Bitcoin Forum

Almost $1 Billion Worth of Bitcoins Stuck in Transaction Backlog
An incredible sum of more than 900,000 bitcoins, worth almost a billion dollars, was stuck at one point last night, waiting to move, due to limited transaction capacity. At the time of writing, more than 300,000 bitcoins remain stuck.
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/almost-1-billion-worth-bitcoins-stuck-transaction-backlog/

A more useful statistic would be the total amount of fees waiting to be collected by the miners.

Did you actually had a look at the article? Because there is an image posted stating the exact fee amount. Total fees at the time that image was posted was sitting at 18.22 BTC -- there you have your answer. As we speak, there are just under 290,000 BTC waiting to get confirmed, which is also noted in the article. Turns out it was just a temporary thing that gave them something to write about and to give their ads more shine.

Luke Jr says pay a $5 transaction fee and the transaction will go through every time.
That is one sure shot way to make sure that Bitcoin remains out of the reach of most people in developing countries.

Bitcoin is already not a tool for the very poor of the world anymore, with transaction fees being easily $0.20-$0.30 in normal circumstances. It will only become worse for these people as mining pools will more and more depend on income that they generate from fees as reward halvings go by. But I have to say that all the complaining that people do about their transactions not getting confirmed is a pain in the... If you just adapt to the situation and include a proper fee that is suited for the current situation, then your transactions get confirmed within 2 blocks. If you add a lower fee anyway, then don't complain about waiting a few hours.

It seems like he's unable to grasp the concept that if a tx goes in because of a greater fee, it goes in the block at the expense of another tx that goes out, and hence the number of stuck transactions remains exactly the same.

The only difference is who gets in the block: a small subset of all potential users.

So thats' what happened to the $20 worth of bitcoins went when I sent them.
They were reported as double spent today even though I didn't do anything different that I normally would do when i sent them the day before. :-\

Blockchain fail! >:(

No. He rathers says: Pray!

No pay...

And yes: Blockchain without bitcoin will fail.


 ;D

I guess Roger Ver refilled his spam wallets.

If you guys think this is because of block limitations, you're not seeing the big picture. There's been a recurring pattern here where transactions suddenly spike, and then we get mempool backlogs. That shit isn't "natural" or "organic". Its some jackhole pushing their agenda in the form of screwing over other people using a shared resource.

Top suspect is Mr-Bitcoin-Unlimited-Asshole-Ver, who has come out in opposition to the latest solution to scaling, which is Segregated Witness. He's tasted the power, and now wants his crap-coin to be a majority fork, and he'll play dirty pool to make that more attractive.

As far as paying fees blocking out some poor ditch-digger in Kuala Lampur, you've got to be fucking kidding me. Our use-case isn't every biped on the planet, its those that have some value to transmit in the first place. Amazonian jungle tribes and outback maori tribesmen need not apply -- nor do they give two shits.

that's an unacceptable cost for most. i have no use for something that charges $5 every single time it needs spending or moving. if this becomes the new norm, and it certainly isn't for now but it's already too expensive for modest expenditures, then i really don't see how bitcoin will thrive.

i remember someone on reddit recently demonstrating it to his girlfriend. they sent the equivalent of two dollars between each other and wound up with 80c. there's a potential user crossed off the list.

That's right. Paying more fees to push your transaction faster will only make more people trying to outbid each other, so that their transaction goes first. Also a $5 fee is ridiculously high. What if you want to send 20$ with a $5 fee? You'll come up with fees greater than what PayPal is charging.
I used to pay 0.0001, and the transactions always went through. I even checked it a few weeks ago and it took over 24h for a 0.0001 fee transaction to be confirmed, half of that for a fee of 0.0002 and a 0.0003 transaction came through in less than an hour.

I have already addressed this in my topic here: What the price would be if there is no Bitcoin scaling in next 5 years?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1771426.0;all

Just to summarize: First of all I'm huge BTC fan, had account here since 2013 and always been bullish - I don't want to draw any doom scenarios.

But if BTC ends up with higher fees higher than in a range of what an SMS costs in retail I don't think it's going to thrive to say the least - in my opinion the fee shouldn't be higher at anytime than 0.1 USD - whatever it takes..

that price is already long gone for most people and it ain't going down any time soon.

2014-02-04 is that the correct date mate? best time to accumulate as much as you can because we're moving towards the exclusive club of the riches where each BTC worth $10K and any successful transaction cost you $1 at least.
Do you know the biggest flaw of bitcoin distribution? you only get the fees if you are the block winner but if we could receive fees just by running a full node, then no problem of sorts.

However I know I'm being silly, no matter how many elevators we have each elevator can only carry a certain number of people though only the fastest one opens it's door when reached destination.

Then, bitcoin can't develop even farther to mass adoption, that will be ridiculous if someone wants to send/pay a cup of coffee worth $5 and he has to pay another $5. I agree that bitcoin fees shouldn't be higher than $0.1 or $1 depends on how much the transaction.
Anyway, we should add suitable fee for every transaction as wallet platforms already estimate it.

Missed these specs in the white paper.  Are they between the lines somewhere?

No, they aren't in the white paper you pedantic tool.

I agree! Bitcoin need to do something to fix this issue. I try to introduce people to bitcoin by showing mock transaction on either doge or ethereum or both and say to them that it is same with bitcoin, only the fees are more if you want to get your transaction confirmed faster  ;D

Bitcoin will surely be able to grow and possibly enjoy mass adoption, but not so much in the aspect of spending your coins on certain goods. Bitcoin's growth will come from people being interested in the store of value aspect, investment aspect, money transfer aspect, fact that people can anjoy financial freedom, etc. I think these features are more than enough to attract the attention of plenty of people in the coming years. As it is right now there is indeed no other option than to include proper fees with all our transactions. If certain people are really that stingy, then depending on the priority of getting their transaction confirmed, they could include a lower fee.

I had a quite similar experience when I transferred one Bitcoin to an exchange earlier this year, when the price had risen sharply. I sent the transaction with a minimum fee of 0.0001 and it took 28 hours to confirm the transaction because there were over 30k of transactions unconfirmed. This first showed me how vulnerable the system is if the number of transactions is too high. Bitcoin is far away of being a payment system for the masses in the current technical specification.

That is just the kind of news I don't want to read in mainstream media. We are lucky that it was only one of our circlejerk Bitcoin blogs. But this kind of news could slow down adoption as it's not exactly what newbies want to hear when they are interested in Bitcoin. They want to gain confidence, instead they're getting insecurity - "a currency that sometimes doesn't work? Do I really want that?"

And this kind of news will pop up more regularly if there isn't a solution to the scaling problem - and eventually there will be a mainstream newspaper that wants to benefit from this "story".

I felt so frustated with the recent transaction backlog that's been going
on for the past couple of weeks now. But how will bitcoin, being promoted
as a cheap payment method alternatives for doing micro-transaction?
How will it reach mass adoption with the current situation?

Others might shy away and will not use bitcoin as alternative payment.

Though I'm still clinging on hope that it will be mass adopted and enjoy by a lot of people globally!!!

For the first time in my BTC life I paid 300K satoshis for a transaction! I couldn't wait and so I paid that amount. Let's be honest, in this way BTC will never be seen for everyday spending. My tx fees are now more than the price of my morning coffee
Look at the one year mempool chart you will find a lot of interesting hints
https://blockchain.info/charts/mempool-size?timespan=1year

That is horrible. But, as of now it seems most of the pending transactions were got confirmations and the minimum optimum network fees also come down reasonably. I read viabtc offers some free services to push our transactions to get confirmations and some people shared it is a working way. Next time, if tx fees remain high, I will try them.

Blame the spammers that flood the mempool. This isn't organic growth causing problems, its a regular and habitual pattern of abuse that always seems to run out of money for a while until next cycle. Prime suspects are Roger Ver, ex-pat cheerleader for Bitcoin "Unlimited".

Also, 0.00000001 * 300,000 = 0.003 BTC * 1,009 (Bitstamp) == 3 bucks and change.

While high, it isn't the end of the world, either.

Again, just follow the surges in the mempool for likely actors.

though it's a often an artificial problem caused by assholes with an agenda, bitcoin doesn't deserve newbies if it can't deliver for them.

viabtc only have that many transactions to push (100 per block)
it is not a one time problem,rather a recurrent event when some a-holes artificially congest the network
the general bitcoin public lack of information about bitcoin fees doesn't help either
plus blockchain.info setting recommended dynamic fees below needed adds to continuous congestions  

Back in early 2013 when I started with using Bitcoin I was sending basically every transaction without any fees, and nearly all transactions were getting confirmed with the next block. In that situation you could say that Bitcoin was perfectly as tool for micro transactions. Now it's greatly different. Don't forget that Bitcoin has more to offer than just serving as currency tool.

I use Bitcoin mainly for the following purposes;

# Investments.
# Store of value.
# Transferring money from one place to another.
# To purchase digital goods with Bitcoin from the registrar I use.

I never used Bitcoin as micro transacting tool, so for me it's not a big deal.