees will be.

The fees will still be too big but not over the amount of the transaction.

In present time I can’t say anything about it but right now the fee of bitcoin is crazy high even on small transactions .It’s really pain full that when you pay 35$ fee on small transaction I am still confused about it that will try to make a proper check and balance on fee like on 100000$ dollars transaction fee and 100$ dollar transaction fee will be same??I think Next year its fee will be increased and I will be more expensive for us.

Fee's should be % based. Someone sending 100 paying 5$ fee, same as someone sending 5$. Will only get higher, such a shame.

Bitcoin is not an appropriate choice for micro-transaction, that's why an altcoin like Litecoin, etc is co-existing with it, it's just a part of the cryptocurrencies ecosystem. I believe as soon as the lightning network in Bitcoin successfully implemented and all things are doing good it will greatly improve the transaction fee and the transaction time.

The fee is btc's rate and a certain percentage. If you want to reduce the fee, then the btc price must decrease first. At the current btc prices are very high at about $ 18k, the increase fee is also understandable. The thing you need to do is to selectively transact the transactions that should be made.

Yeah the fees and transaction speed are going badly and btc has to do something regarding this problem because so many other coins tend to use it against  btc, so i believe it will have some update on them.

You cant say how high the transaction fees will go as already they are too high and even the transaction speed is slow
Other cryptocurrency can use this against bitcoins to their advantage and this might be harmful for bitcoins
These two are the main disadvantages of bitcoin and the reason why people are not investing more in them

Yeah, those are serious disadvantages of the current BTC. I wonder how much segwit and LN will actually affect those problems, and when we will see their effect.

LN is around the corner it will curb stomp all the madness that is ongoing with BTC, er so I think and pray for at least lol. That should solve speed as well as the fee problem we are having :-\.

they are working on it to fix this. it's just not that easy. also I think miners like high fees.

There's always two sides to a coin! Non miners like a lot of us definitely will not like high transaction fees. While miners confirm like high fees so they can earn more in exchange for electrical fees.
But i believe they are definitely working on improving the speed and cost spent.

That is the reason but it doesn't change the face that how it became annoying. Even if you need to transfer little amount of btc, you have to pay huge amount of transaction fees. I hope it is solved somehow.

I wish I can talk to the key devs and opinion leaders around BTC and tell them to "wake the f*** up!" I am in Bitcoin since it was 30 usd and I can't see any adoption unless it is faster and cheaper than Visa. It's easy like that.

Liquidity - bad
Fees - high
Speed - slow

It's crippled and used as a Ponzi scheme right now.

it’s depends to you how you can manage it to get high fees to bitcoin

Fees are better now. I aid only 0.0003 btc and it took under 20 minutes to go through. Once one went through in a few minutes almost instant so it is better. Still it could be even better but let's see what happens. I'm just glad I don't have to pay 0.001 anymore. That was killing me.