Transaction Fees are SPIKING !

[freedomno1]

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.

Felt like making an a side note to your most recent comment.

If someone introduced a fork that rewarded nodes for participation in the Bitcoin network and increased the block-size as part of the package we would see a fork get approved pretty quickly an area that would be viable is incentivizing the Bitcoin nodes for doing work and is one way a fork could be forced.

I'm for the we support the Bitcoin Nodes camp and let the miners responsibility being a reduced part of the equation, if the nodes leave with the expanded blocksize its a viable concurrent chain, and when we look at Saotshi's design its not a far stretch to say that Nodes are our backbone and would rationally be deserving of some rewards for hosting the network but that would be a hard-fork and also demand a change of block rewards.

That said Bitcoin nodes don't get enough support right now for just being around to relay transactions and miners act as free riders to them taking all the profits, with no incentive to keep the backbone operational other than to confirm transactions as the blockchain grows their is no incentive to have relay nodes, the miners get to much swing in the say, so in that sense miners are a bit evil in maximizing their profits at the expense of everyone else.

https://news.bitcoin.com/full-bitcoin-nodes-get-rewarded-like-miners/
https://aakilfernandes.github.io/soft-forks-vs-hard-forks

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[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). 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

I don't really feel that we have "strong security" right now

Or how it will be less stronger when there would be no or low fees. Basically, the level of security doesn't in the least depend on fees. It depends on the number of miners participating in mining. In fact, it remains to be seen whether with lower fees we wouldn't have stronger security than what we have presently. And presently we have just a dozen of miners confirming 99% of all transactions (that's why they are evil). Personally, I wouldn't call that strong security. If they are gone, the playing ground will become more level, and thus more competition between miners will set in which would raise security, not lower it

[jonald_fyookball]

Of course it doesn't depend on fees right now and won't for several decades.  That's what I've been saying.

[olushakes]

Transactions fees are really spiking these days even exchange sites are not making it any easier as they now charge for both deposit and withdrawal which is not the case before but the way it is I think the transaction fees are moving in the same direction that price of bitcoin is also moving which I also believe should be so in case we witness a price crash so we wont be losing at both ends. However, we should also not be unmindful of the fact that compared to other platforms of making some transactions, bitcoin fees is still the compared to paypal or western Union.

[deisik]

Of course it doesn't depend on fees right now and won't for several decades.  That's what I've been saying

Should I have said it in every post that I consider the situation when there is no mining reward already? I emphasized that twice in one of my previous posts

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

If you ask me, that's bullshit

There is no huge transaction traffic apart from scammy transactions which are likely made by rogue miners themselves to get even more fees. Price is determined on exchanges, and trading there doesn't need any transactions altogether, especially when you just buy bitcoins as you assume in your post ("it has caused some huge users to invest in bitcoin"). That would certainly increase the number of fiat transactions, but Bitcoin miners have nothing to do with that

[LLec]

This is getting to be silly.
Sent 0.009btc just now and it took $0.34 in fees to send it. Usually pay half of this in transaction fees to send the same amount last week.
It cuts from the total amount you have in your wallet available to send. Simply prosperous!

Just received a notice on bitify that their raising their rates to not have to lose out on paying these high fees in using their escrow service even.

 Changes to the Fee System
As many of you might be aware, the Bitcoin network has recently been struggling to keep up with the number of transactions being sent each day. This has resulted in some transactions taking considerably longer than usual to be confirmed by the network, as miners choose only to include transactions sent with the highest of fees. A few months ago, in an effort to ensure that your funds confirm as quickly as possible, Bitify made the decision to increase the fee we pay when sending your transactions. This cost was absorbed by us and had no effect on our users except for transactions confirming quicker. Unfortunately many other businesses followed suit, pushing fees even higher, to the point where some transactions are again taking many days to confirm when the network is under heavy load.

Over the last 3 months the amount paid in network fees by Bitify totals more than our previous 3 years combined, yet we find ourselves needing to increase the network fees again in order to compete with the current congestion on the network. To allow us continue to provide our customers with a great service and acceptable transaction confirmation times, we regret that Bitify can no longer continue to absorb the increasing network fees required by the Bitcoin network.

Bitcoin Fee Increase - Blockchain.info
Blockchain.info – Total Transaction Fees

As a result, going forward Bitify will deduct the network fee from all amounts sent to sellers/buyers. This network fee will be adjusted in line with the current Bitcoin network load, meaning that the fees you pay will reduce when the Bitcoin network is quiet, and increase when it is busy. At all times Bitify will pay the Bitcoin network the recommended fee in order to include your transaction within 5 blocks (50 minutes average).
Starting today:
– The final amount charged by Bitify will include a network fee, deducted from the amount sent.
– Sellers will be charged 2.5% or 0.001 (whichever is higher) + network fee.
– Buyers using Escrow will continue to be charged 1% or 0.001 (whichever is higher)
– Buyers requiring a refund will additionally be charged a network fee, deducted from the refund amount.
– The network fee will be calculated at the time the transaction is sent, and will be relative to the current network load.

The Bitcoin core client can only estimate the current fee required per KB of data in order to be included within our required time frame of 5 blocks. This is the rate at which we will apply fees when sending transactions. However we cannot calculate the exact fee required on a particular transaction before the transaction is sent. Therefore the network fee amount we will charge users will be calculated as the average charged to us by the network over the previous 25 transactions. This will mean that the actual fee paid by us to the Bitcoin network will vary slightly from the network fee we charge you, but since this can be higher or lower, on average this variance will be negligible.

For reference, the current average fee we are charged by the network is just 0.00015 (around $0.19 USD)

We regret that we have had to make this change, but unfortunately it is no longer sustainable for us to absorb the network costs whilst keeping our low fees. On the plus side! You will no longer have to wait more than 5 blocks for your transaction to confirm.

https://bitify.com/changes-to-the-fee-system/

Happy Bitcoining,
Bitify Team

What is going on with these fees sky rocketing?

[tvbcof]

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.

...

If 1000 trinket purchases were made on a subordinate chain for every balancing transaction on the Bitcoin chain, transaction fees could be $5.00 while the trinket buyers pay $0.005.

This would net infrastructure operators about $1.5M per day compared to your $0.135M.  In short, much better security.

In monetary terms, there is no difference between a subordinate chain user and a main-chain user.  Any currency which exists on a subordinate chain is taken out of the Bitcoin reserve.  From Bitcoin's perspective, a subordinate chain is just a particularly active individual user who can afford realistic fees.  In both cases, it is critical to the users that Bitcoin itself remains healthy and robust.

From a trinket-class user's perspective, they can choose subordinate chain solutions tailored to their particular needs.  e.g., privacy, speed, fees, etc.  So, they get a much better user experience.

There are a raft of other advantages as well, but I won't get into them.  The main 'disadvantage' seems to be that someone feels butt-hurt if their candy bar purchase does not bloat the permanent record on the 'real' blockchain.  Never mind that this 'critical need' impacts every entity who wants to support Bitcoin since they need to carry the data around forever.

[xIIImaL]

Transactions fees are really spiking these days even exchange sites are not making it any easier as they now charge for both deposit and withdrawal which is not the case before but the way it is I think the transaction fees are moving in the same direction that price of bitcoin is also moving which I also believe should be so in case we witness a price crash so we wont be losing at both ends. However, we should also not be unmindful of the fact that compared to other platforms of making some transactions, bitcoin fees is still the compared to paypal or western Union.

Bitcoin is always feeble than the other mode of international transactions with low fees. Then I using blockchain and electrum wallets respectively. last week I noticed that minimum required fees from blockchain has been revised and it increased. Hope it would reduce again.

[Carlton Banks]

The main 'disadvantage' seems to be that someone feels butt-hurt if their candy bar purchase does not bloat the permanent record on the 'real' blockchain.  Never mind that this 'critical need' impacts every entity who wants to support Bitcoin since they need to carry the data around forever.

To exemplify this: people like jonald are making the case for using something like the SWIFT network for every pack of $0.50c chewing gum they buy, and it's all SWIFT's fault for charging them $10 to do it.

[freedomno1]

What is going on with these fees sky rocketing?

The mempool is full and the average fee keeps rising in exchange to get the transaction confirmed promptly.
The mempool is the aggregate size of transactions waiting to be confirmed.
A lot of exchanges in order to provide for speedy service paid the higher fee but as everyone did the fee kept increasing because the mempool is not shrinking making it costly to send.  
https://blockchain.info/charts/mempool-size

[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.

...

If 1000 trinket purchases were made on a subordinate chain for every balancing transaction on the Bitcoin chain, transaction fees could be $5.00 while the trinket buyers pay $0.005.

This would net infrastructure operators about $1.5M per day compared to your $0.135M.  In short, much better security.

In monetary terms, there is no difference between a subordinate chain user and a main-chain user.  Any currency which exists on a subordinate chain is taken out of the Bitcoin reserve.  From Bitcoin's perspective, a subordinate chain is just a particularly active individual user who can afford realistic fees.  In both cases, it is critical to the users that Bitcoin itself remains healthy and robust.

From a trinket-class user's perspective, they can choose subordinate chain solutions tailored to their particular needs.  e.g., privacy, speed, fees, etc.  So, they get a much better user experience.

There are a raft of other advantages as well, but I won't get into them.  The main 'disadvantage' seems to be that someone feels butt-hurt if their candy bar purchase does not bloat the permanent record on the 'real' blockchain.  Never mind that this 'critical need' impacts every entity who wants to support Bitcoin since they need to carry the data around forever.

Obviously higher fees means more security but where does it end?  How much security is enough?  How high of fees do people want to pay?  The market will decide that.  Where we disagree is on what system is most conducive to a properly functioning fee market and when is the appropriate time to focus on that.

Proponents of main chain scaling are not advocating it for emotional reasons as you are implying.  (Come on dude)... There are genuine concerns including centralization.
Here is an interesting article about LN that someone posted (I haven't read it in detail yet):  http://www.wallstreettechnologist.com/2016/10/03/lightning-network-will-it-save-bitcoin-or-break-it/

  

Of course it doesn't depend on fees right now and won't for several decades.  That's what I've been saying

Should I have said it in every post that I consider the situation when there is no mining reward already? I emphasized that twice in one of my previous posts
 

Honestly I don't follow you.  Maybe we're talking past each other.

To respond to one of your other points:  We don't have "a dozen miners doing 99% of the transactions".
Maybe you mean pools.  Pools are very different than miners.  Unless you have evidence that it's actually
only a dozen different mining farms.  Even if mining power is very concentrated, that is a different problem than not having security, which is measurable in terms of hashing difficulty.

[Carlton Banks]

The mempool is full and the average fee keeps rising in exchange to get the transaction confirmed promptly.
The mempool is the aggregate size of transactions waiting to be confirmed.
A lot of exchanges in order to provide for speedy service paid the higher fee but as everyone did the fee kept increasing because the mempool is not shrinking making it costly to send.  
https://blockchain.info/charts/mempool-size

There is no "The" mempool in a decentralised transaction network. Each node has it's own mempool, and the settings one uses determines how full or empty your personal mempool is.

Your link is to blockchain.info's mempool, not "The" mempool, which doesn't exist

[jak3]

sure it does costs the highest fees in all the cryptocurrency world. but still i think its lower compared to real world anyway peoples are not started using Dsh Coin insted of Bitcoin but i do not think they can suffer its Serious COndition its like a new plannet rightnow still very hot and inadiquate for living with that

[freedomno1]

The mempool is full and the average fee keeps rising in exchange to get the transaction confirmed promptly.
The mempool is the aggregate size of transactions waiting to be confirmed.
A lot of exchanges in order to provide for speedy service paid the higher fee but as everyone did the fee kept increasing because the mempool is not shrinking making it costly to send.  
https://blockchain.info/charts/mempool-size

There is no "The" mempool in a decentralised transaction network. Each node has it's own mempool, and the settings one uses determines how full or empty your personal mempool is.

Your link is to blockchain.info's mempool, not "The" mempool, which doesn't exist

It's easier to explain it that way for convenience, the point is that the waiting queue is full because the 1MB blocksize limit is not large enough to handle all the transactions.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_size_limit_controversy
https://blockchain.info/charts/transactions-per-second\

I could just say we are past 7 txt/second but the mempool is a useful jargon for waitlist.

Or the median confirmation time is 2.3X the standard limit with transaction fees if you want can spin it in various ways still gets the point clearly across.
23 minutes for transaction
https://blockchain.info/charts/median-confirmation-time
https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-time

http://www.nigeriatoday.ng/2017/02/bitcoin-transaction-fees-are-up-more-than-1200-in-past-two-years/

[deisik]

Honestly I don't follow you.  Maybe we're talking past each other

So you reply to my posts without actually reading them?

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

To respond to one of your other points:  We don't have "a dozen miners doing 99% of the transactions".
Maybe you mean pools.  Pools are very different than miners.  Unless you have evidence that it's actually
only a dozen different mining farms.  Even if mining power is very concentrated, that is a different problem than not having security, which is measurable in terms of hashing difficulty

And what does it change?

Even if these are mining pools you still can't escape the simple arithmetic that if there are more miners independently confirming transactions the network would be more secure overall. If you disagree (which seems to be the case), then you will have to explain how hashing difficulty is correlated with security. As far as I understand it, difficulty just shows how difficult it is to find a new block. What correspondence does it have to Bitcoin network security? If some miner grabs more than 50% of hashing power (which basically renders the network "insecure"), it won't matter at which difficulty that happens, right? Thus difficulty is irrelevant to security

[CyberKuro]

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.

Current trends are :
1. Bitcoin price reach ATH
2. Transaction fees reach ATH
3. Unconfirmed transaction reach ATH
Everyone expects when the price rise up but transaction fees doesn't.
I'm wondering about Mr. Satoshi thought regarding this situation, what the solution?

[jonald_fyookball]

Even if these are mining pools you still can't escape the simple arithmetic that if there are more miners independently confirming transactions the network would be more secure overall. If you disagree (which seems to be the case), then you will have to explain how hashing difficulty is correlated with security. As far as I understand it, difficulty just shows how difficult it is to find a new block. What correspondence does it have to Bitcoin network security? If some miner grabs more than 50% of hashing power (which basically renders the network "insecure"), it won't matter at which difficulty that happens, right? Thus difficulty is irrelevant to security

You are correct that a widely distrbuted mining landscape is healthy for the network.  No argument there.

I also agree that no pool should have 50% of the hashing power.  This happened a couple years ago with gHash
and the imbalance was soon after corrected as many miners decided to leave that pool since it had too much control.

[tvbcof]

...
Proponents of main chain scaling are not advocating it for emotional reasons as you are implying.  (Come on dude)... There are genuine concerns including centralization.
Here is an interesting article about LN that someone posted (I haven't read it in detail yet):  http://www.wallstreettechnologist.com/2016/10/03/lightning-network-will-it-save-bitcoin-or-break-it/

My summation of the article is that the author is saying, "Oh no!  Lighting might make Bitcoin work."  From my perspective I would classify the guy's concerns as mostly either advantages, neutral, or no problem, and it looks to me like his main beef is that it would interfere with the bloat-it strategy to quash or control Bitcoin.

The guy tries to scare people about paper-vs-gold.  He relies on the well implemented mass ignorance of the populous and conspicuously neglects to point out that there is no problem with paper notes circulating in lu of gold and it makes a lot of sense in that context.  The trouble lies in fractional reserve monetary inflation where banks create $1000 worth of notes and back them with $100 worth of gold (then pocket the interest on the remaining $900.)  This is simply not an issue with a properly designed Bitcoin-backed exchange currency.

Actually, it could be a problem for anyone stupid enough to use a fractional reserve subordinate exchange currency.  Given an option (and some knowledge) many people would not make this choice.  That's why corp/gov has to force them to do so and quash any other options.

[deisik]

Even if these are mining pools you still can't escape the simple arithmetic that if there are more miners independently confirming transactions the network would be more secure overall. If you disagree (which seems to be the case), then you will have to explain how hashing difficulty is correlated with security. As far as I understand it, difficulty just shows how difficult it is to find a new block. What correspondence does it have to Bitcoin network security? If some miner grabs more than 50% of hashing power (which basically renders the network "insecure"), it won't matter at which difficulty that happens, right? Thus difficulty is irrelevant to security

You are correct that a widely distrbuted mining landscape is healthy for the network.  No argument there.

I also agree that no pool should have 50% of the hashing power.  This happened a couple years ago with gHash
and the imbalance was soon after corrected as many miners decided to leave that pool since it had too much control

So we are essentially back to square one

We don't know how many pools are actually pools and not huge mining farms with some miners allowed to join them to make the former look like genuine pools. In this manner, if we could somehow limit the fees (I refer to upper limit, since the lower one is 0, obviously) and there are no more mining reward (I specifically repeat it), that will actually contribute to more "distributed mining landscape" (and thus overall security of Bitcoin network). Just because simple folks will be able to support mining for no fees at all (i.e. independently confirm transactions)

[jonald_fyookball]

if we could somehow limit the fees (I refer to upper limit, since the lower one is 0, obviously) and there are no more mining reward

That is extremely unlikely to happen with Bitcoin, although there might be an altcoin or two with that type of structure.

...

So you admit technical points were made, and this debate is not about people getting butt-hurt over candy bars.