Transaction Fees are SPIKING !

[NEWGOODOUBLE]

Its really weird for me to see people calling a few cents "spiking fees". I very recently sent someone more than a hundred dollars worth bitcoin with only a single dollar fee and it went smoother than ever.

This is not an issue, at least not now. No need to create panic for it.

may not be too high if you send a lot of money using bitcoin, but what about someone who does small deals between 0.0005-0.01 btc. of course fee  0.0001 btc will only prolong your transactions?

[Raja_MBZ]

Its really weird for me to see people calling a few cents "spiking fees". I very recently sent someone more than a hundred dollars worth bitcoin with only a single dollar fee and it went smoother than ever.

This is not an issue, at least not now. No need to create panic for it.

may not be too high if you send a lot of money using bitcoin, but what about someone who does small deals between 0.0005-0.01 btc. of course fee  0.0001 btc will only prolong your transactions?

Everyone should avoid single small values like those.

If small numbers have to be sent, send to many people with good fee. Manage the number of payments somehow. That's what I do. Just don't let the fee be lowered, increase the number of receivers instead in a single transaction.

[Esphere.in]

If small numbers have to be sent, send to many people with good fee. Manage the number of payments somehow. That's what I do. Just don't let the fee be lowered, increase the number of receivers instead in a single transaction.

It is a good option if you are sending a lot of small amounts . What would a simple user like me who does not have a business deal do if the price of transaction keeps on increasing as i am not mining the coins and every bit of coin i own is purchased through exchanges and i am not sure how much profit i can make with it if you are transferring coins every now and then.

[audaciousbeing]

All time high for the transaction fees : https://bitcoinfees.info/

Now more than 50 cts for the 3 blocks fees !

The network is BLOATED and more people want to confirm transactions on the network.
The result is spiking transaction fees that might seriously hurt the network and its growth in 2017 if there is nothing done very quickly.
If nothing is done and transaction costs keep spiking, a lot of activity will move to cheaper rising networks like DASH. I am not saying it is a bad thing but Bitcoin is NOT well positioned right now at the technical level to benefit from its rise in popularity.

I can really relate with this as at the last time I made a transfer where I had it in mind of paying less that 20 cents  and to my utmost surprise, I ended up paying 84 cents for the transfer which calls for concern and this will go a long way in affecting the sending of micro-payments if it continues to go that way. I guess since there is nothing I can really do about it, I just have to gather all my coins and transfer at once rather than doing it in bits which might be the cost of transfer higher.

[tvbcof]

You're 100% right.  What some people might not realize is that all this was done on purpose.  Greg Maxwell openly called for this so that a 'fee market could develop'.   Was this a terrible idea based on a corporate agenda?  Well, I think so. 

You seem to be giving Greg to much credit.  It was Satoshi's idea to make the currency deflationary (eventually) by rolling from block reward to transaction fees as a means of funding the operational infrastructure.

As for 'corporate', I cannot think of anything more so than then Bitcoin bloating to the extend that only a handful of large corp/gov entities are able to operate it efficiently and profitably.  Such a scenerio is necessary for coin blacklisting/whitelisting and that seems to have been the primary objective of those who got the bloatchain idea rolling.

[jonald_fyookball]

You seem to be giving Greg to much credit.  It was Satoshi's idea to make the currency deflationary (eventually) by rolling from block reward to transaction fees as a means of funding the operational infrastructure.

...which would come into play several decades later.   Do you deny Greg has advocated for making blocksize a scarce resource and intentionally creating a fee market now?

As for 'corporate', I cannot think of anything more so than then Bitcoin bloating to the extend that only a handful of large corp/gov entities are able to operate it efficiently and profitably.  Such a scenerio is necessary for coin blacklisting/whitelisting and that seems to have been the primary objective of those who got the bloatchain idea rolling.

I think we agree that coin blacklisting/whitelisting would be bad.  But it seems to me that this would be just as likely (if not more likely) to occur due to institutional control of main chain transactions (the inevitable result of small blockism) versus institutional support of full nodes.  

If you disagree, I would at least listen to your argument.

As I see it, a healthy number of full nodes are good, but miners control what goes into blocks and mining is already commoditized and commercialized.  I don't see a problem with that.  But I do see a problem with institutions becoming gatekeepers of what and how transactions flow through the network in ways that are unknown and unpredictable.

  

[Sled]

Yeah, Transaction fees are really spiking and also the confirmation takes a bit longer to wait. That is why other people are now hesitating in choosing bitcoin just like my friends because they think that bitcoin fess will go even higher and the network will be even slower but i already tried to explain them and i'm also hoping for this kind of problem to minimize by the amazing teams behind bitcoin.

[tvbcof]

You seem to be giving Greg to much credit.  It was Satoshi's idea to make the currency deflationary (eventually) by rolling from block reward to transaction fees as a means of funding the operational infrastructure.

...which would come into play several decades later.   Do you deny Greg has advocated for making blocksize a scarce resource and intentionally creating a fee market now?

It's now about 8 years since Bitcoin was released.  Nothing I read in the white-paper said anything about 'several decades'.  At least not that I remember.  At $1200/BTC it seems logical that we would start to see transaction fees become noticeable.

I don't know Greg so I cannot speak for him.  From what I do see in casual observation, the direction he and some of the other core team members are focusing on are exactly what I would do if I wanted Bitcoin to survive and thrive, particularly considering the complexities in forking.  It is for this reason more than anything that I have confidence in the trajectory of the solution and why I don't dump.

As for 'corporate', I cannot think of anything more so than then Bitcoin bloating to the extend that only a handful of large corp/gov entities are able to operate it efficiently and profitably.  Such a scenerio is necessary for coin blacklisting/whitelisting and that seems to have been the primary objective of those who got the bloatchain idea rolling.

I think we agree that coin blacklisting/whitelisting would be bad.  But it seems to me that this would be just as likely (if not more likely) to occur due to institutional control of main chain transactions (the inevitable result of small blockism) versus institutional support of full nodes.  

If you disagree, I would at least listen to your argument.

As I see it, a healthy number of full nodes are good, but miners control what goes into blocks and mining is already commoditized and commercialized.  I don't see a problem with that.  But I do see a problem with institutions becoming gatekeepers of what and how transactions flow through the network in ways that are unknown and unpredictable.

Mining is a sore point in the solution.  My guess is that Satoshi did not properly foresee the evolution of this segment of the solution.  This is understandable.  When I first analyzed Bitcoin I did not put much focus on it.  The reason is that as long as a broad segment of the ecosystem can property validate transactions, miners don't have a lot of latitude to 'cheat'.

I suspect that Satoshi did not completely forsee the economies of scale for mining (which is now tied to hardware manufacture) and the pressure that the formed entities would have over evolution of the rest of the system.  Not that he could not have, but he had a lot of other things to think about and most of them were more interesting.

Anyway, from my perspective, bloating the system will only make it so that there will be fewer opportunities to validate and will force other aspects of the system into the same place we find ourselves today wrt mining.  At that point whitelisting/blacklisting will be feasible.

Once someone is sitting on $10,000,000 worth of hardware necessary to play a part in Bitcoin operation, I don't see them NOT doing what the political leadership in their jurisdiction wishes.  The alternative in, say, China could be not only to lose your $10M worth of hardware but to have your organs harvested.

---

Looks to me as though segwit seeks to optimize the validation options to align with different classes of need and capability.  Once that is proven it will be practical to safely and efficiently edge up the system capacity trying to make sure that some of the concerns of excessive bloat don't become an issue.  This is not at all trivial and I have a lot of respect for those who attempt it.  As long as things are open-source the proposition that Maxwell-n-co are attempting a 'corporate monopolization' or whatever is, in my mind, a weak one.

[jonald_fyookball]

It's now about 8 years since Bitcoin was released.  Nothing I read in the white-paper said anything about 'several decades'.  At least not that I remember.  At $1200/BTC it seems logical that we would start to see transaction fees become noticeable.

You seem to be missing the point.  Worst case scenario for security is that there are ZERO fees,
which will not matter for decades since mining rewards are substantial and will
take several halvings to erode, even in the face of minimal bitcoin value appreciation.
In other words, lets say there's zero fees, and bitcoins remain at $1200.   After
4 more halvings, this still represents $135,000/day in security and the next drop
after that won't be until 19 years from now.

I suspect that Satoshi did not completely forsee the economies of scale for mining

I believe he did, as evidenced in this quote:

At first, most users would run network nodes, but as the network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to specialists with server farms of specialized hardware

[Carlton Banks]

I suspect that Satoshi did not completely forsee the economies of scale for mining

I believe he did, as evidenced in this quote:

At first, most users would run network nodes, but as the network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to specialists with server farms of specialized hardware

That quote depends on SPV wallets using fraud proofs to prevent miners breaking the consensus rules (i.e. what Satoshi really said). Everyone, including Satoshi and big blockers like Andresen and Hearn, have long since realised this cannot be achieved technically.

So try to provide us with information that's not more than 5 years out of date, please

[cryp24x]

Its really weird for me to see people calling a few cents "spiking fees". I very recently sent someone more than a hundred dollars worth bitcoin with only a single dollar fee and it went smoother than ever.

This is not an issue, at least not now. No need to create panic for it.

may not be too high if you send a lot of money using bitcoin, but what about someone who does small deals between 0.0005-0.01 btc. of course fee  0.0001 btc will only prolong your transactions?

Everyone should avoid single small values like those.

If small numbers have to be sent, send to many people with good fee. Manage the number of payments somehow. That's what I do. Just don't let the fee be lowered, increase the number of receivers instead in a single transaction.

The problem in this approach would be not all people have multiple transaction.  One example is myself.  I only transact one transaction at a time.  I do not have business or whatever that need to send lots of transaction daily.  So I cannot get any kind of discount here since I need to pay the whole transaction fee with just a single receiver in a transaction.

[Raja_MBZ]

Its really weird for me to see people calling a few cents "spiking fees". I very recently sent someone more than a hundred dollars worth bitcoin with only a single dollar fee and it went smoother than ever.

This is not an issue, at least not now. No need to create panic for it.

may not be too high if you send a lot of money using bitcoin, but what about someone who does small deals between 0.0005-0.01 btc. of course fee  0.0001 btc will only prolong your transactions?

Everyone should avoid single small values like those.

If small numbers have to be sent, send to many people with good fee. Manage the number of payments somehow. That's what I do. Just don't let the fee be lowered, increase the number of receivers instead in a single transaction.

The problem in this approach would be not all people have multiple transaction.  One example is myself.  I only transact one transaction at a time.  I do not have business or whatever that need to send lots of transaction daily.  So I cannot get any kind of discount here since I need to pay the whole transaction fee with just a single receiver in a transaction.

Well... either increase the number of transactions you make or the amount of bitcoin you send, otherwise bear off the half dollar fee of bitcoin quietly!

[deisik]

It's now about 8 years since Bitcoin was released.  Nothing I read in the white-paper said anything about 'several decades'.  At least not that I remember.  At $1200/BTC it seems logical that we would start to see transaction fees become noticeable.

You seem to be missing the point.  Worst case scenario for security is that there are ZERO fees,
which will not matter for decades since mining rewards are substantial and will
take several halvings to erode, even in the face of minimal bitcoin value appreciation.
In other words, lets say there's zero fees, and bitcoins remain at $1200.   After
4 more halvings, this still represents $135,000/day in security and the next drop
after that won't be until 19 years from now

These are the extremities, and none of which is good

The worst case scenario would be if no one continues to use Bitcoin directly, I mean sending and receiving bitcoins through the blockchain. If the mining reward eventually goes down to zero (due to halvings) and people stop transacting (e.g. due to hefty fees) the effect will be the same as if there were no fees altogether. On the other hand, if there are no fees but a lot of people are still making such transactions, I guess there will be enough miners confirming transactions totally free of charge just to keep the Bitcoin network ticking (if that was your point, of course)

[jonald_fyookball]

It's now about 8 years since Bitcoin was released.  Nothing I read in the white-paper said anything about 'several decades'.  At least not that I remember.  At $1200/BTC it seems logical that we would start to see transaction fees become noticeable.

You seem to be missing the point.  Worst case scenario for security is that there are ZERO fees,
which will not matter for decades since mining rewards are substantial and will
take several halvings to erode, even in the face of minimal bitcoin value appreciation.
In other words, lets say there's zero fees, and bitcoins remain at $1200.   After
4 more halvings, this still represents $135,000/day in security and the next drop
after that won't be until 19 years from now

These are the extremities, and none of which is good

The worst case scenario would be if no one continues to use Bitcoin directly, I mean sending and receiving bitcoins through the blockchain. If the mining reward eventually goes down to zero (due to halvings) and people stop transacting (e.g. due to hefty fees) the effect will be the same as if there were no fees altogether. On the other hand, if there are no fees but a lot of people are still making such transactions, I guess there will be enough miners confirming transactions totally free of charge just to keep the Bitcoin network ticking (if that was your point, of course)

No, my point wasn't about a scenario in which people stop bitcoin.

The point is this:

One of the main arguments that the "small block proponents" advocate is that eventually the issuance of new Bitcoins to the miners that solve the blocks will dwindle, leaving only transaction fees to economically support the miners who are providing security for the network.

While that is true, there are many unknowns about the future, including transaction volume, the effectiveness of a fee market based on propogation times,   what kind of fee structures could support  the network, how much security is needed, advances in technology and paradigms, and other unknown factors. 

It will be decades before these concerns become pressing and it is best to allow bitcoin to grow organically right now, rather than restrict its transaction capacity.

[blackhawkeye1912]

All time high for the transaction fees : https://bitcoinfees.info/

Now more than 50 cts for the 3 blocks fees !

The network is BLOATED and more people want to confirm transactions on the network.
The result is spiking transaction fees that might seriously hurt the network and its growth in 2017 if there is nothing done very quickly.
If nothing is done and transaction costs keep spiking, a lot of activity will move to cheaper rising networks like DASH. I am not saying it is a bad thing but Bitcoin is NOT well positioned right now at the technical level to benefit from its rise in popularity.

That's is one of the disadvantages of bitcoin transaction fee's extremely getting higher, which is the number one will get affect on it is we the bitcoin enthusiast who always do transaction into the blockchain.

[deisik]

It's now about 8 years since Bitcoin was released.  Nothing I read in the white-paper said anything about 'several decades'.  At least not that I remember.  At $1200/BTC it seems logical that we would start to see transaction fees become noticeable.

You seem to be missing the point.  Worst case scenario for security is that there are ZERO fees,
which will not matter for decades since mining rewards are substantial and will
take several halvings to erode, even in the face of minimal bitcoin value appreciation.
In other words, lets say there's zero fees, and bitcoins remain at $1200.   After
4 more halvings, this still represents $135,000/day in security and the next drop
after that won't be until 19 years from now

These are the extremities, and none of which is good

The worst case scenario would be if no one continues to use Bitcoin directly, I mean sending and receiving bitcoins through the blockchain. If the mining reward eventually goes down to zero (due to halvings) and people stop transacting (e.g. due to hefty fees) the effect will be the same as if there were no fees altogether. On the other hand, if there are no fees but a lot of people are still making such transactions, I guess there will be enough miners confirming transactions totally free of charge just to keep the Bitcoin network ticking (if that was your point, of course)

No, my point wasn't about a scenario in which people stop bitcoin.

The point is this:

One of the main arguments that the "small block proponents" advocate is that eventually the issuance of new Bitcoins to the miners that solve the blocks will dwindle, leaving only transaction fees to economically support the miners who are providing security for the network

I see your point perfectly

And I specifically addressed it in my previous post. Basically, I assert that no mining fees would be the lesser of two evils while you claim that it is the worst case scenario. The bigger evil for Bitcoin (or worse case scenario if you please) would be if Bitcoin drops from usage completely. But I wouldn't raise this issue if it was only that (since this is essentially an end point for Bitcoin, nothing to discuss). Your basic premise (or "small block" advocates) that fees are required to economically support the miners seems to be skewed (obviously, I mean the case when there are no more mining rewards). Fees are not required, and even if there were no fees altogether (and no rewards either), there would still be enough mining nodes to support the Bitcoin infrastructure ticking just for the sake of its further operation. That's why miners as they are today are evil. In other words, they receive a bigger portion of the pie than they deserve, and this is primarily thanks to severe monopolization (or rather olygopolization) of mining as such

[freedomno1]

All time high for the transaction fees : https://bitcoinfees.info/

Now more than 50 cts for the 3 blocks fees !

The network is BLOATED and more people want to confirm transactions on the network.
The result is spiking transaction fees that might seriously hurt the network and its growth in 2017 if there is nothing done very quickly.
If nothing is done and transaction costs keep spiking, a lot of activity will move to cheaper rising networks like DASH. I am not saying it is a bad thing but Bitcoin is NOT well positioned right now at the technical level to benefit from its rise in popularity.

Someone will end up hard-forking Bitcoin in the long run if we look at private keys and slow transactions becoming a strong enough motivation to justify it and we might well end up with two competing Bitcoin chains one with the micro-lending and increased block size and protocol changes for daily use but surviving as a brother/sister pair, the other being the traditional client.
 
There is enough demand to sustain both chains at this point with a few changes so I'm on the side of this will either be resolved internally or forced to the breaking point and we move to two chains and competing dev teams.  One can see there is a strong enough base of support to not be choked by the cap to force a fork, (Basically the we are choking all the air out of Bitcoin development and growth if we follow this route through and make it so only the rich can send Bitcoin at a decent speed as services will be forced to pay higher fees and this will impact users as well, aka pay $2 to verify a $30 dollar meal at a restaurant in 3 confirms) While the retainers of the original size being the other half and non budging so compromise is a puzzle.

Case in Point withdrew 0.05 BTC from Betmoose with a standard microbit fee to put in an exchange and its been in the transit line for a day
https://blockchain.info/address/1PKG3V2aq7ppdFc8UHa5gekmjrJU4NjXQx
One example choking commerce and activity since I can't request for a higher fee per-se although I am requesting the option for next time.

Block subsidy will be offset by price appreciation in all likelihood if we remain one chain a nickel at $500 is a dime at $1000 and a dollar at $10,000 but block rewards are also worth more. (Miners will be forced to Equilibrium) China might like small nodes while the West likes big ones so there will be variations in the price but at this point two similar chains is looking more like a possibility.
One could argue alt-coins do serve the same role for small lending but if vendors only accept Bitcoin others will argue that two-chain keeps the consistency of Bitcoin.

Competing chains such as  Ethereum and Ethereum Classic do demonstrate that after forks successful splits are possible. That said I find it amusing that Classic wants to make a fixed limit to ether in order to increase long term value even as we worry about block subsidy although Block Size is not even in their cards of concern.
http://www.coindesk.com/beyond-immutability-ethereum-classic-maps-way-forward/

[jonald_fyookball]

It's now about 8 years since Bitcoin was released.  Nothing I read in the white-paper said anything about 'several decades'.  At least not that I remember.  At $1200/BTC it seems logical that we would start to see transaction fees become noticeable.

You seem to be missing the point.  Worst case scenario for security is that there are ZERO fees,
which will not matter for decades since mining rewards are substantial and will
take several halvings to erode, even in the face of minimal bitcoin value appreciation.
In other words, lets say there's zero fees, and bitcoins remain at $1200.   After
4 more halvings, this still represents $135,000/day in security and the next drop
after that won't be until 19 years from now

These are the extremities, and none of which is good

The worst case scenario would be if no one continues to use Bitcoin directly, I mean sending and receiving bitcoins through the blockchain. If the mining reward eventually goes down to zero (due to halvings) and people stop transacting (e.g. due to hefty fees) the effect will be the same as if there were no fees altogether. On the other hand, if there are no fees but a lot of people are still making such transactions, I guess there will be enough miners confirming transactions totally free of charge just to keep the Bitcoin network ticking (if that was your point, of course)

No, my point wasn't about a scenario in which people stop bitcoin.

The point is this:

One of the main arguments that the "small block proponents" advocate is that eventually the issuance of new Bitcoins to the miners that solve the blocks will dwindle, leaving only transaction fees to economically support the miners who are providing security for the network

I see your point perfectly

And I specifically addressed it in my previous post. Basically, I assert that no mining fees would be the lesser of two evils while you claim that it is the worst case scenario. The bigger evil for Bitcoin (or worse case scenario if you please) would be if Bitcoin drops from usage completely. But I wouldn't raise this issue if it was only that (since this is essentially an end point for Bitcoin). Your basic premise (or "small block" advocates) that fees are required to economically support the miners seems to be skewed (obviously, I mean the case when there are no more mining rewards). Fees are not required, and even if there were no fees altogether (and no rewards either), there would still be enough mining nodes to support the Bitcoin infrastructure ticking just for the sake of its further operation. That's why miners as they are today are evil. In other words, they receive a bigger portion of the pie than they deserve, and this is primarily thanks to severe monopolization (or rather olygopolization) of mining as such

Well, there is a difference between having mining nodes just keeping our network 'ticking along' vs strong security. 

I really don't understand why you think miners are evil -- they are participating in the network exactly as
Satoshi envisioned by rationally competing for the rewards.

[Xester]

Its really weird for me to see people calling a few cents "spiking fees". I very recently sent someone more than a hundred dollars worth bitcoin with only a single dollar fee and it went smoother than ever.

This is not an issue, at least not now. No need to create panic for it.

may not be too high if you send a lot of money using bitcoin, but what about someone who does small deals between 0.0005-0.01 btc. of course fee  0.0001 btc will only prolong your transactions?

Everyone should avoid single small values like those.

If small numbers have to be sent, send to many people with good fee. Manage the number of payments somehow. That's what I do. Just don't let the fee be lowered, increase the number of receivers instead in a single transaction.

Bitcoins price is getting higher and higher everyday and it has caused some huge users to invest in bitcoin. Those users has made a huge demand for bitcoin and in due to this a huge transaction traffic in great volume has flooded the network. Due to this the miners are asking for additional fees so they can make their services much more faster but it will bring burden to their machines and will cost a lot of power. Without additional fees our transactions will more likely reach a week before it will be confirmed.

[layoutph]

This is indeed a sad news to all of us. Is this is a call for more miners? Is this the reason why so many unconfirmed bitcoin transaction and very high transaction fee? In my case, I am expecting a bitcoin payment from freelancing, which is still unconfirmed for almost a week now.