Has the high fees problem changed your behaviour when spending bitcoins?

[CyberKuro]

Personally I'm now less prone to do a btc transaction since the fee market has exploded and blockstream/sidechains aren't really available currently. I was enjoying speding btc with sites like humblebundle, but currently is really a pain. It's just me or you are on the same boat?

Current fees are affordable for me, it just like $0.33, fair enough. But, I'm not sure people will agree if transaction fees always increase as bitcoin price getting bigger as time goes on. The higher fees make sense to get faster confirmation but it should not exceed $0.5 in my opinion. Well, I'm okay with the current fees because I rarely send my bitcoin and love to save it,  but devs team really have to solve this problem, stop argue and implement solution.

[coolcoinz]

It hasn't changed my behaviour. It only frustrates me because I have to do what I have never done before, check the current fees and the number of transactions in mempool on https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ before I decide to send anything. It makes the operation a little more annoying, because the fees are going up so fast that one month a transaction with 0.0004 fee is completely fine and the next you need 0.0006 or you'll wait 24h...

[Sled]

We can't deny that the fees are getting more expensive and higher than before and yes it changed my behavior in spending bitcoins because it makes me more type of person that just save it and will not spend it in the things that i don't need because fees are high now and that is a loss for me if i will just transfer and pay the fees.

[nara1892]

Personally I'm now less prone to do a btc transaction since the fee market has exploded and blockstream/sidechains aren't really available currently. I was enjoying speding btc with sites like humblebundle, but currently is really a pain. It's just me or you are on the same boat?

so do I. I don't send bitcoin this few period of time because of the fee problem. it is better to hold it in wallet and wait for the increasing price. it will be more profitable, but in some case I sell my bitcoin for some needs.

[maydna]

Personally I'm now less prone to do a btc transaction since the fee market has exploded and blockstream/sidechains aren't really available currently. I was enjoying speding btc with sites like humblebundle, but currently is really a pain. It's just me or you are on the same boat?

yes i think that we are in the same boat and i realize its really a pain but i think for spending bitcoin, the fees its not take too much than before although there is an increase amount but its fine to send bitcoin with that amount. actually, the fees can help us to gets fast confirmed on the network but maybe its on my mind and i can be wrong for this. but so far, i still spending my bitcoin to pay something that i should too to fill what i need to buy for my offline real so i am doing this over and over for weeks and i don't think too much about the fees unless in future, the fees is increase more high than now.

[biggee]

I keep seeing people saying "BTC fees are much cheaper than fiat" over and over again.

This is simply not true.

You can send money via paypal to "a friend" and pay nothing in fees for starters.

[LTU_btc]

Yeah, now I try to do less transactions, I'm trying to avoid less important transactions. I also don't send small amounts of bitcoin anymore, but I'm still receiving small payments and sometimes it takes long time to confirm.
Now I realized that bitcoin transactions fees are become similar to bank transfer fees. In some cases bank transfers even cheaper. Cheap transactions was one of bitcoin advantages against fiat and now it's gone.

[youdamushi]

Personally I'm now less prone to do a btc transaction since the fee market has exploded and blockstream/sidechains aren't really available currently. I was enjoying speding btc with sites like humblebundle, but currently is really a pain. It's just me or you are on the same boat?

Current fees are affordable for me, it just like $0.33, fair enough. But, I'm not sure people will agree if transaction fees always increase as bitcoin price getting bigger as time goes on. The higher fees make sense to get faster confirmation but it should not exceed $0.5 in my opinion. Well, I'm okay with the current fees because I rarely send my bitcoin and love to save it,  but devs team really have to solve this problem, stop argue and implement solution.

Ahah even with something like that it's high...
Of course if you compare it to shits like western union it's nothing.
But that means you accept your currency is used as a western union bis.
So not going to compete with actual fiat payment system :/

[jbreher]

No.

I'm a BU proponent, but I must admit that the current level of fees is not a significant detriment to me.

Then again, for the last several years, I've not been using Bitcoin for trivial small amounts. The current level gets lost in the noise as a percentage of transaction value.

There are however several attributes coupled to the fee that are causing me significant pain. I'll talk about those in a minute after the following observation...

Just thinking logically about this, there is no use case for Bitcoin that goes away with smaller fees. Indeed, for every increment in average fees, there is yet another potential use case that is no longer economically feasible. I guess some people might think 'so what?', but I find it a truism that a more usable Bitcoin is a more robust and secure Bitcoin. We should be enabling all use cases that do not cause damage to the system.

More importantly, however, the current block size caps system-wide usage of Bitcoin at somewhere around 250,000 transactions per day. Regardless of what the fee rises to. If 300,000 people were willing to pay 0.1, 1, 10, whatever amount of bitcoins as a transaction fee in a given day, not all of their transactions will be able to be processed. Period. Sure, if this was a one-day event, they might be processed the following day. But if usage increases? Nope. Permanent backlog. Regardless of the average fee people are willing to pay.

Now back to my personal pain... the uncertainty in regards to an appropriate fee level has turned a thought-free process into one that takes a conscious effort to process. Yeah, I know ... first world problems. But this is just one additional disincentive to using Bitcoin, and one more (small) barrier to increased adoption.

So been using Eth & LTC & Doge to transfer Funds between exchanges instead of BTC.
(Cheaper & Faster, and I just convert to BTC on the exchange if needed and avoid the BTC Transaction Fees & Delays altogether.)

Except you are not converting to BTC on the exchange - you are converting to BTC-IOUs, which is a distinctly different thing.

[Holliday]

We should be enabling all use cases that do not cause damage to the system.

Right, the argument we are having is, "What will cause damage to the system?"

More importantly, however, the current block size caps system-wide usage of Bitcoin at somewhere around 250,000 transactions per day. Regardless of what the fee rises to. If 300,000 people were willing to pay 0.1, 1, 10, whatever amount of bitcoins as a transaction fee in a given day, not all of their transactions will be able to be processed. Period. Sure, if this was a one-day event, they might be processed the following day. But if usage increases? Nope. Permanent backlog. Regardless of the average fee people are willing to pay.

I don't know of anyone arguing that we shouldn't scale Bitcoin at all. We are simply debating the implementation.

[hardtime]

It's forced me into not allowing myself to do any small transactions and to attempt to minimize the amount of transactions that I do per month, this in turn leads the minimizing of the amount of money that I end up paying in fees when I add that all up at the end of the month. Pretty sad to see this occur as I hadn't cared in the least about before as it had been a minor aspect of my buying things which Bitcoin.

It hasn't changed my behaviour. It only frustrates me because I have to do what I have never done before, check the current fees and the number of transactions in mempool on https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ before I decide to send anything. It makes the operation a little more annoying, because the fees are going up so fast that one month a transaction with 0.0004 fee is completely fine and the next you need 0.0006 or you'll wait 24h...

Frustrates everyone, I guess I'll be trying to go with a lower fee for things I don't really need instantly. You pay with your time, if you pay less in money you pay more in time wasted waiting.

BTW, do any of you guys use Coinbase? They don't charge a fee to send bitcoins out from your bitcoin wallet on any amount over 0.0001 BTC. So, basically, sending over 0.0001 bitcoin is free

You still pay transactions fees, Coinbase themselves just don't charge you any fees for allowing you to use their wallet.

[FlightyPouch]

It is really a pain since the fees are getting higher. Though we cant do that much because of the popularity of bitcoin, there are lot of transactions and the companies are getting advantage of these many transactions.

[d5000]

For the moment, fees are still OK for my use cases, so my behaviour has only slightly changed (I try to bundle payments to use larger amounts). But if they double again (in USD) then I will look for alternatives - and yes, I mean altcoins. The problem is that in my country there are practically no stores/exchanges that accept altcoins, not even LTC or ETH. But I then will write to local Bitcoin exchanges and stores to convince them to accept at least one major altcoin as a temporary measure until the block size problem is solved (I actually prefer Segwit over BU).

I view that behavior not as "treason" to the Bitcoin community, but as a legitimate form of pressure to do something and agree about a scalability mechanism. If that does not happen, Bitcoin's simply not usable for me because for me it's not a digital gold but a currency or payment system.

[d@nte]

Personally I'm now less prone to do a btc transaction since the fee market has exploded and blockstream/sidechains aren't really available currently. I was enjoying speding btc with sites like humblebundle, but currently is really a pain. It's just me or you are on the same boat?

Yeah, I was starting to buy things on the internet using Bitcoin, but the increase in the value of fees is something that can not be ignored. I will probably continue to use Bitcoin to buy things, but less frequently, until these problems are resolved.

[pedrog]

Personally I'm now less prone to do a btc transaction since the fee market has exploded and blockstream/sidechains aren't really available currently. I was enjoying speding btc with sites like humblebundle, but currently is really a pain. It's just me or you are on the same boat?

Yeah, I was starting to buy things on the internet using Bitcoin, but the increase in the value of fees is something that can not be ignored. I will probably continue to use Bitcoin to buy things, but less frequently, until these problems are resolved.

In a deflationary economy people don't spend much money, bitcoin isn't good for shopping.

Check this article about Japan's deflationary economy:

The World’s Most Radical Experiment in Monetary Policy Isn’t Working
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-worlds-most-radical-experiment-in-monetary-policy-isnt-working-1488135495

[Barbut]

For the moment, fees are still OK for my use cases, so my behaviour has only slightly changed (I try to bundle payments to use larger amounts). But if they double again (in USD) then I will look for alternatives - and yes, I mean altcoins. The problem is that in my country there are practically no stores/exchanges that accept altcoins, not even LTC or ETH. But I then will write to local Bitcoin exchanges and stores to convince them to accept at least one major altcoin as a temporary measure until the block size problem is solved (I actually prefer Segwit over BU).

I view that behavior not as "treason" to the Bitcoin community, but as a legitimate form of pressure to do something and agree about a scalability mechanism. If that does not happen, Bitcoin's simply not usable for me because for me it's not a digital gold but a currency or payment system.

Your observation is worth attention. I can't add nothing here cause I totally agree with you about this, higher fees are big problem for me too, and I would like to find alternative in some altcoin. Even thou I use bitcoin as a currency, that is becoming hard with time. I plan to save part of bitcoins I earn, and for gambling and daily transactions to start using some alt. This high price of bitcoin makes me to change my mind about bitcoin as a currency and to accept bitcoin as a digital gold.

[tambok]

It is burden to have a high free transaction especially if you just want to convert small amount of bitcoin, but, on the other hand it has big impact on me, due to high transaction I save it  first and when I finally have the amount that I wanted I convert it to local currency. Sometimes, it took a month before I convert it. And with that, I save more as well as earn more when the btc goes up even in small amount.

[dmamigo]

The high fees doesn't bothers all the time, the fees are still acceptable, but it seems it might increase on increase of value which might cause trouble. Small transactions with high fees will restrict me in near future.

[jtipt]

Personally I'm now less prone to do a btc transaction since the fee market has exploded and blockstream/sidechains aren't really available currently. I was enjoying speding btc with sites like humblebundle, but currently is really a pain. It's just me or you are on the same boat?

Yes more or less the high fees have always affected me, especially while doing small transactions of maybe <$10 sending fees of 1$ or more seems too much and if I have more than 2 inputs then the fees gets higher, and for low amount tx's usually i have inputs more than 2. For high amount tx the current fees are still acceptable with only 1 input I only need to send around 0.0005 BTC that is affordable for the tx.

[Anarchist]

No change for me. I paid what is needed to be paid. The same i do with banks. Bitcoin is still cheaper for thr type of transactions i do