We are paying miners ~$10,000, undeservedly

[The One]

And miners have no reason to stop while fees keep increasing, there will be no incentive for a compromise until bitcoin crashes and miners start losing money. It's unfortunate but its the reality we live in.

Not all miners are stupid.

Take Roll Royce, Aston Martin cars - few are produced in limited capacity for selected rich customers. Bitcoin now. Limited economy and usage - value of BTC will be limited. Miners income limited.

Or Ford, GM - mass production of cheap cars for everyone by increasing capacity. Bitcoin as it should be. Wider adoption and usage - value of BTC will go higher than the above limited value. Miners will then make more money.

[RodeoX]

If you think they are enriching themselves by charging fees that are higher than they have to be, then mine. No one can stop you from offering the same service for less. That is the system, nothing more is needed.

[TheWallStreetCrew]

i've just realized that the amount of total fee that we are paying miners because of the size of mempool these days has exceeded 2.5BTC and is nearing 3BTC.
that is about $5000 that miners are receiving undeservedly just because they are not adopting the scaling solution!

that is 24% of what they gain from block reward (12.5BTC=$2200)

You make it sound like the miners are incentivized not to adopt a solution. Is that the case?

[philipma1957]

Satoshi made the block reward smaller every 4 years until 0, so the transaction fees are designed to be more and more of the total % of block reward.
Of course maybe not so quickly, but this is unavoidable over time

the way it look like it now it seems that the total amount of fee that will be payed will slowly replace completely the total emission per day now at 1800 coins per day with 300 btc paid for fee, by the time the reward is 0, miners will have again 1800 coins in fee, i see nothing wrong with this

you two are a bit off topic here because this topic is all about today, May of 2017 when block reward is 12.5BTC not some far away future when block reward is very small like 0 for example and miners need fees to compensate for their costs.

Alt coins thrive due this .  I simply argue get a few alt coins.  they now handle little value payments.

At the moment the btc backlog has created huge alt coin values.  I have no issues with it at all.  Most btc is in wallets  the easiest way to get btc is mine an alt coin and convert it to btc.

Segwit = death to the game.

Bu or a fair scale method   will only cause a real face off with alt coins.

the easy way to play this is diversify into 2,3,4 other coins.

the hard way is to fix BTC  when it is not broken it is acting like a god and creating an entire universe of alt coins that have real value.

@ op you should simply realize growth goes beyond btc  and btc is the highway and infrastructure  that allows the growth and movement of all crypto coins.

[pooya87]

honestly, i feel it's out of control =/ Did Satoshi envision this?

Yes.

Once   a   predetermined   number   of   coins   have   entered
circulation, the incentive can transition entirely to transaction fees and be completely inflation
free.

If the mining fees are too high then one can open a mine and take their business. Bitcoin rewards work. do something=get something. If the price really is too high then you will win the competition.

By convention, the first transaction in a block is a special transaction that starts a new coin owned by the creator of the block. This adds an incentive for nodes to support the network, and provides a way to initially distribute coins into circulation, since there is no central authority to issue them. The steady addition of a constant of amount of new coins is analogous to gold miners expending resources to add gold to circulation. In our case, it is CPU time and electricity that is expended.

in other words that predetermined amount is when a couple of more halvings happened!

Alt coins thrive due this . At the moment the btc backlog has created huge alt coin values.

No they thrive because they are pumped. because people think the way you do.

they now handle little value payments.

payment to whom? nobody accepts them! there is no place that an altcoin can be used as payment! and it proves what i said above, bitcoin's big backlog has not caused the altcoin price rise because they are not used in real life to incentivize a real investment. the hype however has done it perfectly well.

[QuestionAuthority]

i've just realized that the amount of total fee that we are paying miners because of the size of mempool these days has exceeded 2.5BTC and is nearing 3BTC.
that is about $5000 that miners are receiving undeservedly just because they are not adopting the scaling solution!

that is 24% of what they gain from block reward (12.5BTC=$2200)

You make it sound like the miners are incentivized not to adopt a solution. Is that the case?

Yes, that's what he's getting at and he's right. If they can keep "off-chain" solutions from happening they win. Why they would block segwit is not so clear. Segwit has the short run potential to increase on-chain transactions and with it the number of fees collected.

[-ck]

Why they would block segwit is not so clear. Segwit has the short run potential to increase on-chain transactions and with it the number of fees collected.

Because they (wrongly) believe it is only being added to bitcoin to make lightning network possible and move all transactions off-chain.

Though that perception is finally being turned around and segwit no longer looks impossible.

[QuestionAuthority]

Why they would block segwit is not so clear. Segwit has the short run potential to increase on-chain transactions and with it the number of fees collected.

Because they (wrongly) believe it is only being added to bitcoin to make lightning network possible and move all transactions off-chain.

Though that perception is finally being turned around and segwit no longer looks impossible.

Ah, that makes sense then. They also wrongly believe that LN and other off-chain solutions will weaken their revenue. Anything that is a value add for Bitcoin and allows increased adoption into real untapped markets will necessarily make mining a more long term viable business. I have a feeling that the Asian farm owners are not exactly economics gurus.

[pinkflower]

Would it not be nice if everyone started to boycott them, by not paying these high fees.... this is the only reason why these miners are getting

away with this extortion. People should just be patient and just pay normal lower fees and ignore the rush and the people trying to jump the

queue by paying huge fees. We give them the power, by bending the knee and paying these high fees. 

That is a very good idea. Let us bring back the day of a BTC0.0001 fees for BTC. As users we should also conspire against them like how they conspire against the community. No more high fees, let everythng be back to normal.

[Tyrantt]

Would it not be nice if everyone started to boycott them, by not paying these high fees.... this is the only reason why these miners are getting

away with this extortion. People should just be patient and just pay normal lower fees and ignore the rush and the people trying to jump the

queue by paying huge fees. We give them the power, by bending the knee and paying these high fees. 

That is a very good idea. Let us bring back the day of a BTC0.0001 fees for BTC. As users we should also conspire against them like how they conspire against the community. No more high fees, let everythng be back to normal.

if you ask me, there should be fixed value of fees for a different vallue, like if you're sending between 0.01-0.020 the fee would be 0.0002 and I think it's pretty reasonable to pay for that, and then the fee would multiply by 2 for every value of 0.01x10, so for 0.1 it would be 0.0004 and just again, it seems pretty reasonable for me.

Would it not be nice if everyone started to boycott them, by not paying these high fees.... this is the only reason why these miners are getting

away with this extortion. People should just be patient and just pay normal lower fees and ignore the rush and the people trying to jump the

queue by paying huge fees. We give them the power, by bending the knee and paying these high fees. 

That is a very good idea. Let us bring back the day of a BTC0.0001 fees for BTC. As users we should also conspire against them like how they conspire against the community. No more high fees, let everythng be back to normal.

What would happen if all of a sudden a large portion of people start paying low fees? I don't think miners care that much as long as they're getting money from doing what are they doing now.

[TheWallStreetCrew]

Would it not be nice if everyone started to boycott them, by not paying these high fees.... this is the only reason why these miners are getting

away with this extortion. People should just be patient and just pay normal lower fees and ignore the rush and the people trying to jump the

queue by paying huge fees. We give them the power, by bending the knee and paying these high fees. 

That is a very good idea. Let us bring back the day of a BTC0.0001 fees for BTC. As users we should also conspire against them like how they conspire against the community. No more high fees, let everythng be back to normal.

Best idea i have heard so far. So how do we get started  because we cant just sit on our hands.

[Thekool1s]

if you ask me, there should be fixed value of fees for a different vallue, like if you're sending between 0.01-0.020 the fee would be 0.0002 and I think it's pretty reasonable to pay for that, and then the fee would multiply by 2 for every value of 0.01x10, so for 0.1 it would be 0.0004 and just again, it seems pretty reasonable for me.

Interesting idea.. I think this kind of system does makes sense if the miners dont want to lose out on the fees.. In the long run the ideal scenario would be to shift to LN but if that cant become a standard. A standard fee system could work.. It will bring back the micro transactions but the only problem is that why would miners include transactions with low fees.. They will instead go with the transactions which have high fees attached to them.. Then again this kind of scenario may arise..

[pinkflower]

Would it not be nice if everyone started to boycott them, by not paying these high fees.... this is the only reason why these miners are getting

away with this extortion. People should just be patient and just pay normal lower fees and ignore the rush and the people trying to jump the

queue by paying huge fees. We give them the power, by bending the knee and paying these high fees. 

That is a very good idea. Let us bring back the day of a BTC0.0001 fees for BTC. As users we should also conspire against them like how they conspire against the community. No more high fees, let everythng be back to normal.

if you ask me, there should be fixed value of fees for a different vallue, like if you're sending between 0.01-0.020 the fee would be 0.0002 and I think it's pretty reasonable to pay for that, and then the fee would multiply by 2 for every value of 0.01x10, so for 0.1 it would be 0.0004 and just again, it seems pretty reasonable for me.

Isnt that what were doing already? Fees are measured and adjusted by satoshis per byte. Your example uses amounts but the current system uses the size of the transactions because the blocks have limited space.

As a Hero member you should already know this.

[pooya87]

about a month later and we are paying them much higher!
total fees are 3BTC up to 4BTC in total in each block!
that is $8600-$11500 extra undeserved income for them just because they are blocking every solution and users are competing with each other over space and like always there is a spam attack...

https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000015950a01438458134420c916de12d2f7a678e63d18f0b2a

[Dudeperfect]

Yes, I agree that the transaction fees are getting higher and I am sure we will lose the user base if the fees will keep increasing at this rate. There are many businesses and companies out there who want to use bitcoin as a payment method for their transactions but since the fees are dynamic and the price of bitcoin is volatile, they are staying away from it. I believe that if we can find a concrete solution on this issue then the price will touch $5K mark within a year.

[1Referee]

If it was them "just" blocking Segwit from activating, then things would be less worse, but they are largely responsible for the major influx of rubbish transactions that they use to choke the network, and via that way artificially boost their income through fees. In that regard, these bastards are willingly holding back Bitcoin's growth just for their own financial gains. If it is up to the miners, they will prefer this situation to remain for plenty of more months as they get more income through fees than ever before.

[anheqiaobei]

Higher fees Desperate things
High shipping costs are a big problem for bitcoins