Mempool is now up to 25.5 MB with 22,200 transactions waiting.

[owm123]

So ppl ljust have to pay more for transactions if they want them done quickly. Now recommended value is  70 s/byte (https://tradeblock.com/bitcoin/). Just last week 40 s/byte where enough for quick confirmation.

[Lauda]

Just received small transaction from SUNDAY. It's moving ...

I've transacted last night and had 3 confirmations within 6 minutes. The network is still fine. People aren't using Bitcoin properly.

So ppl ljust have to pay more for transactions if they want them done quickly. Now recommended value is  70 s/byte (https://tradeblock.com/bitcoin/). Just last week 40 s/byte where enough for quick confirmation.

Interesting. I was expecting it to go down. Blockchain.info now shows about 5.5k unconfirmed transactions.

[1Referee]

I have been sending out quite a few transactions yesterday, all with a few of at least 0.0002BTC and they have been confirming nicely without problems. So far I don't experience any problems from the huge mountain of waiting transactions.

[zmhaha]

I have been sending out quite a few transactions yesterday, all with a few of at least 0.0002BTC and they have been confirming nicely without problems. So far I don't experience any problems from the huge mountain of waiting transactions.

You won't have any problems if you pay high enough fee. The problem is that the fees are constantly moving up!

[hv_]

I have been sending out quite a few transactions yesterday, all with a few of at least 0.0002BTC and they have been confirming nicely without problems. So far I don't experience any problems from the huge mountain of waiting transactions.

You won't have any problems if you pay high enough fee. The problem is that the fees are constantly moving up!

Sh...t ,  I need to go Long Western Union 

[pogress]

You won't have any problems if you pay high enough fee. The problem is that the fees are constantly moving up!

You can always pay much more than is recommended for fast confirmation, though the fees could skyrocket even faster if more people do this...

[hv_]

You won't have any problems if you pay high enough fee. The problem is that the fees are constantly moving up!

You can always pay much more than is recommended for fast confirmation, though the fees could skyrocket even faster if more people do this...

So - pls DEVs + miners count 1 + 1 together, ETH skyrocks BTC stalls - extrapolate to 2017 - goodbye BTC!

[1Referee]

I have been sending out quite a few transactions yesterday, all with a few of at least 0.0002BTC and they have been confirming nicely without problems. So far I don't experience any problems from the huge mountain of waiting transactions.

You won't have any problems if you pay high enough fee. The problem is that the fees are constantly moving up!

That's true, yes. It's basically an auction where people are constantly increasing their "bid" to win and get their transaction confirmed.

[Lauda]

So - pls DEVs + miners count 1 + 1 together, ETH skyrocks BTC stalls - extrapolate to 2017 - goodbye BTC!

Not really, no. You have to be a 'special' to support ETH (aside from solely wanting to profit).

You can always pay much more than is recommended for fast confirmation, though the fees could skyrocket even faster if more people do this...

I don't think that a lot of users are using custom fees. Either they don't pay attention to the fee included or they max out the setting in their client (e.g. slider to the right in Core).

I have been sending out quite a few transactions yesterday, all with a few of at least 0.0002BTC and they have been confirming nicely without problems.

It isn't just about the fee. You need to look at satoshis/byte. Depending on the size of the transaction such a fee might not be enough.

[sturle]

I have been sending out quite a few transactions yesterday, all with a few of at least 0.0002BTC and they have been confirming nicely without problems. So far I don't experience any problems from the huge mountain of waiting transactions.

You won't have any problems if you pay high enough fee. The problem is that the fees are constantly moving up!

The blocks aren't even full now.  There can only be two reasons for the fees are moving up:
1. The miners demand a higher fee to bother to include it in a block.
2. The spammer(s) pay higher fees.

There is nothing a normal user can do about any of the reasons, and a change of blocksize won't change anything either.

[owm123]

I have been sending out quite a few transactions yesterday, all with a few of at least 0.0002BTC and they have been confirming nicely without problems. So far I don't experience any problems from the huge mountain of waiting transactions.

You won't have any problems if you pay high enough fee. The problem is that the fees are constantly moving up!

The blocks aren't even full now.  There can only be two reasons for the fees are moving up:
1. The miners demand a higher fee to bother to include it in a block.
2. The spammer(s) pay higher fees.

There is nothing a normal user can do about any of the reasons, and a change of blocksize won't change anything either.

Its not true. Normal users can pay more. Its so simple. Just pay more, and you will have no problems.

[Denker]

You won't have any problems if you pay high enough fee. The problem is that the fees are constantly moving up!

You can always pay much more than is recommended for fast confirmation, though the fees could skyrocket even faster if more people do this...

So - pls DEVs + miners count 1 + 1 together, ETH skyrocks BTC stalls - extrapolate to 2017 - goodbye BTC!

Really?
Meh don't think so buddy!
Eth is down 7% right now and out of fuel.Expect even more dumping the next coming days.
Furthermore Bitcoin will progress and scale. I have no doubt about that.Like it or not.

[sturle]

I have been sending out quite a few transactions yesterday, all with a few of at least 0.0002BTC and they have been confirming nicely without problems. So far I don't experience any problems from the huge mountain of waiting transactions.

You won't have any problems if you pay high enough fee. The problem is that the fees are constantly moving up!

The blocks aren't even full now.  There can only be two reasons for the fees are moving up:
1. The miners demand a higher fee to bother to include it in a block.
2. The spammer(s) pay higher fees.

There is nothing a normal user can do about any of the reasons, and a change of blocksize won't change anything either.

Its not true. Normal users can pay more. Its so simple. Just pay more, and you will have no problems.

Paying more helps, but it still doesn't do anything about the reasons why low fee transactions won't confirm quickly.

[stan.distortion]

Yeah, doesn't look like zero-fee is credible at this stage :/ Some of the figures projected for capacity requirements, transactions per second... if transactions between machines is nothing more than a few lines of code then the projections based on things like visas current capabilities are way out, there's no upper limit if transactions cost nothing.

Something I was wondering about for another network was a fixed fee and that led to a laddered fee, a very low fixed fee to be included within n blocks with n varying depending on load, if n is 3 then 2x n for within 2, 3x n for the next block etc. Always thought a floating fee based on transaction size would help against bloat and laddering it like that would put a cap on the maximum fee and put the price for network load on time instead.

[sturle]

I ckecked my mempool right now, btw.  This mempool is limited to 1.5 GB, i.e. much larger than default.

Total size:  38057 transactions
Transactions paying less than 2 satoshi/byte in fees: 35152 (92.3%, 457 MB)

The rest will fit in a block.  Actually some of the less than 2 satoshi/byte transactions will fit as well.

Conclusion: Mempool size is irrelevant.  Anyone can fill up all mempools with free or almost free transactions.

[hv_]

You won't have any problems if you pay high enough fee. The problem is that the fees are constantly moving up!

You can always pay much more than is recommended for fast confirmation, though the fees could skyrocket even faster if more people do this...

So - pls DEVs + miners count 1 + 1 together, ETH skyrocks BTC stalls - extrapolate to 2017 - goodbye BTC!

Really?
Meh don't think so buddy!
Eth is down 7% right now and out of fuel.Expect even more dumping the next coming days.
Furthermore Bitcoin will progress and scale. I have no doubt about that.Like it or not.

Tried to put some pressure on ... June 2017 is just a joke sorry.

[Laosai]

I'm sorry for the question I'm going to ask but there is something I just can't understand.

Blocks are not at all all full.
So why are the tx in the mempool not filling the blocks which are not full?

Some mining pools, AntPool, BW and BTCC, get a lot of empty blocks, miners don't really need to include transactions.

What's the point of allowing void blocks to me mined? Isn't it a waste of time and energy?

Is there anything to win for the mining pools to not include transactions?

You can't force miners to include transactions. If you tried, they would just make a bunch of transactions that pay themselves.

Why would they do that?
Why not taking existing txs?

I mean is there is any reason for that?

[Laosai]

Isn't it the duty of miners to include maximum txs in blocks?

If blocks aren't full and txs are blocked, Btc seems as less attractive and reliable.

Hence investors will be less numerous and people will tend to use other altcoins.
Hence price will not rise as much.

I feel like I'm missing a really important point cause my reasoning is really too simple xD

[sgbett]

Isn't it the duty of miners to include maximum txs in blocks?

If blocks aren't full and txs are blocked, Btc seems as less attractive and reliable.

Hence investors will be less numerous and people will tend to use other altcoins.
Hence price will not rise as much.

I feel like I'm missing a really important point cause my reasoning is really too simple xD

The important point is that nobody is compelled to do anything, by anything other than their own best interests. The whole ecosystem relies on it. If any part of the ecosystem relies on the few then it is doomed to fail the same way as every other centrally planned system has, or will fail, due to "best intentions".

When a block is found it takes time before you get the details and adjust your mempool. If you sit doing nothing whilst you are waiting for that to happen then you have has power going to waste. To avoid this you start work on an empty block, then if you solve it you can publish and don't risk being orphaned.

This is because the block reward is much higher than potential transaction fees. As the ratio shifts, then there is more incentive not to mine empty blocks.

How mining empty blocks affects perception, and what if any effect this has on price are not easily measured. How many blocks you would get orphaned at 25BTC a pop by waiting is measurable and directly affects bottom line.

[VeritasSapere]

Fees are going to continue to go up until enough people are pushed out. That is the way such a "fee market" works. There is simply not enough capacity for everyone to transact regardless of the fee that is payed.

Again, a fee market does not fix this, a fee market simply priorities who is able to use Bitcoin and who is not able to use Bitcoin. There are losers in a fee market that become priced out.