New to BTC - Accidentally shifted the decimal on my transaction fee...

[Carlton Banks]

a block is every 10 minutes.. and in that block we get about 1000-2000 transactions confirmed.. more or less but its roughly that.


do the math.. there is no catching up..

I know. Why does it need to catch up?

the only way to get a tx confirmed is to fight over fees... i add a higher fee, you add a higher fee, someone else adds a higher fee.. pretty soon the fee will be .1 btc / KB.. maybe even more?
at what point does it become too much??

also what about the last people who's fees were high enough but arent now.. because everyone else one upped them?

What you're describing is called "price setting". In the modern world, price setting happens almost exclusively on the financial markets. Being a participant in a real market where real prices are set actually gives you alot of power, that's how some people became rich from Bitcoin.

But this is a real hard-knocks grown-up way to do business. Like I said, if you don't like the dynamics and pressures in this system, you don't have to use it.

[talkbitcoin]

I get it: people don't like paying. Well, don't. No-one is forcing you to do anything here, you have other options.

it has nothing to do with no wanting to pay fees.. its the system is seriously broken..

I agree that it has nothing to do with liking to pay or not. it is annoying that there are times when there is an extreme competition going on! and i may not call it broken but we are getting to a point when 1 MB block size is no longer enough.

right now we have

30,000 unconfirmed transactions..
and 3.38 or so a second being added to that..

a block is every 10 minutes.. and in that block we get about 1000-2000 transactions confirmed.. more or less but its roughly that.

do the math.. there is no catching up..

it is not just math you have to consider other things too.
the same thing happened last month with another 60K+ unconfirmed transactions and it was solved in 2 days. and smaller scale has happened before and they were also solved.

the creation rate is not only new transactions but also double spends and possible even some spam attacks.

the only way to get a tx confirmed is to fight over fees... i add a higher fee, you add a higher fee, someone else adds a higher fee.. pretty soon the fee will be .1 btc / KB.. maybe even more?
at what point does it become too much??

also what about the last people who's fees were high enough but arent now.. because everyone else one upped them?

lol, yeah this gets out of hand sometimes, i just hope like the times before it doesn't last longer than 2 days.
and eventually we see some real improvement for the block size issue once and for all.

[DannyHamilton]

- snip -
the only way to get a tx confirmed is to fight over fees... i add a higher fee, you add a higher fee, someone else adds a higher fee.. pretty soon the fee will be .1 btc / KB.. maybe even more?
at what point does it become too much??
- snip -

When the fees become so expensive that some people stop using bitcoin.  Then the number of transactions is reduced, and the blocks can catch up.  This process of building up large backlogs and people moving to other payment systems for smaller value transactions will repeat until an equilibrium between cost of transactions, number of transactions, and size of block is reached.

It's difficulty to predict just how expensive transactions will be at that equilibrium. There are some that feel it may result in VERY expensive transactions, such that the bitcoin blockchain will ONLY be used as a clearinghouse between large businesses and services. Everyone else would end up just using one of those services and their transactions would all be handled "off-chain". For example:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=946236.0

[Dahhi]

The easiest solution to this would have been having more miners to serve the increase in demand - but then solo mining is not as profitable anymore.

But I do not think it's best for existing miners to determine the size of the block... there should be a fixed cap on block size (not a decentralized size).

[DannyHamilton]

The easiest solution to this would have been having more miners to serve the increase in demand

Absolute nonsense.

That's not how mining works.

Increasing the number of solo miners would reduce the amount of control that the biggest pools have, but it wouldn't change the number of transactions that can be processed AT ALL.

[aarons6]

a block is every 10 minutes.. and in that block we get about 1000-2000 transactions confirmed.. more or less but its roughly that.


do the math.. there is no catching up..

I know. Why does it need to catch up?

the only way to get a tx confirmed is to fight over fees... i add a higher fee, you add a higher fee, someone else adds a higher fee.. pretty soon the fee will be .1 btc / KB.. maybe even more?
at what point does it become too much??

also what about the last people who's fees were high enough but arent now.. because everyone else one upped them?

What you're describing is called "price setting". In the modern world, price setting happens almost exclusively on the financial markets. Being a participant in a real market where real prices are set actually gives you alot of power, that's how some people became rich from Bitcoin.

But this is a real hard-knocks grown-up way to do business. Like I said, if you don't like the dynamics and pressures in this system, you don't have to use it.

lol how do you feel about it now?

Unconfirmed Txs
Count
70,072
Size52,443,654 - 52.44 MB
24h Tx Rate
3.38 txs/s
Median block size of 2 weeks
998,110 Bytes
The current best transaction fees
0.001 BTC/KB

[Carlton Banks]

The same way as before: nothing.

[macedoniantable]

I did that once as well.
All those zeroes can make you misplace one.
I believe this happens more often than you would think they would.

[ArcCsch]

All those zeroes can make you misplace one.

That is why I set my electrum base unit to mBTC, very nice feature.

[macedoniantable]

All those zeroes can make you misplace one.

That is why I set my electrum base unit to mBTC, very nice feature.

Yes that would help out alot if that option was available for all wallets.
I like working in mbtc instead as the casinos do. It makes it much more easier instead of working with all those zeroes.

[Felimon]

You could always contact someone that can push transactions into blocks for one of the larger pools so it gets confirmed in their next block.  They'll probably want some sort of fee for the service.  There are a couple of them that are members here at bitcointalk.org:

Quickseller

macbook-air

Could someone explain more on how this happens and what is all involved?  Is there topics on here, I can not seem to find any, where I can read more about this and all of the other things involving bitcoin, that are not listed on the main bitcoin page.  Thank you in advance.

[DannyHamilton]

Could someone explain more on how this happens and what is all involved? 

Sure.

First you contact the person that has the ability to control which transactions a pool confirms.

Second you ask them very nicely if they will help you.

Third you negotiate a price for their service.

After that, depending on the agreement, either you pay them and then they add your transaction to the pool's next block, or they get your transaction confirmed and then you pay them.