Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[Dabs]

There are many much coin with big block, some are very nice and very work much wow, like super wide cool highway. Fees no artificial high there.

Indeed there are. That doesn't really impact the fact of the fees being artificially high.

A better argument is that the the 21 million coins limit is artificial too. Solid fact but that's part of the design where the link provided indicates that the block size limit was intended to only be temporary. Make of that what you will. It doesn't seem to have damaged Bitcoin so far but it has definitely limited use cases and cause disadoption in some cases.

I still think the way forward is through increased on-chain capacity. I'm deeply skeptical of second-layer solutions, particularly LN. In fact, if LN is actually a success in 18 months, I'll eat my (xhomerx10 provided) hat.

Eventually. Maybe. Maybe another megabyte in 10 years or something like that. It's not broken now, so it won't be an issue until at least 3 or 4 more halvings.

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[d_eddie]

There are many much coin with big block, some are very nice and very work much wow, like super wide cool highway. Fees no artificial high there.

Indeed there are. That doesn't really impact the fact of the fees being artificially high.

A better argument is that the the 21 million coins limit is artificial too. Solid fact but that's part of the design where the link provided indicates that the block size limit was intended to only be temporary. Make of that what you will. It doesn't seem to have damaged Bitcoin so far but it has definitely limited use cases and cause disadoption in some cases.

I still think the way forward is through increased on-chain capacity. I'm deeply skeptical of second-layer solutions, particularly LN. In fact, if LN is actually a success in 18 months, I'll eat my (xhomerx10 provided) hat.

A serious response to my joking grimace of a post. Thank you.

There are a few possible objections to your legitimate (and probably informed) opinion that the fees are artificially high, apart from L2 - which I, differently from you, believe will solve or ease the issues.

- The actual block size has been made larger by the SegWit update. The bookkeeping has also changed to incentivize certain types of transactions over others. The new incentive system has deflected much public (uninformed) attention from the fact that there is more space in blocks today, not less.

- If the fees are artificially high now, why wouldn't they remain inflated after, say, a doubling of the size? The more the mining power gets centralized, the more room for abuse there is. A small size, at the very least, allows user nodes to check by themselves that there's no fuckery going on. Verify without trust.

[BitcoinBunny]

Quite a healthy pull back dancing between 50 - 55K. Really not much harm done. If you bought the dip then congrats. Soon we moon further.

[Richy_T]

There are a few possible objections to your legitimate (and probably informed) opinion that the fees are artificially high, apart from L2 - which I, differently from you, believe will solve or ease the issues.

A valid position and one I have held in the past (and had quite the discussion with Stolfi about at the time). However, it becomes ever more clear that Bitcoin is the way it is because it solves the problems that Bitcoin is designed to solve. Any second layer solution is not Bitcoin and will thus not solve the same problems. Hence the ever increasing complexity of LN and the ever extending time required. To be clear, I am not against LN and think it can be very useful in the problem domains it was originally envisioned to solve. However, it has had its scope increased as a way to put off increasing the blocksize which has done a disservice to not only those who had bold visions for Bitcoin but also the LN project itself.

- The actual block size has been made larger by the SegWit update. The bookkeeping has also changed to provide incentives towards certain types of transactions over others, and the new incentive system has deflected much public (uninformed) attention from the fact that there is more space in blocks today, not less.

The last block (at current time) was 1.16M with a rolling average looking more like 1.3. Disregarding the other arguments against segwit (and the fact that segwit transactions are, in fact, larger than legacy transactions, given that people are stuffing transactions into blocks as hard as they can right now with simple transaction fees in the 20-30 dollar range, that's paltry. Especially given it was clear we were soon to hit the block size limit regularly end 2015/beginning 2016.

- If the fees are artificially high now, why wouldn't they remain inflated after, say, a doubling of the size? The more the mining power gets centralized, the more room for abuse there is. A small size, at the very least, allows user nodes to check by themselves that there's no fuckery going on. Verify without trust.

Maybe. Less so. A simple doubling would have best been done in 2016 with a roadmap to other options down the line. LN should never have been something that everything was depending on. It wasn't fair to Bitcoin and it wasn't fair to the LN project.

When Satoshi added the block size limit, blocks were 1/100 of the size of that limit. That's huge headroom. The *natural* fee for a block would be the resource cost for validating and storing a transaction and the resources for hashing a block (which *does not* depend on block size) plus a small amount of profit multiplied over a number of miners. We're talking around 200 bytes. That's trivial and the block reward is still in play and arguably more valuable than ever. Meanwhile, improvements in technology have made this process ever cheaper. Fees should be marginal, Certainly nowhere near the 20-30 dollars currently required. This indicates an imbalance in incentives. This is why I say fees are artificially high. They are not what would be being set in a truly competitive free market.

With that said, it seems that a contentious fork has not provided an answer (for a variety of reasons) so I am curious to see how things play out.

[AlcoHoDL]

It's not only about capacity, but also about confirmation time. Bitcoin (on-chain) is not well-suited for buying coffee, regardless of block size. 10 minutes is far too long and feels like an eternity against a cup of espresso to go. There are no fees for HoDLing. I don't mind paying $10 to transfer the equivalent of 1 kg of gold from Europe to the USA, nor do I mind paying $10 to load my hot wallet with $1000 chunks for my monthly expenses. Extremely low fees could cause spam attacks, just like email is full of spam because it's free. Gotta pay to sleep with Carolina. There is no free lunch.

Bitcoin is fine as it is.

HoDLsleep. Gotta shut down those lasers. Dreaming of $60k when I wake up (OK, maybe $56k).

[vapourminer]

It's not only about capacity, but also about confirmation time. Bitcoin (on-chain) is not well-suited for buying coffee, regardless of block size. 10 minutes is far too long and feels like an eternity against a cup of espresso to go. There are no fees for HoDLing. I don't mind paying $10 to transfer the equivalent of 1 kg of gold from Europe to the USA, nor do I mind paying $10 to load my hot wallet with $1000 chunks for my monthly expenses. Extremely low fees could cause spam attacks, just like email is full of spam because it's free. Gotta pay to sleep with Carolina. There is no free lunch.

Bitcoin is fine as it is.

HoDLsleep. Gotta shut down those lasers. Dreaming of $60k when I wake up (OK, maybe $56k).

i too am fine with the current setup of small blocks. i want to be able to have my own local copy of the blockchain to verify transactions and holdings for myself. so doing occasional transfers where i dont mind 1 percent say or 100 buck fees to move something. but sooner or later its gonna be a whales only game with full blocks with large enough transactions where like say a minimum $20k USD miner fee to get it into a block will price plankton like myself out. once institutions start routinely using btc only institutional sized miner fees will work.

[Richy_T]

It's not only about capacity, but also about confirmation time. Bitcoin (on-chain) is not well-suited for buying coffee, regardless of block size. 10 minutes is far too long and feels like an eternity against a cup of espresso to go. There are no fees for HoDLing. I don't mind paying $10 to transfer the equivalent of 1 kg of gold from Europe to the USA, nor do I mind paying $10 to load my hot wallet with $1000 chunks for my monthly expenses. Extremely low fees could cause spam attacks, just like email is full of spam because it's free. Gotta pay to sleep with Carolina. There is no free lunch.

Bitcoin is fine as it is.

HoDLsleep. Gotta shut down those lasers. Dreaming of $60k when I wake up (OK, maybe $56k).

If I wanted gold, I'd load my pockets with gold. Yeah, I like my mad gainz too but I never lose sight of what made scramble and take mad risks to get hold of Bitcoin way back when and high fees weren't it.

Mark you, I'm in no way against fees completely. I'll even say that I don't know where they should be. I'm saying that they are not currently being set by free market forces.

Note that there are a number of measures that could improve block storage (some of them mentioned in the whitepaper) and reduce spam. Relying on an artificially low block size limit has meant that the incentive to solve these issues correctly has been blunted.

[GreekCoiner]

Im 99% sure that Peter Schiff is a big troll and he's definitely holding a lot of Bitcoins.. Every time he tweets about "BTC collapse", this is the time when it bottoms! 

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eu3LusNXEAETbCY?format=jpg&name=large

https://twitter.com/BTC_Archive/status/1363970282818519047

[Richy_T]

i too am fine with the current setup of small blocks. i want to be able to have my own local copy of the blockchain to verify transactions and holdings for myself. so occasional transfers where i dont mind 1 percent say or 100 buck fees to move something. but sooner or later its gonna be a whales only game with full blocks with large enough transactions where like say a minimum $20k USD miner fee will price plankton like myself out.

The blockchain is currently 320GB. Take your $100 and buy yourself a 4tb hard drive and store some porn on the free space.

Bear in mind that many, many bitcoin users do not verify their blocks themselves (including myself. I powered down my full node a couple of years ago). you are asking them to support your need. Do you actually run a full node yourself BTW? I found it was providing no benefit and simply the fact that I *could* if I wanted to was good enough for me.

Either way, fees are artificially high. Which is what I'm saying.

[vapourminer]

i too am fine with the current setup of small blocks. i want to be able to have my own local copy of the blockchain to verify transactions and holdings for myself. so occasional transfers where i dont mind 1 percent say or 100 buck fees to move something. but sooner or later its gonna be a whales only game with full blocks with large enough transactions where like say a minimum $20k USD miner fee will price plankton like myself out.

Bear in mind that many, many bitcoin users do not verify their blocks themselves (including myself. I powered down my full node a couple of years ago). you are asking them to support your need. Do you actually run a full node yourself BTW? I found it was providing no benefit and simply the fact that I *could* if I wanted to was good enough for me.

if im paying the fee to get into a block how is that asking others to support me? im paying my way and miners set that fee, not me. i pay to play.

and yes i have a full node on a dedicated 512gb ssd. its only online every couple weeks on average (bandwidth sucks here in the sticks), and its what i verify transactions with when im moving coin.

[BitcoinBunny]

Im 99% sure that Peter Schiff is a big troll and he's definitely holding a lot of Bitcoins.. Every time he tweets about "BTC collapse", this is the time when it bottoms! 



https://twitter.com/BTC_Archive/status/1363970282818519047

Seems like Peter Schiff is a glass half empty type of guy.

[Dabs]

(and the fact that segwit transactions are, in fact, larger than legacy transactions ...

Oh, I didn't know that. All I know is almost all my segwit transactions cost less in fees compared to legacy transactions.

I also run a full node, on a spinning platter too. I'll eventually move it to another computer so it can also run an Electrum server since I use that wallet. Not sure yet about Spectre (wallet.)

[lightfoot]

i too am fine with the current setup of small blocks. i want to be able to have my own local copy of the blockchain to verify transactions and holdings for myself. so occasional transfers where i dont mind 1 percent say or 100 buck fees to move something. but sooner or later its gonna be a whales only game with full blocks with large enough transactions where like say a minimum $20k USD miner fee will price plankton like myself out.

The blockchain is currently 320GB. Take your $100 and buy yourself a 4tb hard drive and store some porn on the free space.

Bear in mind that many, many bitcoin users do not verify their blocks themselves (including myself. I powered down my full node a couple of years ago). you are asking them to support your need. Do you actually run a full node yourself BTW? I found it was providing no benefit and simply the fact that I *could* if I wanted to was good enough for me.

Either way, fees are artificially high. Which is what I'm saying.

I run several full nodes here, the latest is on a 1tb SSD. Trust me, you want SSD for speed although when I set the latest one up I just used one of my other local nodes as the only "trusted" node and it downloaded in under a day. Doing a network sync to remote peers takes the ass end of forever these days, mostly due to latency.

I like running my own nodes, gives me a feeling I'm helping the network. Back in the day it was needed for p2pool, but I don't know if anyone's still running that anymore (well, other than Antpool who just lifted the code IIRC). But it is handy if you need to do some quiet research on transactions without blabbing it to blockchain.com or others.

[jojo69]

[BobLawblaw]

(and the fact that segwit transactions are, in fact, larger than legacy transactions ...

Oh, I didn't know that. All I know is almost all my segwit transactions cost less in fees compared to legacy transactions.
I also run a full node, on a spinning platter too. I'll eventually move it to another computer so it can also run an Electrum server since I use that wallet. Not sure yet about Spectre (wallet.)

I threw out a piece of shit IBM Xeon server and replaced my full node with a RasPi4 connected to a USB3 2TB SSD.

Last time I ever buy IBM crap. Their fan controllers are completely and utterly retarded, at least in my limited experience. Wake up at 4am to a server with screaming fans for God only knows why...

Anyway, love those Raspi4's. Slow as shit compiling bitcoin from source, but otherwise handles the load of a public node quite handily.

[xhomerx10]

Sometimes you instantly regret getting something when you haven't thought about the negative consequences of that thing that you only saw the good sides of.
https://imgur.com/gallery/y8G9HAe

[rolling]

i too am fine with the current setup of small blocks. i want to be able to have my own local copy of the blockchain to verify transactions and holdings for myself. so occasional transfers where i dont mind 1 percent say or 100 buck fees to move something. but sooner or later its gonna be a whales only game with full blocks with large enough transactions where like say a minimum $20k USD miner fee will price plankton like myself out.

The blockchain is currently 320GB. Take your $100 and buy yourself a 4tb hard drive and store some porn on the free space.

Bear in mind that many, many bitcoin users do not verify their blocks themselves (including myself. I powered down my full node a couple of years ago). you are asking them to support your need. Do you actually run a full node yourself BTW? I found it was providing no benefit and simply the fact that I *could* if I wanted to was good enough for me.

Either way, fees are artificially high. Which is what I'm saying.

There is a very good reason for keeping the blocks small, therefore fees are not "artificially" high. They are as high as the free market determines they need to be to keep the blocks necessarily small. This dead horse needs to be left alone.

[heslo]

Well this has been quite a day... bought a little to increase my stash at 52k but out of ammo now. How low does everyone think we will go and why the drop? Seemed things were getting a bit too bubbly from what I could see, I think a nice pullback and reset isn't too bad a thing

[jojo69]

[Richy_T]

if im paying the fee to get into a block how is that asking others to support me? im paying my way and miners set that fee, not me. i pay to play.

If miners set the fee, we wouldn't be having this discussion. If miners "set" a $200 fee and 10,000 people were willing to pay that fee, they would not all get into the block. Thus that fee could not have been said to be set at all. It is only the artificial scarcity of the artificially limited block space that forces fees high for those that want to participate.