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

[HabBear]

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!

Fees aren't changing for Bitcoin. The real question is how high will fees need to be before you start to use Litecoin...hell, you can buy more of it now too!

Check this out: Reduced Transaction Fee by 99% using Litecoin

[shield132]

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

I have already said many times that fees are very unfair when you are making bitcoin trabsactions and I already created thread about that but suddenly very dissapointed. Seems many people enjoys curent very high fees. Yes I understand that price become 3-4x higher but fees because really 10x higher and that's not normal.

[Creativity]

Yes, the fees are high now, but they will become lower soon, with the proposed solutions, like segwit and lightning network!

[eaLiTy]

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?

Hello Andy,the fees are not higher than bank charges and if you planning to remit money internationally the price are way higher in banks than with bitcoin ,trust me,i am also sad to see the fate of bitcoin like this as i am also willing to see a network upgrade to accommodate more users,what went wrong is that,our current network have some limitations when accommodating transactions and with more people coming into bitcoin the number of transactions also increased,so in order to change that we need to upgrade that,there are several methods being proposed and in a perfect world the lead team could get to a general agreement with the miners on how things will be done here to avoid further delays.

[sashamoe]

It's true that transaction fees become more expensive with bitcoin price increases, maybe there should be a new wallet that uses transaction fee in the form of dollars, but I think it will be difficult, once coinbase can free transaction fee, I do not expect free, but not too expensive

[TryNinja]

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?

It is rather difficult to pinpoint one’s reasoning behind these attacks. If smart contracts were embraced on a large scale in the bitcoin ecosystem, one could argue the contract has gone awry. Even though smart contracts in bitcoin have been available for some time, they are not commonly used. The only logical explanation seems to be how someone – or a group of people – are purposefully creating a spam attack. The bigger question is how long this attack will last.

The only winners right now are the bitcoin miners. With more transaction fees being produced, miners make slightly more money. It appears someone will gladly let miners earn a lot more money, although no one knows for sure why that would be the case. We can only hope this attack relents sooner rather than later, so things can go back to normal.

More info about the current issues:
http://www.newsbtc.com/2017/03/04/new-spam-attacks-aim-slow-bitcoin-network/
http://www.newsbtc.com/2017/03/20/appears-another-spam-attack-taking-place-bitcoin-network/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5xi84f/this_address_is_spamming_the_network/

[South Park]

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.

Bitcoin is not becoming like a bank, what we are seeing is people responding to incentives that is all, the miners are not in it because they believe in bitcoin like a life philosophy, they are in it because they like the smell of the money, and as more people use bitcoin and the price increases and the blocks remain the same size and they cannot accommodate more transactions then the price of fees becomes higher this is nothing new fellows.

[darkangel11]

The current situation limits the use of bitcoin for small transfer and "street food" type of purchases, that's true, but its other uses like a store of value, quick and cheap overseas transfer method, anonymous payment system (yes it is anonymous if you buy your coins for cash, get from a giveaway, faucet, and such) and investment opportunity. Maybe it's destiny is not to function like credit cards.

[cryptoneet]

The current situation limits the use of bitcoin for small transfer and "street food" type of purchases, that's true, but its other uses like a store of value, quick and cheap overseas transfer method, anonymous payment system (yes it is anonymous if you buy your coins for cash, get from a giveaway, faucet, and such) and investment opportunity. Maybe it's destiny is not to function like credit cards.

i withdrew from coinbase 3 hours ago still saying 0 confirmations.

not exactly fast

[Celsiuss]

Well, you have a point. The fees are outrageous. Bitcoin isn't for the rich, but all those small transactions we used to do, is gone. Why would I spend 3$ on sending 5$?? It's more like for medium transactions only now. I don't like where this is going.

[krisnt80]

I dont know banks fees at the moment, but i still believe you are able to moove big ammounts cheaper then making those into the banks, anyway bitcoin has a issue the blockchain size isnt enought to handle the big volume of transaction, this kind of thing should only happen when the mine would be over, but well the community need to choose to handle the best way with the issue.

[andrew24p]

While I would like to see lower fees, I think if it turned into simple a store of value, we would still be fine the way things are. If you are buying something you plan to hold for a year, you can use low fees and just wait. It may take a while, but eventually it will go through.

[the rise]

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

Uncontrolled transaction levels cause each user to want to be at the forefront of their queued transactions in the order of the masses, the more frequent transaction costs are often used by that person so the benchmark cost for each miner gets higher, the miners will become More greedy determining the transaction fee, I think this is a problem with the bitcoin system. But many users do not care about it.

I just think if these costs are not set well, one day the system will become out of control.

[Schuyler]

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.

Bitcoin is not becoming like a bank, what we are seeing is people responding to incentives that is all, the miners are not in it because they believe in bitcoin like a life philosophy, they are in it because they like the smell of the money, and as more people use bitcoin and the price increases and the blocks remain the same size and they cannot accommodate more transactions then the price of fees becomes higher this is nothing new fellows.

As the transactions increase in number, we can only expect that the fees are going to go higher in order for them to be confirmed, given that they are just all going to go through the same block. And it’s all good for the miners since they are making a killing with the fees they are collecting. It is obvious that these rising transaction fees has ticked off a lot of us and even made others abandon bitcoin altogether.

[Rahar02]

Yah, current fee is too high compared to what we have to paid in last year. When bitcoin price started to increase, transaction fees increase as well, but it seems not fair for everyone as it could take days for a transaction to be confirmed.
Who is responsible? There are some people whom get benefits more than everyone, they are the miners.
Why it take a long time to activate segwit or increase the blocksize?  Because they keep acting agree and disagree, playing a drama to prolong this problem, so they could get more fee (bitcoin) from every transaction.

[ufaiz50]

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

along with rising bitcoin prices the fee transaction bitcoin feels very big indeed like a bank. even I found a transaction that has fee 70% more than the funds that go in the wallet.

[prieaji]

If bitcoin will be the world's bank that will change your future life, in order to transact now we need a big cost so the transaction will be fast, I am amazed with the instant that is in bitcoin.

[South Park]

I dont know banks fees at the moment, but i still believe you are able to moove big ammounts cheaper then making those into the banks, anyway bitcoin has a issue the blockchain size isnt enought to handle the big volume of transaction, this kind of thing should only happen when the mine would be over, but well the community need to choose to handle the best way with the issue.

What it happens is that since the miner fees are not dependent on the value of the transaction but the size we may have some instances where the fee seems unusually high for some like a 5 dollar fee for a 5 dollar transaction, but you can send transaction with a big denomination in dollar sand you can get cheap rates, so it depends on the way you are using bitcoin.

[tittensor]

If bitcoin will be the world's bank that will change your future life, in order to transact now we need a big cost so the transaction will be fast, I am amazed with the instant that is in bitcoin.

I not hope that, I want bitcoin only a digital cash and have a huge community use it.
The price now is good, but I hope it can up more than now and can send BTC instant with low fee, short time =))

[Wipro]

If bitcoin will be the world's bank that will change your future life, in order to transact now we need a big cost so the transaction will be fast, I am amazed with the instant that is in bitcoin.

I not hope that, I want bitcoin only a digital cash and have a huge community use it.
The price now is good, but I hope it can up more than now and can send BTC instant with low fee, short time =))

Don't consider bitcoin as a digital money alone. You can use the bitcoin as stock, investment as simply holding it, transaction medium for international money transfers.
As said price moving good but fees are so high than the last 3 years. Almost 0.001 btc for a transaction.