Bitcoin is too slow

[rizzlarolla]

The bitcoin is going to slow and that is only because there are to many people who are just holding them and i know that for sure. Because if we all spent some coins the price will rise allot trust me.

You are a complete idiot.

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[Zaun]

Transactions are too slow. Will someone fix it or do we need a better coin?

I have never experienced any problems with the transactions and it always worked pretty fast with me. I do not have any complaints about Bitcoin. 

[rizzlarolla]

Such bad advice on fees from staff here.

If you pay more than the minimum relay fee (currently 0.00005), and a little bit more than the estimated fee for confirmation in 25 blocks (estimatefee 25) then your transaction will get included in a block within an hour or two, almost guaranteed.

"almost guaranteed". In the past , yes. Now and in the near future, probably not.
And if it is not, then your transaction is stuck for as long as it takes.
This is exactly the sort of fee Lauda calls spam. (or at least tells people it is not a high enough fee, in most cases)
Fine if you don't mind waiting it out.

Free transactions (the ones without a tx fee) still get included provided the priority is very high.

Most coins of course will not have this high priority rating.
Free transactions are (usually) spam. (ask Lauda)
Most free transactions will not get broadcast, or will be dropped from the mempool in a few days.

Anyone using Dabs advise will run into delays.
And Lauda will tell you it is your own fault for not paying correct fees.

[iamnotback]

None of the posts in this thread so far have really explained the problem.

Bitcoin's 0-confirmation transactions have three major flaws:

1. They are too slow for certain types of microtransactions such as clicking the mouse to access some Internet resource. No one wants to wait 5+ seconds every time they click the mouse. The reliability against a double-spend increases as propagation of the transactions across the full node network completes. This depends on the weighted average of hashrate and the slowest latency on the network. Thus the way to improve this speed is to centralize mining, which is probably why ButtCON has been getting faster as mining has essentially become entirely centralized and only an illusion of decentralization remains.

One might argue that no one will bother to double-spend such small valued instant microtransactions, but in fact these are the most vulnerable to double-spending because the the payee can't delay the access for many seconds, the payer can't get caught in the virtual act unlike retail and because there might be an incentive to sabotage an Internet merchant or service (e.g. competing social networks attacking each other covertly, politically/religiously motivated attack, etc).

Some references:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3ze0sz/why_bitcoin_0_confirmation_transactions_are_safe/
https://chrispacia.wordpress.com/2015/11/29/on-zero-confirmation-transactions/
https://blog.blockcypher.com/from-zero-to-hero-bitcoin-transactions-in-8-seconds-7c9edcb3b734

2. The Bitcoin block chain can't scale to handle the level of transaction rate that microtransactions would require without being centralized.

3. It seems the core developers may be intent on implementing Replace-by-Fee and destroying 0-confirmations, although RBF will apparently be opt-in so it wouldn't destroy all 0-confirmations. Although RBF seems to have a legitimate use-case for being able to prevent transactions from getting stuck if the fee ends up being too low in a free market competition for setting transaction fees:

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-core-developer-jonas-schnelli-explains-controversial-transaction-replace-by-fee-feature-1454343556

Also the collusion between Blockstream and the Chinese mining cartel potentially breaks 0-confirmations by not increasing the block size sufficiently to handle all transactions that have a sufficient fee, which by definition is not spam. Which btw may incentivize payers to use RBF. Perhaps Blockstream may be trying to push towards Lightning Networks, which is also flawed and can't scale decentralized either.


Note many people may think that instant microtransactions are irrelevant, but when that ends up being the future economy of the Knowledge Age and displaces the retail and tangible economy by several orders-of-magnitude, then the dinosaur (Model T) will be Bitcoin.

[Lauda]

That is exactly what I was trying to tell pereira. It was his bad not mine.

I never said that it was your 'bad'. I was just adding my input to that view.

Confirmations take 10 minutes on average.

I doubt that irrelevant comment is even true. Link please?

1) It is not irrelevant. 2) It is true. Unless you want to include irrational transactions (unusual size, unusually low fee in comparison to the recommended one) in your calculation.

Blocks take 10 minute on average to find.

Exactly, and this is why we tell people that confirmations take 10 minutes on average per confirmation.

Free transactions are (usually) spam. (ask Lauda)

Not necessarily all, but most are. Whoever complains about the network when they've included a fee that is several times lower than recommended is very ignorant (the nicest way to put this). The only time when this might work is if there are practically almost no transactions in the mempool.

And Lauda will tell you it is your own fault for not paying correct fees.

I stand by those words. If this wasn't the case, everyone would be affected (which is not the case here).

[Mr.grin]

Transactions are too slow. Will someone fix it or do we need a better coin?

I have never experienced any problems with the transactions and it always worked pretty fast with me. I do not have any complaints about Bitcoin. 

I also have no problem with that, I think there is a problem in the way, but I did not know it. This week I am doing transactions with bitcoin, but I did not get into trouble, because the transaction took place fairly quickly and satisfactorily

[RoommateAgreement]

you should compare the bitcoin transaction speed not talk about it absolutely.

when you compare bitcoin with other payment methods and also check the average time not a single bad luck or low fee timing you see that it is fast.

[Cryptonitex]

Bitcoin transactions are the fastest global transactions ever created in the history of history. Only an "in-person" cash transfer is faster. For comparison, a credit card takes 2 - 60 days if all goes well. No "fix" is needed as it works great.

If we're talking about some alt coins, they can get it done in less than a minute. So... Considerably the OP is right and wrong at the same time. BitCoin is fast, but there's faster.

[Dabs]

Aw crap. Another staff member talking bollocks!

...

"the estimate moves higher." Doh!

Regardless of what rank I have, what did I say that is not true or incorrect? Did you mean "nonsense" or you just have contempt for the facts?

It is what it is. You either work with it, or find a way around it. The simple solution, for most end users, is to pay a fee. Or to wait.

Anyone using Dabs advise will run into delays.

If you pay higher, your delay is less. If you pay less or none, then you will have to wait.


Nothing is going to change anything I said, I was simply stating how it is now.

[Dabs]

Bitcoin's 0-confirmation transactions have three major flaws:

1. They are too slow for certain types of microtransactions such as clicking the mouse to access some Internet resource.
...

Note many people may think that instant microtransactions are irrelevant, but when that ends up being the future economy of the Knowledge Age and displaces the retail and tangible economy by several orders-of-magnitude, then the dinosaur (Model T) will be Bitcoin.

Bitcoin was never meant for these types of microtransactions. That's where alt coins and lightning and other off-chain transactions come in. Or giant online wallets. Or whatever.

[iamnotback]

Bitcoin's 0-confirmation transactions have three major flaws:

1. They are too slow for certain types of microtransactions such as clicking the mouse to access some Internet resource.
...

Note many people may think that instant microtransactions are irrelevant, but when that ends up being the future economy of the Knowledge Age and displaces the retail and tangible economy by several orders-of-magnitude, then the dinosaur (Model T) will be Bitcoin.

Bitcoin was never meant for these types of microtransactions. That's where alt coins and lightning and other off-chain transactions come in. Or giant online wallets. Or whatever.

So you've answered the OP's question about do we need another coin.

[rizzlarolla]

That is exactly what I was trying to tell pereira. It was his bad not mine.

I never said that it was your 'bad'. I was just adding my input to that view.

Ok, you were saying it was pereiras bad, like I said.

Confirmations take 10 minutes on average.

I doubt that irrelevant comment is even true. Link please?

1) It is not irrelevant. 2) It is true. Unless you want to include irrational transactions (unusual size, unusually low fee in comparison to the recommended one) in your calculation.

Average block time is not the same as average transaction time.
Unless you exclude all transactions that take longer than 10 minutes you say?

Blocks take 10 minute on average to find.

Exactly, and this is why we tell people that confirmations take 10 minutes on average per confirmation.

You really mean if you pay a high enough fee to be included into the next block, the average comfirmation time would be 10 minutes?
Not the same thing
("we", who else is giving this false info, other staff?)

Free transactions are (usually) spam. (ask Lauda)

Not necessarily all, but most are. Whoever complains about the network when they've included a fee that is several times lower than recommended is very ignorant (the nicest way to put this). The only time when this might work is if there are practically almost no transactions in the mempool.

I agree. So why are staff telling users to do this?

And Lauda will tell you it is your own fault for not paying correct fees.

I stand by those words. If this wasn't the case, everyone would be affected (which is not the case here).

And I agree. (that the fee was to low to get into a "core restricted" 1mb block)
So why are staff telling people to use a low fee and hope for the best?

[rizzlarolla]

....If you pay higher, your delay is less. If you pay less or none, then you will have to wait.

Oh, I see your depth of knowledge on the subject now.
Thanks for contributing.

[Lauda]

Average block time is not the same as average transaction time. Unless you exclude all transactions that take longer than 10 minutes you say?

I never said that they were the same thing (re-read my post). Transactions take a few seconds at most, and blocks are solved (on average) every 10 minutes.

Exactly, and this is why we tell people that confirmations take 10 minutes on average per confirmation.

You really mean if you pay a high enough fee to be included into the next block, the average comfirmation time would be 10 minutes?

No. I mean if you properly use Bitcoin (which involves using the proper fees and software which is not outdated) you will get a confirmation every 10 minutes (on average).

("we", who else is giving this false info, other staff?)

Anyone that isn't spamming this thread (and others) with useless posts and knows a bit more about Bitcoin.

I agree. So why are staff telling users to do this?
-snip-
So why are staff telling people to use a low fee and hope for the best?

Being a staff member does not imply having a high knowledge of the underlying technology that Bitcoin uses (Note: I'm not saying that dabs does not). I don't understand the point behind his post. This part of his post:

If you pay more than the minimum relay fee (currently 0.00005), and a little bit more than the estimated fee for confirmation in 25 blocks (estimatefee 25) then your transaction will get included in a block within an hour or two, almost guaranteed.

is false.

[rizzlarolla]

Aw crap. Another staff member talking bollocks!

Regardless of what rank I have, what did I say that is not true or incorrect? Did you mean "nonsense" or you just have contempt for the facts?

This part of his post:

If you pay more than the minimum relay fee (currently 0.00005), and a little bit more than the estimated fee for confirmation in 25 blocks (estimatefee 25) then your transaction will get included in a block within an hour or two, almost guaranteed.

is false.

Thanks Lauda.

[Dabs]

Being a staff member does not imply having a high knowledge of the underlying technology that Bitcoin uses (Note: I'm not saying that dabs does not). I don't understand the point behind his post. This part of his post:

If you pay more than the minimum relay fee (currently 0.00005), and a little bit more than the estimated fee for confirmation in 25 blocks (estimatefee 25) then your transaction will get included in a block within an hour or two, almost guaranteed.

is false.

Sorry about that. There was some confusion on my part. estimatefee 25 means exactly that, it will probably confirm in 25 blocks from the time you send the transaction. It has been my experience that most of my own transactions confirm in less than 25 blocks, but some of them have indeed taken longer.

If you want a high probability of confirmation within the hour, you use a fee higher than estimatefee 6 gives you.

For most transactions that I have dealt with, anything higher than estimatefee 25 worked. For escrow transactions, since it is part of my fee, I make the buyer or seller pay for the tx fee and intentionally make it higher such that it confirms in 1 or 2 blocks. I also do not proceed with the the escrow until there is at least 1 confirmation to the escrow address, regardless of tx fee, so that part is up to the sender.

The only time I've had to use what I consider microtransactions was when I used to play Satoshidice and the minimum bet was 0.01 and I included a fee of 0.001 but that was a long time ago. I've only discovered bitcoin in 2012, so there are many people who know a lot more about this than I do.

I'm just another user of bitcoin.

[BigBoom3599]

"Just pay a higher fee" isn't a proper solution though, if we would all pay the recommended fee, than that fee would keep on increasing, because there can only be so many transactions in a block, eventually the fee will become high enough that people will start to move over to other blockchains with proper scaling solutions.

You can't fix a capacity problem with fees. If there are only 20 seats on the bus and 25 people that want to ride there is no ticket price where everyone gets a seat. You don't even know how much you have to over pay to get a seat. This is a bus business where customers are going to leave... especially when they discover there are many alt-bus companies that do the same thing better and for less and without capacity restraints.

[rizzlarolla]

"Just pay a higher fee" isn't a proper solution though, if we would all pay the recommended fee, than that fee would keep on increasing, because there can only be so many transactions in a block, eventually the fee will become high enough that people will start to move over to other blockchains with proper scaling solutions.

You can't fix a capacity problem with fees. If there are only 20 seats on the bus and 25 people that want to ride there is no ticket price where everyone gets a seat. You don't even know how much you have to over pay to get a seat. This is a bus business where customers are going to leave... especially when they discover there are many alt-bus companies that do the same thing better and for less and without capacity restraints.

Thanks. How hard to understand that can that be?

And to think this was "planned" by Core. This is Cores dynamic fee market. It is not some f*** up!
And it will get worse and worse every day, until segwit is rushed out.

More likely, with the ensuing loss of faith in Core, a sudden hard fork to bigger blocks.
(For the median transaction size of 333 bytes, this results in a fee of 26,640 satoshis (0.17$).

[b0art]

"Just pay a higher fee" isn't a proper solution though, if we would all pay the recommended fee, than that fee would keep on increasing, because there can only be so many transactions in a block, eventually the fee will become high enough that people will start to move over to other blockchains with proper scaling solutions.

You can't fix a capacity problem with fees. If there are only 20 seats on the bus and 25 people that want to ride there is no ticket price where everyone gets a seat. You don't even know how much you have to over pay to get a seat. This is a bus business where customers are going to leave... especially when they discover there are many alt-bus companies that do the same thing better and for less and without capacity restraints.

i never thought of it like this but then why has there because such a crazy spike in the mempool graph in last day or so? it's not like everyone woke up and decided to start paying higher fee

https://bitcoinfees.github.io/#1d

[Lauda]

Sorry about that. There was some confusion on my part. estimatefee 25 means exactly that, it will probably confirm in 25 blocks from the time you send the transaction. It has been my experience that most of my own transactions confirm in less than 25 blocks, but some of them have indeed taken longer.

Well, not necessarily. It gives you an estimate probability, but combined with the flat relay fee it would end up with a flat fee. What I mean is, would this really work with transactions of any size (hint: It won't). A very important factor is the satoshis/byte included fee factor. If it is lower than the recommended one, then: now ---time---> confirmation - will increase.

"Just pay a higher fee" isn't a proper solution though, if we would all pay the recommended fee, than that fee would keep on increasing, because there can only be so many transactions in a block, eventually the fee will become high enough that

Nobody claimed it was a 'proper' solution to some problem which was not the topic here. It comes down to whether the transaction needs the priority or doesn't.

people will start to move over to other blockchains with proper scaling solutions.

There are no blockchains that are decentralized with what you've just described.

And it will get worse and worse every day, until segwit is rushed out.

Segwit is not being rushed out. This is probably the biggest review of any change to-date.

More likely, with the ensuing loss of faith in Core, a sudden hard fork to bigger blocks.

Only irrational and greedy baboons would rush into a HF.