Bitcoin Forum

I will write my story and why i think that bitcoin network need an block size ugprade asap.
I live in Greece Athens and recently i notice that a bike shop here in a center mall accepts bitcoin. I go with my bitcoin wallet to buy a bike from there

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.schildbach.wallet

https://www.facebook.com/bikeloungeathens

i was the first customere that will ever pay with bitcoin. The problem is that when i pay i choose to the wallet the normal fees and not the fast and i have to wait almost one hour without any confirmation!.
After one hour i give my id to the shop and i left and when i go to my car  i see at last that the payment has one confirm.
The fact now. This shop and the owners is new very new to bitcoin and as they say to me they are doing like an experiment. I dont think that they have see this experiment with any success.
In bitcoin community especially developer of bitcoin must admit that in this current situation bitcoin is not anymore for every day usage. We are not in 2013 or 2014 and the bitcoin network is every day overload.
In my opinion the block size must upgrade to 2mb asap and the wallet to drop all the low fees and has only the fast option fess.

I agree with the blocksize update (and for more than just 2mb), but the fees still have to be customizable. What if you just don't want to pay high fees?

you can still have the manual fee option. Is not acceptable anymore when you choose the "normal" fee to doing one hour for one single confirm.

No, the shop employee needs an upgrade. They should not make you wait for a confirmation!

For regular payments, like a cup of coffee, or a bike, you can accept zero-confirmation payments without any significant risk - MUCH lower than when accepting credit cards, for example.

When a customer pays with credit card, a shop owner does not make the customer wait until the transaction becomes irreversible (which is typically 6+ months for most Visa and MasterCards).
Similarly, they should not make a customer wait if they pay with Bitcoin either, even though the confirmation time or 'irreversibility time' is only 10 minutes on average.

If they're scared about double spends, they should use a Bitcoin payment provider. There are plenty, it's free of charge and then they have zero risk.

I know this but the confirmation time is not a problem?

So the solution is to simply drop the normal fee? I disagree, I think the solution is more of a rework to the normal fee. It should constantly query the blockchain for what should a "normal" fee be. I don't think it does this as of now, but honestly I'm not sure as I don't use the app. Last time I checked, it didn't.

where do you have this option in schildbach product ?
i use 3 time per month, this schildback wallet since 2 years ... and i can not choose the fees !

by the way, it's the seller that it must provide an QR-code to pay the invoice ... not you that you must pay a amount.

Why are people upset about fees?
Normally they are just $0.02 or $0.03

in the payment window in the menu option

There's not much backlogged tx'es now. They should be confirmed in time.
http://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

for that i say that the wallets must drop the "normal" and low fees

There's a whole lot to take on board if it's their first transaction but it's up to them to do their homework. Payment processor is the way forward indeed.

If a customer says 'hey, you don't have to wait for confirmations with this new type of money. Gimme the bike.' They're probably going to be a tad sceptical.

 

this was the payment that has doing more than an hour for a single confirm

https://www.biteasy.com/blockchain/transactions/a4faec0e037cf6397d4ad7a2cc32f49f96bade9d8bcf6aeed0668c3261eb3d9b

every day i read to reditt complains about long time waiting for normal confirmation in many cases that times it exceeds and 2-3 hours

not for a low amount like that unless that bike has cost you a lot, but in that case i'm sure you can wait for 1 confirmation

if this shop has a website he can at least experiment more online with bitcoin, which i think it would work better

i see them that was their first time in this kind of payment.

I agree with you,
Gavin has already implemented the upgrade in bitcoin XT, so I don't think what is the problem

Maybe mobile wallets (They're SPV wallets) aren't broadcasting tx'es in time.
Did you checked it? I'm paying 10k sats as fee and I've never waited that long (besides the spam attack).

How can i see this? Because when i sent the payment i see at once in blockchain.info.

Did you check it after making payment on blockchains? (Copy the tx id and search it on the chain).
If your mobile wallet is not synced at the payment time it may not be broadcasted and It may have take 2 hours to broadcast.
After making transaction then you should check it if it's broadcasted or not.

was not that problem because the wallet is online almost always and i have done and other payments and recieve and some payments the same day without this problem

There's another possibility. You've spent unconfirmed tx'es and waited for parent tx'es to be confirmed.

maybe.. because i sent to the wallet some bitcoin to spent them after to the shop. But i remember the payments was from above 10 confirmations each of them because i check them before i go to shop. Is now with 34 confirmations both of them.
Is this possible to keep this payments the last payment back?

why you touch this ?
on bitcoin core, i understand ... but not on a SPV system ...   :-X

because has three options one the default normal and two other one high and one low. If you choose the low fees you will need one life to complete the payment :P
Everyone can understand that this situation removes bitcoin from similar cash. with cash you can trade in seconds and bitcoin must be the same way if we need to have a e-cash currency.

I agree they should get on with the block increase, what's the holdup

Even if OP send with a high fee, the transaction would be confirmed in the next block, it is possible that the next block is still an hour or two hours away. No one know when the next block will be. This is how bitcoin works. Bitcoin needs an "upgrade", bigger blocks for example. But wait for confirmations is never going away.

I see this in reditt today

https://blockchain.info/tx/763a197e1c927a90f85391f204ef9080dbf0ae0bdc27ee02764fa46e07d45834

he pay his fees and has 2 days for a single confirm.

Here's a very good thread that tells you exactly what to do when your transaction get stuck.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=232979.0;all
It is the top sticky on "Tech Support" and qualifies as required reading.

The network upgrade already happened (RBF, CPFP)... The wallet you have has a feature called CPFP that will fix transactions that are stuck like yours.  All you had to do was use that feature and apply a high fee.

Here's the suggested fee page you should bookmark and check before sending transactions... always....
http://bitcoinexchangerate.org/fees

Also, here's an audio clip that might be of use to anyone else with stuck transactions
Andreas A. discusses the three ways to change a too-low-fee TX (https://soundcloud.com/mindtomatter/ltb-e234-doublespends#t=40m14s)

• Wait & Resend - Discussed above in this thread
• Replace By Fee (RBF) - Patch available to recompile Bitcoin-QT with RBF support.  Mining pool support is unknown (by me)
• Child Pays for Parent (CPFP) - Already implemented in Android Wallet and Eligius mining pool

EDIT: BTW... depending on what POS system the shop owner uses, confirms can be much less of a problem.  I believe that either bitPay or coinbase can fix some of the wait for confirm (checking...).  Also, any other POS system can easily add RBF or CPFP for incoming transactions.  If they did, as soon as a low fee TX is found on a network congested day, they could depoly RBF or CPFP to fish it out of the mempool.

I would prefer that more miners support RBF and CPFP, so in that regard, an "upgrade" would be nice.  But the blocksize debate is just the result of a TX spammer trying to prove a point (quite successfully).  RBF and CPFP cut through this mess... If only miners would see the profit potential in implementing them.

The problem I think are not the amount of fees but the time to wait and the unsecured status about your payment because if the payment is not confirmed then this mean that the payment is not made. Only after the confrmation the payment must be considered finished.

The block size for sure will be increased. It is a need for the regular use of payments. As about the fees there are two options. Use coinbase as a wallet and then you don't pay at all fee because is coinbase that pay for you or pay less fee and wait more to see your payment done.

Maybe it's just my imagination, but this does seem to take longer than it before.  Last year, I could buy some bitcoin from Coinbase and transfer it to my Mycelium bitcoin wallet and it usually took just a few minutes.  A couple weeks ago, I bought some more bitcoin from Coinbase and transferred it to my Mycelium wallet and it took over 3 hours before it showed up.  I was getting worried for a while there.

Look at http://bitcoinexchangerate.org/fees

That will telll you all you need to know.

When the blue line on the chart goes above 10³ then you need to put the highest fee on your TX that your wallet will allow.  If you do the math you can fine tune your fees better based on the chart... but you should always check the chart as long as we have a network spammer on the loose.

thx. case closed.

the blocksize is not the problem of OPs problem.

and the good news: we will increase the blocksize  :)

You really await them to give out a bike with zero confirmations? That's way to risky with all the ongoing spam. And bitcoin payment providers are not really helpful for bitcoin. At least when the coins are exchanged to fiat instantly.

I had the same problem, with a merchant I "converted" to take Bitcoin as a payment method. He complained at the start about the long confirmation times and I explained to

him that this was due to a spam attack and not the norm. He has calmed down since our first conversations, but he is still on the wire, if he wants to continue accepting

Bitcoin as a payment method. This is definitely hurting merchant adoption. I have also started to tell people to use services like Xapo for small transfers and micro payments to

reduce the load on the Blockchain.

It's not, as you've been told, everytime you pay with a credit card the average way to avoid any chargebacks is on average 6 months. Are you concerned that during 6 months after you pay with a credit card, you may suffer from non-confirmed phenomena? Nope, that's why confirmation time doesn't matter in Bitcoin. All transactions get eventually confirmed.