aaaand here we go again

[Xester]

almost 70k unconfirms in the mempool.

https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

Today's congestion brought to you by 1-meg Greg and all the Blockstream superfriends.  Go team!

The slow confirmation that you are speaking of and you are connecting to 1 meg Greg as the cause along with its friends in the blockstream. I do not understand it and I havent grasp how did they cause the lag in the blockchain. But anyway possibly it is one expression of their dissatisfaction to the current situation that bitcoin has now and they wanted that their voice be heard.

[LoyceV]

Yeah, 70,000 garbage, no-fee transactions by tumblers and gambling sites.

The tumblers can go to hell. Bitcoin is not supposed to be Mastercard. It is a settlement system for people transferring significant amounts of money, not jokers buying sandwiches and playing nickel slots.

You might want to read Satoshi's Whitepaper again. Start with the title: "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System".
Premined and hardforking altcoins are rising, because Bitcoin is being limited by "the ones in power".

[Labumi]

Wow a very exceptional delays to this day. There are indeed some time we can see the confirmation does not do, but the thing I am sure is only temporary if it is indeed a team there in the mines do the right way. But I am sure this will not give bad effect if indeed we can use transactions in a timely manner and conduct transactions on those who do not need the confirmation level but also trusted
 

[buwaytress]

Yeah, 70,000 garbage, no-fee transactions by tumblers and gambling sites.

The tumblers can go to hell. Bitcoin is not supposed to be Mastercard. It is a settlement system for people transferring significant amounts of money, not jokers buying sandwiches and playing nickel slots.

Hear, hear! Bitcoin is for the bourgeois elite who struggle to understand how anything less than 10 dollars (I'm not underestimating the elite, I hope) can be a significant amount of money. Bitcoin is only for certain businesses and not others. We ought to issue notices to sandwich shops and fast food outlets to stop accepting Bitcoin, they're really clogging up the network!

Jokers can go use Dogecoin and Litecoin, for example.

Sincerely,
a sandwich-buying joker.

[QuestionAuthority]

Yeah, 70,000 garbage, no-fee transactions by tumblers and gambling sites.

The tumblers can go to hell. Bitcoin is not supposed to be Mastercard. It is a settlement system for people transferring significant amounts of money, not jokers buying sandwiches and playing nickel slots.

You might want to read Satoshi's Whitepaper again. Start with the title: "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System".
Premined and hardforking altcoins are rising, because Bitcoin is being limited by "the ones in power".

"The ones in power" Think about that statement for a moment. If there can be anyone or any small group in "power" Bitcoin is a failed experiment and no better than any centrally controlled fiat, Visa, or bank account. In fact, it's much worse. Fiat, Visa, and bank accounts actually work pretty well.

[ralle14]

Yeah, 70,000 garbage, no-fee transactions by tumblers and gambling sites.

The tumblers can go to hell. Bitcoin is not supposed to be Mastercard. It is a settlement system for people transferring significant amounts of money, not jokers buying sandwiches and playing nickel slots.

70,000 transactions with no fee? Are you sure with what you're saying because when you look at bitcoinfees.21 most of the uncofirmed transactions have fees. Also most gambling sites charges you with fees when you withdraw and some don't but they still add miners fee to your tx so there's no way to make a no fee transaction from gambling sites.

[The One]

Yeah, 70,000 garbage, no-fee transactions by tumblers and gambling sites.

The tumblers can go to hell. Bitcoin is not supposed to be Mastercard. It is a settlement system for people transferring significant amounts of money, not jokers buying sandwiches and playing nickel slots.

Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System - perhaps you have never read the whitepaper.

[Qartada]

Yeah, my sig campaign earnings have been stuck in the network all day, but luckily I'm not standing in line at Starbucks paying for my coffee with bitcoin.  Ugh.

This is why bitcoin sucks as money, and it's kind of hard to deny if you're honest.  Nobody in their right mind would switch from fiat to bitcoin.

Absolutely. Bitcoin is so impractical to be used as money especially on a daily basis and on a face to face payment. Bitcoin has its own advantage over fiat and fiat to bitcoin. We can still see that fiat is on top of bitcoin until who knows when.

I'd say that Bitcoin just transfers the responsibility from the banks to the user.  Digital fiat is very inefficient anyway, sometimes it takes a very long time for the transaction to actually get confirmed it just appears convenient to the user.  Bitcoin is for those who want to have real control over their money, and that carries responsibility as well as benefits but it doesn't make Bitcoin suck as money, it just restricts certain people from wanting to use it.

The unconfirmed transactions in the mempool don't really show how Bitcoin is as money and it doesn't show any inherent problem in the network.  Solutions are proposed and SegWit increases the transaction capacity.  Jonald seems to think that the LN is the only part of SegWit but the LN is just a development which can happen.  The network only needs an increase for now, it doesn't need such a huge increase in potential capacity as BU right now, just more than the current capacity.  The LN is just a good addition which will come later.

[jonald_fyookball]

if by 'shill' , you mean unpaid advocate for on chain scaling, Satoshi's vision of Bitcoin, and the entire community...then yes, guilty as charged.

If true (in bold), we wouldn't be having this same discussion for the past three, maybe four, years now.

But hey, I know you wouldn't dare let a little truth interfere with your narrative.

You're absolutely right -- I should have said "large portion of the community".

But you know what Holliday...I am still advocating for what you want:  A censorship resistant Bitcoin.

Do you think that because you have some experience running a node, you're now better suited to plan Bitcoin's future than Satoshi?  It was the plan all along to have large mining nodes.

You believe in the digital Gold concept of Bitcoin without fast , cheap transactions for coffee, but I wonder if you have really thought through the game theory here.  Bitcoin can only remain digital gold if it has high security.  It can only have high security if there's a lot of hash power.  It can only have a lot of hash power if the miners are getting paid a lot.  The miners can only get paid a lot if people are willing to pay a high price for Bitcoin.  People will only pay a high price for Bitcoin if there is a lot of demand.  Where does that demand come from?  It's a combination of a lot of things, but if you take away the demand for widespread use, if you take away the utility, then you are left with "well they demand it because it has high security".   So its somewhat circular logic.  It could work, but its questionable this will be able to compete in the long run with other cryptocurrencies that offer high security AND usability.   At least it is very risky.  You do not seem to acknowledge these possibilities. 
 

[johnwest]

More than 64k unconfirmed transactions still. This is one of the most important reason why Bitcoin cannot come into main stream market. No one will wait this long to buy a product or anything. This may give some serious hit to the Bitcoin, if it goes on like this.

[BADecker]

Actually, this shows that Bitcoin is coming into the mainstream market. Many of those unconfirmeds will be confirmed, but more will be added later.

All that the stupid fee does is to keep the price of Bitcoin down. If we didn't have fees, miners who mined wouldn't sell until the price was right for them. The price would go up - supply and demand.

Bitcoin is supposed to be free and open source. Get rid of the fees and let the thing run as it should, by supply and demand.

[Holliday]

if by 'shill' , you mean unpaid advocate for on chain scaling, Satoshi's vision of Bitcoin, and the entire community...then yes, guilty as charged.

If true (in bold), we wouldn't be having this same discussion for the past three, maybe four, years now.

But hey, I know you wouldn't dare let a little truth interfere with your narrative.

You're absolutely right -- I should have said "large portion of the community".

But you know what Holliday...I am still advocating for what you want:  A censorship resistant Bitcoin.

Do you think that because you have some experience running a node, you're now better suited to plan Bitcoin's future than Satoshi?  It was the plan all along to have large mining nodes.

You believe in the digital Gold concept of Bitcoin without fast , cheap transactions for coffee, but I wonder if you have really thought through the game theory here.  Bitcoin can only remain digital gold if it has high security.  It can only have high security if there's a lot of hash power.  It can only have a lot of hash power if the miners are getting paid a lot.  The miners can only get paid a lot if people are willing to pay a high price for Bitcoin.  People will only pay a high price for Bitcoin if there is a lot of demand.  Where does that demand come from?  It's a combination of a lot of things, but if you take away the demand for widespread use, if you take away the utility, then you are left with "well they demand it because it has high security".   So its somewhat circular logic.  It could work, but its questionable this will be able to compete in the long run with other cryptocurrencies that offer high security AND usability.   At least it is very risky.  You do not seem to acknowledge these possibilities.

A large portion of the community may want bigger blocks, but a larger portion of the community, measured by every metric besides pool operators, want a real scaling solution.

No, you aren't advocating for what I want. Giving more control to miners (which is what BU does) is not conducive to a censorship-proof Bitcoin.

I never suggested that I am better suited than satoshi to plan Bitcoin's future. However, I am willing to consider the opinions of many experts who are actively involved in Bitcoin. Since we've already had this argument and you've apparently forgotten, I'll quote myself to save time.

Satoshi was a genius. No doubt in my mind. Either that or a group of people well versed in many different fields.

However, that does not make him perfect, and relying on his now outdated comments on how to move Bitcoin into the future would be a mistake. His ghost lacks all the data we have amassed since he left us.

Also, sometimes inventions outgrow their inventors and become something they never expected them to be.

Satoshi's biggest failure, in my opinion, was not hardening mining against centralization (pools are actually worse than huge server farms IMO), and I've spent a large part of my time on Bitcointalk trying to get people to wake up to that fact.

Making blocks larger does not necessarily mean that miners will earn more transaction fees. Larger blocks will simply fill up with free transactions until there is once again pressure to compete to have your transaction included in the next block. Once there is pressure again, coffee drinkers will resume their complaining or the blocks will have to be made even larger. That's not a valid solution for either coffee drinkers or decentralizationists.

Using a second layer which can aggregate many small transactions (with small fees) into a single on-chain transaction (with a large fee) is beneficial for both coffee drinkers and decentralizationists, however.

There will only be demand for Bitcoin transactions if Bitcoin offers something unique, which in my mind is a system which allows censorship-proof transactions and a seize-proof store of value. Increasing the resources required to maintain the block chain is in direct opposition to the properties which promote decentralization. A system where you have to record every transaction into a permanent ledger which all full nodes must maintain forever will never be able to compete with centralized solutions when it comes to speed and efficiency, so I'm not sure why we should base future improvements on attempting the impossible when we can base them on strengthening the very properties which gives Bitcoin it's unique use cases and thus it's value.

There is no mainstream demand for Bitcoin transactions (I'm not sure why "big blockers" like to pretend there is). The only people who will find it valuable are those who are willing to intentionally evade the capital controls implemented by their governments. Pretending it can compete with more efficient, centralized solutions while maintaining the properties that make it valuable, and attempting to "improve" the protocol based on those imaginary use cases, is pure folly. The average debt slave can't even write a check for $500, so I'm not sure why anyone would think they are going to purchase bitcoins in order to make their everyday, mundane purchases.

Pretending other cryptocurrencies (which must also maintain a permanent ledger) won't run into the same issues as Bitcoin should they obtain similar usage is silly.

I think I've fully acknowledged every possibility in your post.

[eternalgloom]

I really hope we're not talking weeks of congestion again, just as everything seemed to be running smooth for a while, this happens.
Must also be really off putting for people who are just getting into Bitcoin.

I wouldn't recommend my friends to get into it in times like this.

[vrm86]

Yeah, 70,000 garbage, no-fee transactions by tumblers and gambling sites.

The tumblers can go to hell. Bitcoin is not supposed to be Mastercard. It is a settlement system for people transferring significant amounts of money, not jokers buying sandwiches and playing nickel slots.

Hear, hear! Bitcoin is for the bourgeois elite who struggle to understand how anything less than 10 dollars (I'm not underestimating the elite, I hope) can be a significant amount of money. Bitcoin is only for certain businesses and not others. We ought to issue notices to sandwich shops and fast food outlets to stop accepting Bitcoin, they're really clogging up the network!

Jokers can go use Dogecoin and Litecoin, for example.

Sincerely,
a sandwich-buying joker.

Sounds like bagholder waiting to dump his 0.5 BTC and spending time dreaming about BTC rocketing and becoming more and more 'elite' So, shall Bitcoin be only a toy for playing speculation games, or alternative tender of payment? It doesn't prove strength of Bitcoin at all - you can bet on on football results as well.

[jonald_fyookball]

Making blocks larger does not necessarily mean that miners will earn more transaction fees. Larger blocks will simply fill up with free transactions until there is once again pressure to compete to have your transaction included in the next block. Once there is pressure again, coffee drinkers will resume their complaining or the blocks will have to be made even larger. That's not a valid solution for either coffee drinkers or decentralizationists.
 

You have no proof of this.  You are postulating a tragedy-of-the-commons problem that many disagree with, and you are ignoring that block rewards will continue for decades.
Here's an interesting article about the fee market: https://medium.com/@johnblocke/the-fee-market-myth-b9d189e45096

There will only be demand for Bitcoin transactions if Bitcoin offers something unique

The only thing really unique about Bitcoin is the first mover advantage and network effect.  But those qualities won't last forever.

[0xfff]

8 mb blocks please. Satoshi didn't even put in a hard limit. Adding block limit was a hardfork that should have never happened. Please fix miners.  

[peter0425]

Yeah, my sig campaign earnings have been stuck in the network all day, but luckily I'm not standing in line at Starbucks paying for my coffee with bitcoin.  Ugh.

This is why bitcoin sucks as money, and it's kind of hard to deny if you're honest.  Nobody in their right mind would switch from fiat to bitcoin.

We have the same problem mate. Payment was late and it took 36 hours before the payment was credited to my wallet. But going back to the issue,  bitcoin cannot be used as a micro-payment now because of slow confirmation times. Only solution is to increased the transaction fees. I think dynamic they should implement like a dynamic block generation to really help the block size problem.

[LoyceV]

Here's an interesting article about the fee market: https://medium.com/@johnblocke/the-fee-market-myth-b9d189e45096

I found a very interesting link inside this link: Bitcoin v0.1 released 2009-01-09 20:05:49 UTC, which shows release notes from Satoshi Nakamoto.
The basic idea was to create new Bitcoins as a subsidy for nodes:

When that runs out, the system can support transaction fees if
needed. It's based on open market competition, and there will
probably always be nodes willing to process transactions for free.

Miners currently still get about $15,000 in Bitcoins every 10 minutes as a subsidy. It is incredibly harmful for Bitcoin's future that they want to squeeze more money in the form of fees out of users long before mass-adoption has been reached, and long before there is any need caused by a much lower Block subsidy.
Short-term financial goals vs a long-term electronic peer-to-peer cash system.

Note that Satoshi only mentioned "nodes", not miners! Nowadays Bitcoin nodes only support the network without earning from it, while the dedicated mining hardware gets the money.
As far as I understand SegWit, it could give something back to the nodes, and take away some of the power from miners.

[MadGamer]

I could be wrong but isn't this likely to be from bitcoin unlimited somehow? I also would like to point that PushTX from BTC.com (acquired by bitmain who by the way supports BU) are down for maintenance, Is it possible that they have done that in purpose to make people use BU instead?

[JGoRed]

almost 70k unconfirms in the mempool.

https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

Today's congestion brought to you by 1-meg Greg and all the Blockstream superfriends.  Go team!

I think we just need to face it: Bitcoin can’t handle this many transactions, and in order for it to do so we need a change. Whether that be Segwit, BU, or something completely different I don’t know; but what I do know is that we can’t reach mass adoption without fixing this issue.