Bitcoin Forum

greetings to all friends, last December was a pretty bad month for all bitcoin users and also those who actively transact with bitcoin because bitcoin fees were really suffocating, even the highest fee i saw reached $20, this caused a lot of topics to be discussed. discussing this phenomenon, a few minutes ago i accessed the mempool and found that the bitcoin fees listed there were very cheap when compared to last December 2023,
https://www.talkimg.com/images/2024/01/04/sGoGT.png

from this it can be concluded that changing bitcoin fees should not be an obstacle to bitcoin adoption.  For those who transact Bitcoin with small amounts, it's a good idea to pay attention to the time because you will definitely find the best time to process your Bitcoin transactions.

Funny enough, I actually just checked the price on mempool few minutes ago and also found that the price has reduced and I came to the notion that the massive withdrawal during this festive period might also be a contributory factor to why the price was so high. The price a few days back was wildly crazy as I was that transaction were posted on a staggering 200-210statoshi per fee and now after all the hurdles the price is currently down to a very low 17-34 stats, so what you said is notable because you can actually check to follow up to actually know when it's good to do your transaction to avoid high fee charges.

The fee was really something else over the past few weeks but I could not even get hold of how the fee was moving as I hardly conduct a transaction on the blockchain network this period, I don’t want my transaction to get stock and I have also lot have need to make any transaction on the bitcoin network.

If the fee can drop down like this and keep on going down then it will be a good thing for those who use bitcoin for payment on a daily basis, back then when the fee pump high like this did few months to the end of last year the fee after some time drop back down on its own but this last experience took longer than the previous one and I just hope we this one last a little bit longer and just the ordinals going for break of any kind.

Just a few days ago, I also made a statement somewhere, saying that this high transaction fee of Bitcoin will definitely reduce, which it did. Some Bitcoiners, mostly new investors, and also those that were spending just a small fraction of Bitcoin, could not actually bear the high transaction fee.

Some people used the lighting network to overcome the high fee, while those who don't have the LN, like myself, surfer the high transaction fee, and it almost led me to take the decision to not accept Bitcoin payments in my shop because customers were not ready to cover the fees. It's a good thing that the fee has reduced; it has also been an experience for some new Bitcoin investors. At least if this kind of high fee issue arises anytime in the future, they will know it's temporary and will not give ears to FUD.

Very nice, so what happened to make the fees go down?
Anyway good chance I hope the fees stay this low for a long time, I have postponed all my transactions and it looks like I will get them done before the fees go up again.

I won't agree with you. Changing Bitcoin fees is an obstacle to real adoption. We are unable to use Bitcoin as a payment method when fees increase. We can't wait to see when fees will be reduced and then make the transaction. For investors, fees won't be a factor; they will make transactions when fees are reasonable. But the real Bitcoin goal is to create a global payment solution without centralised involvement, where we are failing due to high fees. I tried a week ago to make a payment to Namechap, where I needed $17 in transaction fees to transfer $50. So it's clearly unrealistic and an obstacle to real adoption.

The last block that has been confirmed in the mempool with 2,458 transactions, the median fee is around 35 sat/vB.
https://talkimg.com/images/2024/01/04/sMZSZ.jpeg
The news I got from @ordinalswallet (https://twitter.com/ordinalswallet/status/1742747887274955229) tweet, the decrease in transaction fees was caused by BRC-20 being temporarily disabled.

The reduction in Bitcoin transaction fees is very beneficial for businesses that accept Bitcoin payments.
Hopefully it will no longer increase like what was experienced by hundreds.

After the block that I displayed, there are 3 subsequent blocks that have been confirmed.

The fees reduce because the congestion in the mempool has actually reduced. Looking at some of the few past blocks mined I didn’t see smaller transaction amounts like dust amounts which signifies that the ordinals and inscriptions users that have been disturbing us have reduce their mass transaction for now. Probably everything is going to be this way again until maybe after halving before we start seeing movement again because I believe they have just stopped to hodl for the future bull run after that we will see their transactions again.


I don’t think it was actually everyone that hated the high transaction fee, at least not the miners, they enjoyed every bit of it if I am being honest because if you look at the transaction fees of last month it’s total for a block is more than the block subsidy itself. I don’t think miners didn’t enjoy it

That the reason why I always check mempool all the time before doing a transaction to avoid paying high fee especially those who only have small amount of btc when doing transactions. I am sure you know that if you are transferring small amount of btc then almost all or even almost half will only be used for transaction fee if the fee is high that's why it's better to wait for the transaction fee to decrease before sending your btc.

I totally agree with you. the recent change in Bitcoin fees is really impacting its adoption in various ways. Even though it has temporarily reduced, we don't know how long it will stay that way. The root causes behind the initial increase in transaction fees haven't been resolved yet, so the reduction might be short-lived and could go back up unexpectedly.

During the period of high fees, many small investors might have felt frustrated and turned to investing in other cryptocurrencies instead of Bitcoin. Some businesses that previously accepted Bitcoin may have switched to alternative payment methods. This surely affects the adoption rate. A friend of mine who was eager to invest in Bitcoin last year got discouraged when he learned about the high transaction fees. He decided to wait until they came down. But do you think he'll invest the same amount he initially planned?

I have no idea if I'll feel happy about it or not because with such fees like this low now, we're already happy and celebrating about it. Where in fact that it should be lesser than that but I guess this is what we should be grateful for the new year that has come.

But we are becoming used to it and that's why it's a matter of how low it can go now compared to the past months that we've seen terribly high transaction fees and cost for us to make it.

Likely that the brcs are not having that much this time ,eh?

How to deal with the volatility of transaction fees?

I think we must more often to monitor the change of Bitcoin transaction fees if we have a plan to transfer our Bitcoin somewhere. Not sure how the transaction fees to be very volatile, I assume it is because the price of Bitcoin rising and dropping more massively nowadays. We also must understand that there will be more transactions lately because people are preparing their Bitcoin assets toward the Bitcoin halving and bullrun season.

Exactly the thing about bitcoin transaction fees is that they can change every day based on the situation, so it's exactly right that before you transact, you will check the transaction fee. You can use this link Bitcoin Average Transaction Fee (https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_fee) to check the current transaction fee. its better to do transaction with a large amount than frequent transaction, its a common sense every transaction you do you will need to pay the fee then its more practical to do one big transaction. If it's not urgent, then do this strategy, but if it is urgent, then you have no choice. You can use Light Network, but it's not practical to do LN if it's only for a specific person because you need to spend money to fund and open an LN channel. Anyway, it's up to you how you will deal with the transaction fee. You can choose to wait or to bear the fee.

That shit BRC20 did spam out the network
https://beincrypto.com/bitcoin-network-brc-20-token-fees-transaction-backlog/

Yeah, we've been suffering with those $20 fees few weeks ago on which it isnt really that appealing or nice but now we are seeing that it is really that tending to normalize again but still
>30sats/byte  is still high. I do miss the days when the fees are just playing around 1-2say/byte per transaction.A little bit more for us to wait for the
fees to go back low again.

I have tons of pending transactions wayback but now they are all confirmed. Wondering on when would be the next spam into the network?
BRC20 should be stopped.  :D

You can always use the "Lightning Network" if you want to use Bitcoin as a currency, because the transaction fees are much lower and the confirmation time is also much faster.

The congestion on the Blockchain are caused by things like Ordinals, but Miners push through those times and it gets much better over time. We are hoping the developers will find a way to reduce the "spam attacks" that are caused by those types of projects.

The high transaction fee is a major impediment to the use or adoption of Bitcoin. Transaction fees might have dropped now but will someone have to wait until the price is reduced before carrying out a transaction? Some persons use Bitcoin to make payments for business transactions and such delay could hamper the smooth running of the firm. I have also observed that transaction fees also reduce during certain hours of the day. Observing the timing of the transaction fees in the mempool to identify favourable hours might also be beneficial. But I know that Bitcoin will gain more adoption if the spamming of the network by these ordinal inscriptions is put to check.

That's the point, how long will this normal transaction fee last? The Bitcoin community has not found the solution to this spamming of the network by Bitcoin Ordinals, which means we might see another season of high fees very soon.

The mempool is still big and has a huge queue however what is different this time is that more of the transactions have lower fees than before.

There are tons of transactions now in the 20-50 sat area, before there was tons closer to the 100 sat area. So if you wanted a transaction confirmed quick, you had to spend at least 120-150 sat/byte. Now you can spend 50-60 sats and get it confirmed.

From yesterday to today many Bitcoin users may have been able to trade Bitcoin comfortably even though the transaction fees have not returned to normal levels but we have noticed that the transaction fees have come down significantly compared to other times. Mempool has fluctuated between 30 and 40 which has cost a user three to five dollars to transact Bitcoin whereas at other times it would have cost as much as $20 to $30. If Bitcoin's transaction fees were a little more normal then maybe users wouldn't have any more complaints about Bitcoin's excessive transaction fees. Since the transaction fees have come down a lot, we expect the transaction fees to return to a more normal level.

This is predictable. The fees will definitely return to 100% normal level soon, but the big issue here is that we have no idea when it will go back up again thanks to ordinals crap and miners focusing on their own profits(Understandable).

This is why I decided to completely switch to altcoins like LTC whose fees are always dust until the BTC fees mess gets sorted out completely.

actually it is not that bad in talking about Bitcoin because the price really climbed higher than what we had in the last 2 years but what is bad month is about the transaction fees that really sucks but if you are truly a cryptonians then you knew that it will not hinder us from transacting because we can convert the coins to other alts that has so much cheap to use as payment.
healso the problem is that we need to keep our Bitcoin safer first before the complete dumping happens so either to convert in stable coin so there is no need of transaction while waiting for chance to buy and sell.

Last December I wanted to carry out a Bitcoin transaction but the fee was too high I have to temporarily suspend the bit coin transactions with the mindset they I will do it sometimes this year when the price has reduced and is down, going my this your post I'm going to recheck again and see if I can now deliver my transaction with a fair fee.  Most persons I'm sure did stopped Bitcoin transactions due to the surge in the fee price but it's good to know it's now down .

It's good to know that the fee is going down!
The effect of the high fee was terrible and it's good to know that those running and looking for an alternative can now have peace of mind knowing that the fee is gradually going back to normal.

It's very good to see the high transaction fees go this low, the Brc-20 was a very negative effect on the Bitcoin blockchain that it lead to the use of alts for transactions.
Personally, I never had to complain even when the price was high because I never had Bitcoin to transact so I didn't complain. Maybe from now I could purchase a little for myself as the transaction fee is relatively low.

I just hope it doesn't jump back to a high price again!

Nah I want the fees back to high price again, if the fees is cheap, that means bull season won't happen.

So choose this, will you want Bitcoin price hit $100K and more but the fees is expensive or the price is not going nowhere but the fees is cheap?

The good thing of cheap fees is we can take this moment to consolidate inputs, so if the fees jump high, at least it won't really hurt you.

What I do is to always check the mempool immediately am about to initiate and send a transaction, this will give me the accurate and most recent fee that am going to get, there's another logic here, using the lowest priority is sometimes better than using the purging features when you place it on static, the fee you will be charged under low priority is lesser compared to when you're having your purging gee to be anything above 20 sat/vbyte, so we have to be logical when doing anything in other not to pay more when we intended to pay less.

     -   At the moment, it seems that the wave is calm again when it comes to the bitcoin fee amount in the bitcoin network where we will make withdrawal transactions. But we still need to monitor the mempool space so we can see or monitor if the fee has not gone up again or if it has continued to decrease again.

It's really different when there is no crisis in the bitcoin network, only the ordinals and inscriptions become a problem why there is an increase in the fee in the bitcoin network where there are more and more people who are annoyed by the behavior of the miners when it comes to the transaction charges demanded them.

The high bitcoin fee can't be an obstacle to bitcoin,  their are several time in the past that we had challenge like this but it didn't cause anything bad for bitcoin.  I don't think this very one will cause anything to the adoption of bitcoin. If you compare the recent transaction fee to that of some weeks ago you will see the fee is reducing, we should be expecting in a few time.  The fee will definitely come back to normal,  at this point let's just concentrate to hodl for the bull market.

sometimes we need to pause a little bit inorder to prevent such things happen. Also this is what I did once the transaction fee are too high then I will take pause and wait for the fee going to reduce cause if I am going to transfer my btc with the higher fee then the it's too bad for me. So it's better to take a pause and wait for the down fee. Anyways nowadays the transaction fee was friendly after being high it will reduce for a couple of hour's.

I agree with you, Op. It is true that expensive transaction fees should not be a barrier to investing in bitcoin. Because bitcoin transaction costs will definitely fall again and will not always be expensive. So when Bitcoin transaction fees are expensive, all it takes is waiting for the right momentum. The point is to be patient first, while collecting the money that will be invested in bitcoin. So when Bitcoin transaction fees are cheap again, then invest all the money have accumulated and the problem is solved. So if someone really intends to continue investing in bitcoin, it goes without saying that the transaction fees are expensive. Because you just have to wait, the transaction fees will be cheaper again.

Currently, the issue of Bitcoin fees is hindering the adoption of Bitcoin for everyone. Bitcoin fees are always volatile, just like the crypto market. Because of which many small traders are unable to transact with Bitcoin. Moreover, the transaction time of Bitcoin is also not fixed.

OP, you cannot cover the "sun with a finger", says a phrase when faced with a real problem, and the fees are paid according to what corresponds when you have to make a transaction, and in fact, as I commented in another post, compared to a regular fees from any bank (swift-SEPA) remain viable, however, adoption is not 100% related to the payment of a fee. Consequently, you have to pay the corresponding fee as long as Ordinals or whatever is external to the network "sabotages" the fee.

The fees isn't an obstacle for Bitcoin adoption, irrespective of what the fees are Bitcoin will still have adopters. Remember it was the volatility that was the concern that doubters were pointing to that it'll discouraged the adoption of Bitcoin and when they saw that the adoption of Bitcoin wasn't slowing down, they have turned to the fees as the challenge that Bitcoin will have but that won't be an issue.

The fees weren't this bad untill the ordinals hype came around, but they won't last forever as the hype will die soon and the fees will return to normal. It's quite a good thing the ordinals hype came during this time as it shows how the network will be congested when bitcoin starts getting used more, if something isn't been done about the block size as the high fees will return.

We can't be living in denial that something shouldn't be done. A solution that won't make us go against the decentralization of Bitcoin and the network has to be proposed and accepted to keep things going. Segwit is trying but that's not the permanent solutions, the the poor adoption of the solution should send the signal that more is needed to be accepted by the community.

To be honest, not only last December but until now the fees for Bitcoin transfers are also very high. In fact, it seems like it has jumped more than 5 times from before the fees increased so drastically. Basically, now when planning to transfer Bitcoin to another website, I've thought about it several times because the amount I have to pay is many times over... I thought it would just happen during the long holiday yesterday and it will be back to normal now. However, it turned out to be wrong, because up to this time it was still classified as very high for the fee.

Bitcoin transaction fees are not always this high and it's just an occasional occurrence that should never be an obstacle to long-term Bitcoin adoption. The majority of people who adopt Bitcoin use it for investment purposes and they buy and hold Bitcoins directly from exchanges. All they need to do is pay a one-time fee to send their assets from the exchange to their non-custodial wallets if they are using centralized exchanges and some would simply keep their assets within the exchanges.

So, these transaction fees are never a problem for the volatility of Bitcoin or are a hurdle in the way of global adoption. Nothing can stop Bitcoin from getting spread over time, no matter what happens, more people will get into Bitcoin and adopt it when they learn about it whether it's price is high or the transaction fees are high.

For those who regularly trade Bitcoin, the sudden increase in transaction fees is irritating. I have seen many people refrain from doing bitcoin transactions when mempool congestion was rampant. Compared to last December, it has started to decrease again, but not much. But hopefully it will become normal again. Since the market has ordinal effects, we must understand that congestion is common. But with time or patience everything can be fixed. There may be little problem here only for small transactions. But if it is accepted as normal for some time then I think the transaction fee can come down to bearable level.

I think it is not the right time to have small transactions as well as trade with Bitcoin with its current average transaction fee. I was planning to sell some Bitcoin and cash out last December for the upcoming holidays and new year, but seems like everyone has the same idea that causes the fee to skyrocket, I have read that the ordinals hype caused this fee. I really expect that the fee will decrease by the next month maybe give if a few weeks it will reach $10 below. Just hold your holdings and be patient they will decrease soon.

But I also don’t remember fees on the Bitcoin network increasing for such a long time before, so the current situation is a little different from previous cases. This will not significantly affect those who hold Bitcoin, but it will have a significant impact on those who use Bitcoin much more often for their needs.
Volatility is what attracts people to cryptocurrency, for them it is an opportunity to earn quick money. Nobody wants to buy some conservative asset and wait 10 years to make a profit, because it's boring, everyone wants quick money, and volatility can help achieve their goals.

If we do try out to compare on how many times that Bitcoin network did have such such clogged in the network in the past and as of todays? We can really say that it is really that more often because of that
ordinals on which it do continually spamming out the network which it did really affect into those people who do really make out active transactions in between their Bitcoin transactions on which it do really sucks
because fees are really that too high on which its never been worth for you to make some micro transactions due to that high fees on which not everyone would really be that willing on paying that.
This is why it would really be that best that you should really know on to seek for alternatives on which you could really be able to save up via with those cheap altcoins
that we do have on the market today.

If not then you can simply just sit and wait up for the things to go down but not all would really be having that patience because the waiting game is really just that too long
where pending transactions way too slow to confirm because of those spams.

This is still way too expensive. When I tried to move my sig camp earnings (8 inputs), at 30 sats/b it asks 0.0001563 btc fee from me and according to preev that's $6.85. Almost 7 bucks to move ~$360. That's 2%. If is probably fine if you can't use legacy banking or altcoins and btc is your only option... but for those who have other options, btc is the worst and most expensive choice now. I think I will wait a bit more to consolidate my inputs into one. I just don't want to pay more than 10 sats/b for any transaction. I don't care how long it'll take for a confirmation. 10 sats/b is my limit for a btc transaction and it is still expensive when you think about it. There are other reliable alts that do the same job for a lot less. Maybe it is time to increase the bottle neck a little bit. Or just get rid of the "feature" which is causing the spam.

It really doesn't make sense to adopt bitcoin when its transaction fees are higher than other alternatives - at least to me. Of course I'm not talking about other users - bitcoin is an option for anyone regardless of transaction fees.

Easy transactions and low transaction costs are some of the advantages of bitcoin compared to other currencies - so when transaction costs are very expensive ^{[beyond reasonable limits]} then adoption barriers can certainly occur. I'm not sure how many users are willing to pay hundreds of dollars in fees to send bitcoin as a means of payment when they want to pay for something - this is a hard thing to accept without considering it a problem.

Yeah, Sending transactions in advance with low fee works well on me. I usually use my Bitcoin on gambling purposes by the time the transaction fee is high. I usually set my transaction fee to lower rate and just wait it to confirm after 2 to 3 days when Bitcoin fee slow down.

The fee is now stable to 50sat/vB in average which is good but I doubt this will continue on weekdays since Bitcoin ordinals hype is still active until now due to the Bitcoin highly speculated ETF approval that makes Bitcoin chain still popular for traders that wants to have a hype profit.

Transaction fees on the Bitcoin network are affected by factors such as network congestion and block size. Navigating Bitcoin fees requires a similar understanding of cryptocurrency market dynamics. Many times users balance their fees by approx. But accepting bitcoin inherent volatility is critical to its ecosystem. However, due to the volatility of these Bitcoin fees, many small businesses are unable to transact through Bitcoin.

I don't know when and why this ordinals hype gets another push again. It seems to be coming in waves most of the time, but what triggers these waves is what I don't understand. If anyone has a clue, I would like to get a glimpse of what is going on and why so many ordinals are being pushed onto the blockchain or broadcasted.

Setting a limit for the transaction is good if you have the time to wait for the transaction to be confirmed, but it is painful if you have to send something now and it is stuck in your wallet. I think it can make sense these days to have some liquid crypto in a coin different from Bitcoin. Once the fees are high, swapping is also expensive.

Well there were plenty of Ordinals mints and inscription going  on in December and couple with the fact that it was a festive period contributed. The Ethereum network experience high fees several times during the holidays so it wasn't surprising to see on bitcoin. I'm kinda gutted because I paid more than twice the current fee 32 sats / vB for a 1-week old transaction that wasn't getting any confirmations because fees were at 100+ sats/vb.

The lowest I have seen Bitcoin transaction fees get to in recent times is around October 2023.

Yes, I think it start somewhere around the second week of December. The highest transaction fee you saw was just $20? I saw $80 if I’m not mistaken. I’m fond of using trust wallet so I checked there constantly and I noticed seeing $80, and sometimes it was lower. It was later that it dropped to $30, and then lower and lower to where we have it today. I know you set make the fee settings manually, but the fact that $80 transaction fee was shown by default, that’s unbelievable.

But in business and finance a delay in transaction due to whatever reason may cause millions of losses.  The fluctuating transaction fee is one of the hindrances of Bitcoin adoption.  Imagine having our transaction pending for days due to a fee surge,  it can incur us penalties and possible deal failure due to the delay caused by the unconfirmed transaction.  It isn't a good idea that we have to time sending transactions with Bitcoin just to have a cheaper fee.  Users of Bitcoin deserve to be able to send their BTC anytime without worrying about the possible fee surge.