Fiverr.com forced to remove BTC as a payment option due to high fees

[chopstick]

See here:  https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/5y53yi/fiverrcom_has_removed_bitcoin_from_their_payment/

Well, I hope you're all happy with your pre-mature "fee market" because it has now materialized. Businesses are having serious trouble accepting Bitcoin as a payment method. My own company probably wouldn't even be able to take BTC as a payment method with the present madness going on. Which is sad, because I'm in an industry that really needs something like bitcoin.

And then there's the Huge backlog with people constantly complaining about stuck transactions. Telling them to pay increasingly high fees isn't helping because, there is only so much room on the network.

Bitcoin is completely losing its utility thanks to this madness, and thanks to the Failed leadership of BlockstreamCore, who have succeeded in Crippling the network, for now.

So now only one of two things will happen:

1. Kore will get booted out by a competing implementation which re-introduces the ability to scale on-chain

2. Some Altcoin overtakes Bitcoin in market share and all the major bitcoin businesses, exchanges, and payment processors switch over to a new coin which is not being ran by bonafide retards who seem to be only interested in running in circles and crippling the network for as long as possible.

There is no middle ground. Enjoy the ride, folks, it's gonna be a bumpy one.

[vodaljepa]

Ouch that sucks but oh well fiverr is old news anyways

[ebliever]

Will be interesting if they and other crypto-friendly merchants start announcing support for litecoin or dash or zcash or something else with higher TX capacity. That could ignite some serious competition against bitcoin at last, and force the warring bitcoin factions to wizen up, lock themselves in a room with a good facilitator and a copy of Ken Sande's The Peacemaker, and not come out until they unified around a plan to move bitcoin forward. As long as they keep shouting that the other side is the Great Satan, bitcoin is stuck in the mud. Not good in a rapidly developing, cutting edge environment like cryptocurrency.

[OROBTC]

Will be interesting if they and other crypto-friendly merchants start announcing support for litecoin or dash or zcash or something else with higher TX capacity. That could ignite some serious competition against bitcoin at last, and force the warring bitcoin factions to wizen up, lock themselves in a room with a good facilitator and a copy of Kevin Sande's The Peacemaker, and not come out until they unified around a plan to move bitcoin forward. As long as they keep shouting that the other side is the Great Satan, bitcoin is stuck in the mud. Not good in a rapidly developing, cutting edge environment like cryptocurrency.

Yes.  This is the first tangible reaction against the BTC Congestion we are suffering through.  We may be nearing Critical Mass in just how much of this we can take while the Core Developers and the Miners sit around and twiddle their thumbs.

Locking them up in a room (like they do with the Cardinals in Rome when picking a new Pope) may be the only way.  Else BTC may lose out to competitors...

[Kakmakr]

Both parties could give a fuck about this. The Blockstream guys developed the Lightning Network in such a way that it can be used with any other coin, so if consensus is not reached with Bitcoin, they just join whomever wants to use it. The miners will do nothing, because they are milking the users for more fees and even adding to the problems by mining selectively around the problem.

Greed is killing Bitcoin's future. ^grrrrrrrrr^

[AliceWonderMiscreations]

Both parties could give a fuck about this. The Blockstream guys developed the Lightning Network in such a way that it can be used with any other coin, so if consensus is not reached with Bitcoin, they just join whomever wants to use it. The miners will do nothing, because they are milking the users for more fees and even adding to the problems by mining selectively around the problem.

Greed is killing Bitcoin's future. ^grrrrrrrrr^

Actually it seems to me that the miners want bigger blocks.

[batang_bitcoin]

I guess this news is quite old already however telling that bitcoin will be replaced by some alt coins in the market. I will subject into it, those people that are stopping the good future of bitcoin are quite greedy enough probably they got what they wanted with bitcoin already. We'll see that some other sites in line with this industry will always do the same action.

[pooya87]

well these are very sad days for bitcoin and it is only getting worse every day.
there are still 50K unconfirmed transactions in the mempool, fees are going up and blocks are full. and the block size debate is getting way too long, longer than it really should be.

i hope in a couple of years we could look back to these sad days and see them as only a bump on the road but not something that caused migration to another altcoin!

[dinofelis]

Will be interesting if they and other crypto-friendly merchants start announcing support for litecoin or dash or zcash or something else with higher TX capacity. That could ignite some serious competition against bitcoin at last, and force the warring bitcoin factions to wizen up, lock themselves in a room with a good facilitator and a copy of Kevin Sande's The Peacemaker, and not come out until they unified around a plan to move bitcoin forward. As long as they keep shouting that the other side is the Great Satan, bitcoin is stuck in the mud. Not good in a rapidly developing, cutting edge environment like cryptocurrency.

Yes.  This is the first tangible reaction against the BTC Congestion we are suffering through.  We may be nearing Critical Mass in just how much of this we can take while the Core Developers and the Miners sit around and twiddle their thumbs.

Locking them up in a room (like they do with the Cardinals in Rome when picking a new Pope) may be the only way.  Else BTC may lose out to competitors...

This is ridiculous.  If you think that bitcoin core is "the master", then you already conceded that bitcoin is a totally centralized entity.  If you think that there are bitcoin cardinals and a pope, then bitcoin is already dead.  If you think that a few guys in a room are deciding on the fate of bitcoin, it is entirely over.  Then bitcoin core is just the FED board and everyone seems to accept that.

The bitcoin software is open source, and just anyone can propose a change to it.  This has BTW already been done, with BU.  So bitcoin's community has the tool to push the can somewhat further down the road.  If BU is not used, it is not Core's fault - and if you think it IS core's fault, then that means that you think that bitcoin IS centralized.

No, what is REALLY happening is the immutable consensus dynamics at work.  There's simply no way to change bitcoin.  You can nail some guys to the cross and blame them of all the sins of the world, but it is not their fault.  In as much as they COULD do something, it means that they were in charge, and that bitcoin was centralized ; in as much as bitcoin is really decentralized, what they can do is IMMATERIAL.

Bitcoin is what it is, and it has a hard limit in it.  This problem was there from the beginning, it is a design error, and immutability makes that it cannot be changed.  So yes, bitcoin is running into one of its fundamental problems, and that was unavoidable.  And there's nothing that can be done about it, because of its consensus mechanism.  Period.

Now, why can it not be changed ?  The immutability comes from the antagonist nature of many players, and the fact that they cannot collude.  If ever they collude, it means that the system is, after all, centralized.  The hard limit of the blocks was a technical matter that could have been changed LONG AGO, when no player had any incentive in opposing it.  Consensus over technical improvements which do not alter economic relationships is possible to find.  But now, this window of opportunity is closed, as the block size is now an economic parameter that determines the "fee market".  It is now a scarcity parameter of the same quality as the total number of bitcoins emitted.  Nobody would think that one can still change the 21 million of bitcoins to be emitted: that's part of the immutable consensus.  In the same way, the block size limit is a scarcity parameter now.  It will be protected by the immutability mechanism in the same way.  Because there are sufficient antagonists that have their advantage with it.

The only way to "save bitcoin" is to centralize it.  This can happen in two ways.  "important people collude" and set up a kind of cartel, deciding about everything in the future (including the 21 million coins).  Or, bitcoin's block chain becomes "vault gold" and a banking layer (say, LN / ETF / ...) takes over actual usage of bitcoin IOU.

[pedrog]

How many people were using bitcoin in Fiverr? Probably very few.

If they removed a payment method so quickly it's because it was irrelevant to their business, if it was relevant they'll use some alternative.

When bitcoin starts losing its utility you'll see it in the price, hint: it will not be an all time high.  

[dinofelis]

How many people were using bitcoin in Fiverr? Probably very few.

If they removed a payment method so quickly it's because it was irrelevant to their business, if it was relevant they'll use some alternative.

When bitcoin starts losing its utility you'll see it in the price, hint: it will not be a all time high. 

Bitcoin's utility is not what makes its price.  Greater-fool mining is.

[darklus123]

That is there decision to make. I my self seriously is also almost getting annoyed  somehow of the high fees because it is actually affecting a business. Specially smaller type of business

[pedrog]

How many people were using bitcoin in Fiverr? Probably very few.

If they removed a payment method so quickly it's because it was irrelevant to their business, if it was relevant they'll use some alternative.

When bitcoin starts losing its utility you'll see it in the price, hint: it will not be a all time high. 

Bitcoin's utility is not what makes its price.  Greater-fool mining is.

I agree, it's speculators domain.

[NorrisK]

That is there decision to make. I my self seriously is also almost getting annoyed  somehow of the high fees because it is actually affecting a business. Specially smaller type of business

The fees have become so big that it is not interesting anymore for any type of micro transactions and becoming less interesting for day to day transactions. Soon the only use will be to send large amount of bitcoins to countries with a different fiat currency. Otherwise, it simply can't compete with many of the costs.

Also, with bitcoin the cost is with the customer, while with other payment options, it often happens at the backend and the merchant is charged the fee.

[Daniel91]

It's bad news really but I can understand their viewpoint.
For clients is important to receive payment as fast as possible.
Currently, with low transaction fees, bitcoin transactions are very slow.
So, they had to chose either to wait more for transaction fees or to pay more for free.
Bitcoin also have some other problems like very changeable price etc.
It's obvious that bitcoin become to big problem for them.
I hope that other companies will not follow or we will have serious issue here.

[AngryDwarf]

It's a shame to see bitcoin merchants dropping out of the market, rather than seeing greater bitcoin merchant acceptance. It's what gives utility value to BTC.

Most people seem to be getting excited about the ETF. This turns BTC into a pure speculation coin and that is only going to end up with disaster.

Some people trade FOREX. Foreign exchange is changing assets with utility value.

If BTC has no utility value, it's just a lot of electricity wasted mining 1's and 0's.

[Vaccinus]

Both parties could give a fuck about this. The Blockstream guys developed the Lightning Network in such a way that it can be used with any other coin, so if consensus is not reached with Bitcoin, they just join whomever wants to use it. The miners will do nothing, because they are milking the users for more fees and even adding to the problems by mining selectively around the problem.

Greed is killing Bitcoin's future. ^grrrrrrrrr^

Actually it seems to me that the miners want bigger blocks.

they need a consensus of over 75% for bu right? then why they simply go with unlimited bitcoin, and have bigger block, they are the one who command here if they all agree we can hard fork and have fee reduced by a lot, could help with what this business which have hard time accepting bitcoin

[BrewMaster]

How many people were using bitcoin in Fiverr? Probably very few.

If they removed a payment method so quickly it's because it was irrelevant to their business, if it was relevant they'll use some alternative.

When bitcoin starts losing its utility you'll see it in the price, hint: it will not be an all time high. 

relevant to their business! that doesn't make sense. but one possibility might be because very few were using it. and usually services don't like having too many options. it is always better to keep the options limited to top used ones.

[Ucy]

Wonder what will happen if they revert back to usual stuff or is it simply greed?

[LittleBitFunny]

I think that this will encourage miners to adopt SegWit.  They might be enjoying the high fees but if people no longer think that people are going to actually use transactions and these sites start to pull out they might start thinking about adopting it because it creates urgency.

I'm fairly sure that sites like Fiverr are happy to have Bitcoin as a payment option, so it needs to occur to people that as soon as these problems are solved merchants will start adopting Bitcoin again.

The bulk of this is on Jihan Wu due to his huge monopoly on mining.  The second he stops supporting BU against the will of most of the mining community, Bitcoin is back to its natural progression.