Bitcoin Forum

I've been saying for a long time that transactions to/from exchanges generate almost all Bitcoin's transaction traffic, so for now those centralized services have a huge responsibility to optimize their own transactions by implementing SegWit, optimizing their fee estimations and batching their withdrawals, which would significantly lower fees for their customers and the whole network in general. Here's a picture (https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/1*9xPXGEOGI8zHPiV51XzCrg.png) that supports my theory - it's clear that there's correlation between fees and trading volume.

Now, recently Coinbase had a problem and they have turned off withdrawals for some time, and many people have noticed that this resulted in decrease of transactions traffic:

https://twitter.com/CivEkonom/status/951693684692701184

https://twitter.com/ziggamon/status/951700118830432257

https://twitter.com/JordanTuwiner/status/951698069967589376

So, it is estimated that Coinbase creates 58% of all Bitcoin transactions today, and because they still don't use SegWit and don't batch transactions, their customers are paying ridiculously high fees, which also raises the fees for all users of the network. Many people, myself included, believe that Coinbase is maliciously attacking Bitcoin in order to boost altcoins like Bcash and Ethereum and centralize Bitcoin by pushing for bigger blocks.

Lately all bitcoin holders have been complaining about very long transactions and about commission on them. Oftentimes I hear that transactions don't go through at all.

I think we should give preference to exchangers that use SegWit or even stop using the biggest exchangers that do not change to SegWit.

you are correct about SegWit but let us not forget that the programs for using SegWit are not ready yet. or for example BIP173 is still in "Proposed" status, it is not even final yet!

and i completely disagree with "batching withdrawals". you say this now because they keep repeating it on reddit. but the same people who are repeating this will start attacking Coinbase when they hold their withdrawal to "batch it with others"....

Many other exchanges and services have successfully integrated SegWit months, so lack of native support from Core client is not an excuse.


I'm the one who say it on reddit, and I don't see any problems with it, privacy is already pretty bad when you withdraw from centralized services, so reducing fees by 80% is a very good tradeoff. And I haven't seen anyone complaining about batching ever, so I don't know where are you getting that from.

Meanwhile, the fees have dropped to 20sat/byte, because the trading volume is decreasing, but huge backlogs are going to happen again if companies won't fix their software.

I'm not holding their side but Coinbase alone can't be the only one to blame for high fees. Or can't be even blamed at all despite some problems, poor support or Segwit implementation.
High fees is much more complex problem than this. Not everything could be so simplified.

It is like they don't care for their customers when they continue to do actions like this. Adopting Segwit surely can't be that hard I did everything by myself and it took a matter of minutes I am sure a multi million dollar company could take care of it quickly!

They do not want to activate the segwit addreses + they are the cancer of bitcoin.

They are only the best exchange and the best "wallet" in order to purchase bitcoin and ethereum directly, but they do not care.

They are just the best friends the roger ver, and they are always licking his ass.

I understand to Segwit adoption could reduce Bitcoin fees, but many people believe that behind Segwit project there are purpose to destroy Bitcoin. Maybe Coinbase knows it and It is on Bitcoin's side.

https://blog.coinbase.com/product-update-march-6th-1cd082dd5168
And finally Coinbase integrated SegWit fully. We'll see how situation with fees will change now...