Is the mempool being jammed solid for a few days now good or bad for the price?

[silverbox]

Transactions are going to start dropping out of the mempool if this shit keeps up..

[RyNinDaCleM]

Transactions are going to start dropping out of the mempool if this shit keeps up..

To hear some say it, Honey badger don't give a fuck.
Will it stop the rally? No idea!
Is it something that needs to be addressed? Certainly

[alyssa85]

It's bad for the price. Everytime there is a backlog, it reminds people of the whole blocksize thing and what Mike Hearn said.

[MatTheCat]

It's bad for the price. Everytime there is a backlog, it reminds people of the whole blocksize thing and what Mike Hearn said.

Would the Mempool being jammed have anything to do with a massive increase in BTC transactions, which might imply that a shit ton of BTC have come out of hibernation and are en-transit to exchanges?

[AZwarel]

Pay the fee.

(right now, with 18,517 tx in wait, the 100% possibility for next block inclusion is 0,0005 BTC which is $0,341, versus the "usual" $0,0682).

Use an intelligent wallet, scanning the average fee atm, and no hold up. I have never been delayed, all my transactions went through to the first possible block. All this mempool backlog is an unnecessary FUD, anyone who pays the actual required fee gets in the first block.

[BitAurum]

Pay the fee.

(right now, with 18,517 tx in wait, the 100% possibility for next block inclusion is 0,0005 BTC which is $0,341, versus the "usual" $0,0682).

Use an intelligent wallet, scanning the average fee atm, and no hold up. I have never been delayed, all my transactions went through to the first possible block. All this mempool backlog is an unnecessary FUD, anyone who pays the actual required fee gets in the first block.

I agree with you.

If you pay the recommended transaction fee you wouldn't have to worry about the mempool backlog.

[Foxpup]

There's no "the" mempool. Every node has its own individual mempool, and its own policy on how many and which transactions to store and for how long.

[silverbox]

It's getting worse.  22 Mb mempool now.

[European Central Bank]

Pay the fee.

(right now, with 18,517 tx in wait, the 100% possibility for next block inclusion is 0,0005 BTC which is $0,341, versus the "usual" $0,0682).

34 cents for the honor of making a guaranteed transaction? If that keeps up then I hope some merchants start accepting LTC. I'm not willing to pay that.

[alani123]

Pay the fee.

(right now, with 18,517 tx in wait, the 100% possibility for next block inclusion is 0,0005 BTC which is $0,341, versus the "usual" $0,0682).

34 cents for the honor of making a guaranteed transaction? If that keeps up then I hope some merchants start accepting LTC. I'm not willing to pay that.

If this is a spam attach, which I wouldn't find unlikely, attackers are also paying a high price to flood the network. It sure is the right time to make transactions more expensive for everyone in terms of FIAT value as the price has gone up but it certainly won't last long. Mempool size in my node is already almost 30% down from yesterday.  

[chopstick]

Pay the fee.

(right now, with 18,517 tx in wait, the 100% possibility for next block inclusion is 0,0005 BTC which is $0,341, versus the "usual" $0,0682).

34 cents for the honor of making a guaranteed transaction? If that keeps up then I hope some merchants start accepting LTC. I'm not willing to pay that.

If this is a spam attach, which I wouldn't find unlikely, attackers are also paying a high price to flood the network. It sure is the right time to make transactions more expensive for everyone in terms of FIAT value as the price has gone up but it certainly won't last long. Mempool size in my node is already almost 30% down from yesterday.  

It's not a spam attack. People are using bitcoin thanks to the increased price. Interest has increased. Bitcoin can't scale because certain people *cough* have refused to implement a blocksize increase in favor of their own egos and convoluted plans. To address the OP, it's obviously not good, and if Bitcoin could scale I'm willing to bet the price would have broken over 1k by now.

[Herbert2020]

Pay the fee.

(right now, with 18,517 tx in wait, the 100% possibility for next block inclusion is 0,0005 BTC which is $0,341, versus the "usual" $0,0682).

34 cents for the honor of making a guaranteed transaction? If that keeps up then I hope some merchants start accepting LTC. I'm not willing to pay that.

If this is a spam attach, which I wouldn't find unlikely, attackers are also paying a high price to flood the network. It sure is the right time to make transactions more expensive for everyone in terms of FIAT value as the price has gone up but it certainly won't last long. Mempool size in my node is already almost 30% down from yesterday. 

It's not a spam attack. People are using bitcoin thanks to the increased price. Interest has increased. Bitcoin can't scale because certain people *cough* have refused to implement a blocksize increase in favor of their own egos and convoluted plans. To address the OP, it's obviously not good, and if Bitcoin could scale I'm willing to bet the price would have broken over 1k by now.

yeah it is not a spam attack but in addition to what you said about the people's interest i think the reason for so many unconfirmed transactions is the long time difference between finding blocks.
as i am writing this comment, last block (416413) was found 44 minutes ago, and if you ask me only 27K unconfirmed is so small in this time!

[Spaceman_Spiff]

Pay the fee.

(right now, with 18,517 tx in wait, the 100% possibility for next block inclusion is 0,0005 BTC which is $0,341, versus the "usual" $0,0682).

Use an intelligent wallet, scanning the average fee atm, and no hold up. I have never been delayed, all my transactions went through to the first possible block. All this mempool backlog is an unnecessary FUD, anyone who pays the actual required fee gets in the first block.

Sure, for now it works.  But how long until the fee gets really high?  Basically the fee will rise until a sufficient amount of people get squeezed out because the fee is getting too painful for them to be using bitcoin.  High net worth individuals and businesses doing international transactions won't have a problem with this, so certainly bitcoin will keep on being used for a long time.  But I get irritated when I read this 'sack up and pay the damn fee whiners, everything is fine attitude' (not necessarily yours to that degree, but certain members of the community have this stance).  There is not a reasonable fee to be paid whereby everyone's transaction will go through, the amount of transactions are limited.  I really appreciate all the work Core is doing for scaling, and I think that maintaining (or in fact archieving) a significant degree of decentralization is paramount.  However, I get irritated when people act like there is no problem, and that paying 10 bucks per transaction in the future is fine.  So what, is bitcoin only meant for the 1% and the techies and libertarians who jumped on board quick enough to be wealthy now?  The rest can have their savings eroded by central banks ?  I hope bitcoin scales as quickly as technologically possible (especially hoping for LN to become reality quickly).

[chopstick]

Blockstream Core wants to make it so that Bitcoin fees will be comparable in price to sending a Bank Wire ($10-20) in the long run. Unless you use the unproven and untested Lightning Network, of course!

Considering that a majority of their $75M funding came from donors affiliated with the Central Banks, it is not surprising they would try to force this on all of us.

We will never reach the point where fees are $10-20. People will have switched to altcoins by then.

[silverbox]

Pay the fee.

(right now, with 18,517 tx in wait, the 100% possibility for next block inclusion is 0,0005 BTC which is $0,341, versus the "usual" $0,0682).

Use an intelligent wallet, scanning the average fee atm, and no hold up. I have never been delayed, all my transactions went through to the first possible block. All this mempool backlog is an unnecessary FUD, anyone who pays the actual required fee gets in the first block.

The fee is rising exponentially.  A bigger 10kbyte transaction is already over $5 usd.  The price to make a transaction happen in next block has more then tripled in a week.  The mempool is now 34 Mbytes..

[r0ach]

This is all you need to know about the so called "mempool problem":

In any system with no minimum transaction fee, the blocks will always be full even if you raised block size to 10 gigs.  All that matters is what the price to get included in a block is, but no blockchain is suitable for microtransactions in the first place.  Even with 10 MB blocks, all small transactions would be pushed off-chain onto things like the shift card or second tier solutions like Lightning Network.  It will never be economical to do microtransactions (buying a pack of cigarettes) using a blockchain.  Blockchains are only suitable for high value transactions or settlement layer.

[MatTheCat]

This is all you need to know about the so called "mempool problem":

In any system with no minimum transaction fee, the blocks will always be full even if you raised block size to 10 gigs.  All that matters is what the price to get included in a block is, but no blockchain is suitable for microtransactions in the first place.  Even with 10 MB blocks, all small transactions would be pushed off-chain onto things like the shift card or second tier solutions like Lightning Network.  It will never be economical to do microtransactions (buying a pack of cigarettes) using a blockchain.  Blockchains are only suitable for high value transactions or settlement layer.

And yet I can transfer 50p worth of Litecoin within 60 seconds.

[alani123]

Pay the fee.

(right now, with 18,517 tx in wait, the 100% possibility for next block inclusion is 0,0005 BTC which is $0,341, versus the "usual" $0,0682).

34 cents for the honor of making a guaranteed transaction? If that keeps up then I hope some merchants start accepting LTC. I'm not willing to pay that.

If this is a spam attach, which I wouldn't find unlikely, attackers are also paying a high price to flood the network. It sure is the right time to make transactions more expensive for everyone in terms of FIAT value as the price has gone up but it certainly won't last long. Mempool size in my node is already almost 30% down from yesterday.  

It's not a spam attack. People are using bitcoin thanks to the increased price. Interest has increased. Bitcoin can't scale because certain people *cough* have refused to implement a blocksize increase in favor of their own egos and convoluted plans. To address the OP, it's obviously not good, and if Bitcoin could scale I'm willing to bet the price would have broken over 1k by now.

But then again, there's no way to be certain about that. As much as I'd like to believe that it's organic usage it's something that sounds unlikely based on transactions on other days when the price was rising.

[r0ach]

This is all you need to know about the so called "mempool problem":

In any system with no minimum transaction fee, the blocks will always be full even if you raised block size to 10 gigs.  All that matters is what the price to get included in a block is, but no blockchain is suitable for microtransactions in the first place.  Even with 10 MB blocks, all small transactions would be pushed off-chain onto things like the shift card or second tier solutions like Lightning Network.  It will never be economical to do microtransactions (buying a pack of cigarettes) using a blockchain.  Blockchains are only suitable for high value transactions or settlement layer.

And yet I can transfer 50p worth of Litecoin within 60 seconds.

Because nobody is using Litecoin for anything, so if people actually started to use it, you'd have the same problem.  Then if you keep expanding out to another coin with the sole purpose of getting "cheap" microtransactions to buy cigarettes, you'd end up with 1000 low hashrate, dead or insecure chains.  Blockchains aren't viable for microtransactions, only for high value transactions or settlement network.  You can also build 2nd tier solutions on top of it like Lightning Network for microtransactions.

[afbitcoins]

This is all you need to know about the so called "mempool problem":

In any system with no minimum transaction fee, the blocks will always be full even if you raised block size to 10 gigs.  All that matters is what the price to get included in a block is, but no blockchain is suitable for microtransactions in the first place.  Even with 10 MB blocks, all small transactions would be pushed off-chain onto things like the shift card or second tier solutions like Lightning Network.  It will never be economical to do microtransactions (buying a pack of cigarettes) using a blockchain.  Blockchains are only suitable for high value transactions or settlement layer.

And yet I can transfer 50p worth of Litecoin within 60 seconds.

Because nobody is using Litecoin for anything, so if people actually started to use it, you'd have the same problem.  Then if you keep expanding out to another coin with the sole purpose of getting "cheap" microtransactions to buy cigarettes, you'd end up with 1000 low hashrate, dead or insecure chains.  Blockchains aren't viable for microtransactions, only for high value transactions or settlement network.  You can also build 2nd tier solutions on top of it like Lightning Network for microtransactions.

To use an altcoin for payment the other party needs to want to have it in exchange, litecoin might have people who want to have some. But you can't use any old alt if no-one wants to exchange it. So I guess as fees become too high in one coin another will become more desirable which has lower fees by natural market forces.