What's going on? Bitcoin for the rich only?

[yambub]

Hi,

Even just a year ago bitcoin was useable... now the fees are about 10x what the banks charge. Seems like its changing from a peer-to-peer money system for everyone into yet another convenient way for rich people to exchange funds!

What went wrong> And more to the point, who is responsible? What can be done to fix it?
Thanks
Andy

[arransiv]

Well you are actually right.That's why I always make sure that I send amount which would make the fees appropriate and not end in the situation where my fees are bigger or as big as the transaction I am making.BTC will be more and more like a store of value and not so much a way of transferring money except for the big sums.At least as long as the problem continues and isn't fixed

[BossMacko]

I feel like Bitcoin is becoming a bank, in order to transact now we need big amount of fee so that the transaction will be fast. I was amazed in Bitcoin before because the transaction is instant now i don't know what to do anymore, i feel like selling all my Bitcoin and find another crypto that will be used by everyone in the future that will always have a low fee.

[Arindava]

I think not, for me not enough money can also be rich by collecting coins that we can with a little bit follow the project.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I think not, for me not enough money can also be rich by collecting coins that we can with a little bit follow the project.

lol what?  Didn't quite catch that.

Yep, fees suck.  It's more practical to use another coin like doge for spending.   As to the 'why', I think that has to do with the price explosion you might have noticed,  which is currently in progress.

[ePesoInitiative]

They could adjust the miner fees. But why? They're making more with higher fees. It's like 15BTC per block.

[BillyBobZorton]

Hi,

Even just a year ago bitcoin was useable... now the fees are about 10x what the banks charge. Seems like its changing from a peer-to-peer money system for everyone into yet another convenient way for rich people to exchange funds!

What went wrong> And more to the point, who is responsible? What can be done to fix it?
Thanks
Andy

How is bitcoin not peer to peer even if the fees are higher? it's peer to peer, just rich peer to rich peer.

If we want to solve this situation, we need segwit, then lightning networks.

Onchain transactions will always be expensive for small transactions. If we want to get everyone on board, again, segwit + lightning network is the way to go.

[odolvlobo]

Even just a year ago bitcoin was useable... now the fees are about 10x what the banks charge. Seems like its changing from a peer-to-peer money system for everyone into yet another convenient way for rich people to exchange funds!

What went wrong> And more to the point, who is responsible? What can be done to fix it?

The fees are high because so many people are willing to pay a lot to make a bitcoin transaction. It is not a matter of rich or poor. It is a matter of what the transaction is worth to you.

The solutions are to make transactions smaller, enable off-chain transaction layers, and make room for more transactions, or perhaps to make Bitcoin less useful.

They could adjust the miner fees. But why? They're making more with higher fees. It's like 15BTC per block.

The fee is not set by anyone. "They" cannot adjust the fee. If you want your transaction to go through, you will have to push out another transaction by paying a higher fee than it. It is that simple.

How is bitcoin not peer to peer even if the fees are higher? it's peer to peer, just rich peer to rich peer.
If we want to solve this situation, we need segwit, then lightning networks.
Onchain transactions will always be expensive for small transactions. If we want to get everyone on board, again, segwit + lightning network is the way to go.

The problem with the Lightning Network solution is that it is another payment system that people will have to adopt. It has taken Bitcoin 8 years to get this far, so we should expect adoption of LN to take just as long. A bigger block solution is necessary in the meantime.

[agustina2]

Hi,

Even just a year ago bitcoin was useable... now the fees are about 10x what the banks charge. Seems like its changing from a peer-to-peer money system for everyone into yet another convenient way for rich people to exchange funds!

What went wrong> And more to the point, who is responsible? What can be done to fix it?
Thanks
Andy

The fees is also considered as high to me surpassing my usual payment method in fiat in those past days. But no worries to me as long as bitocin price is increasing, I just taking that high fees as consideration. Because comparing when the fees is around 20,000 satoshis, bitcoin price back then is cheap that's why people are not making complaints.

Well I can't say how long can I say "no worries" about the fees but as long as bitcoin price is high, I will stick for that thinking for the moment.

[cryptoneet]

3$ transaction fee to withdraw 25$

what a joke if this is the "future" of crypto then its going to suck

[moviebuff777]

Hi,

Even just a year ago bitcoin was useable... now the fees are about 10x what the banks charge. Seems like its changing from a peer-to-peer money system for everyone into yet another convenient way for rich people to exchange funds!

What went wrong> And more to the point, who is responsible? What can be done to fix it?
Thanks
Andy

Originally one of the positives for bitcoin was the low fees for transactions. Now that benefit is starting to go away.

[nightxglow]

I know right, recently more and more people complained about bitcoin fee that's too high.
I'm not really sure what made it like that but maybe because bitcoin price is increasing? So the transaction fee increase as well lol.
So it doesn't really matter since btc price is high, the fee seems quite cheap for some people, but ofc whatever happens there'll always be people complaining about something.
We only can hope that the fee will be lower.

[coolcoinz]

3$ transaction fee to withdraw 25$

what a joke if this is the "future" of crypto then its going to suck

First of all it's not like this won't get resolved. Without a block size consensus and some upgrades of our dear old network the fees will keep growing and that $3 you're talking about will become $5 or 6 next year. This is a temporary problem that needs a software update and that update is coming.
For now, you can stop sending small transactions and wait it out until you have a large sum to process.

[BitHodler]

They could adjust the miner fees. But why? They're making more with higher fees. It's like 15BTC per block.

It's not only the miners that decide the hight of the fees, but more the people that in current situation have to outbid each other in order to make miners include that transaction in one of the first few blocks.

However, the entities that are spamming the network with nonsense transactions are heavily contributing towards mempools more and more filling up, and from there drive up the fees. It's a dirty game that is being played here.

[piebeyb]

I also realize it that every transaction takes a huge fee to get quickly confirmed it's just I believe this problem will be resolved right when the true block size rises above 1 mB

[aTriz]

Hi,

Even just a year ago bitcoin was useable... now the fees are about 10x what the banks charge. Seems like its changing from a peer-to-peer money system for everyone into yet another convenient way for rich people to exchange funds!

What went wrong> And more to the point, who is responsible? What can be done to fix it?
Thanks
Andy

Basically we have to scale before the fees are able to be sorted out. Unfortunately as you said bitcoin is indeed becoming just another way for rich people to store and board their money that they haven't paid tax on. Used to be much more convenient and better as well in my opinion.

I also realize it that every transaction takes a huge fee to get quickly confirmed it's just I believe this problem will be resolved right when the true block size rises above 1 mB

There are lots of supporters for that. We will see in August what the community chooses.

Still though I think that bitcoin is still a heck of am investment to make even when the price seems to be sky high right now. We will see $10000 per bitcoin st the least in ten years.

[Viviyang]

It is still for the people like us and everyone, only problem is that right now the decision isn't made by the Miners about which protocol they have to use, so when the majority of Miners decide one protocol, then the fees problem will be solved and bitcoin will be again used for day to day activities.

[odolvlobo]

However, the entities that are spamming the network with nonsense transactions are heavily contributing towards mempools more and more filling up, and from there drive up the fees. It's a dirty game that is being played here.

That seems like a crazy conspiracy theory to me. Do you have information on who is "spamming the network", and why they are willing to pay so much money to increase fees for everyone else?

[LilibethSantos]

It's really about market demand than the design of the network. There is an unbelievable amount of people trading right now and impatient people are overbidding the transaction fees. At least the money is not being collected by a central entity like in the case of a bank or Paypal.

[haroldtee]

I am sure satoshi may not have really seen this coming or maybe he did and decided to overlook it thinking bitcoin may not really get this big. It is really getting too high and I really hope this can be corrected in a way but as it is now, bitcoin is becoming accessible only to the rich most especially for transactions.