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

[hello_good_sir]

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

Even when bitcoin fees are this high it is still relatively cheaper than international transactions because each transaction will set you back at least $50 depending on where your money is headed. Also if you are using certain services then they may even take a cut from your transaction, something that the bitcoin network does not do.

But still this means that small amounts cannot be sent without losing a big chunk of btc from the transaction. The UASF in August should solve this problem at least partially. Until then just wait and try to not send multiple transactions but instead use one single transaction.

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[Shenzou]

Well not really, because if we compare bitcoin right now with the other online transaction or method of payments we will certanly see that bitcoin has more fees, PayPal and similliar payment method have fixed fees unlike bitcoin which is a growing currency that has an unstable price, and it may be true that it is relativly cheaper compared to sending money worldwide but that only comes for physical transaction not online and bitcoin is an online currencu that can't opaerate without internet.

[yambub]

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

Yes, that's why I said it was supposed to be a peer to peer system for everyone. Now it most definitely is not.

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

Absolutely! Lightning is amazing, but what can us ornery folks do to take the decisions away from the greedy cro-magnons? Thisis a future I want to see, This video sums it up brilliantly, https://youtu.be/r-wlypHbgIU

The boring people have been in charge for thousands of years, it;'s time to bypass them and their dull sad world and take control for ourselves. I'm sick of them and their short-sighted greed.

Onchain transactions will always be expensive for small transactions.

This is not strictly true, even a year ago it was possible to send small amounts cheaply, so it's possible again. It's just a matter of design and it would be quite possible if the will was there. As always, the wrong people are leading the way. The design of the system is being steered away from what it was intended. Maybe it will take another coin to force them to do as we want?

If we want to get everyone on board, again, segwit + lightning network is the way to go.

I think so too, what can I do to push in that direction?

[yambub]

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 tried setting up a 50 dollar transaction and to clear in 20 blocks it was over 5 dollars., With skrill it was 50 cents!

[MWesterweele]

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 fee is become higher because there so many unconfirmed transaction, i don't know what happen to the miner though. But it's fine for now, i mean, the fee is not much higher like before. It's ridiculous though the fee for each transaction can reach 0.001.

Bitcoin is for all the people, the only problem is the transaction fee, it is not bad at all that we have a transaction fee in every transactions that we made, but its bad sometimes that the fee is more likely higher than the amount we want to withdraw. So i am doing i i will stored it for awhile then I will withdraw it when it is high so that my withdraw will be higher than fee.

[BossMacko]

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 fee is become higher because there so many unconfirmed transaction, i don't know what happen to the miner though. But it's fine for now, i mean, the fee is not much higher like before. It's ridiculous though the fee for each transaction can reach 0.001.

Bitcoin is for all the people, the only problem is the transaction fee, it is not bad at all that we have a transaction fee in every transactions that we made, but its bad sometimes that the fee is more likely higher than the amount we want to withdraw. So i am doing i i will stored it for awhile then I will withdraw it when it is high so that my withdraw will be higher than fee.

I disagree bro, even if Bitcoin is available as long as you have internet, Bitcoin is not for all the people now given the current price rate. Only rich people can buy , own or trade Bitcoin now, Most will not be able to afford the current price, though they can get it from signature campaign or bounties but most cant.

[Dimelord]

Satoshi created bitcoin to free people from banking sector as banks charged heavy amount for transactions.Bitcoin was going well for the past seven years with very low transaction fees.But it is no more available now.Bitcoin has lost one of its salient feature due to the greed of miners.They are not ready to get satisfied with nominal fee.So transactions with low transaction fee started to get stuck.I think the only place where bitcoin fee is still low compared to other payment systems is remittance from abroad.High transaction fee has made even new merchants to rethink about accepting bitcoin payment.If this problem is not solved,a situation could soon come when bitcoin would be available only for the rich.

[erickkyut]

Satoshi created bitcoin to free people from banking sector as banks charged heavy amount for transactions.Bitcoin was going well for the past seven years with very low transaction fees.But it is no more available now.Bitcoin has lost one of its salient feature due to the greed of miners.They are not ready to get satisfied with nominal fee.So transactions with low transaction fee started to get stuck.I think the only place where bitcoin fee is still low compared to other payment systems is remittance from abroad.High transaction fee has made even new merchants to rethink about accepting bitcoin payment.If this problem is not solved,a situation could soon come when bitcoin would be available only for the rich.

We cannot blame them. Let's​ try to understand them instead. How can they continue their operations if they don't have funds. Even them need to pay for utility bills and many more operational expenses. And where are they going to get it? Through transaction fees of course. At the end of the day, what they do is all about business.

[qwertyup23]

We all know that bitcoin prices are fluctuating, even though it's price is high. Since bitcoin's popularity is also increasing, it's also obvious that banks will increase their charge for converting cash to it. But we also have to consider that we earn bitcoins even though we're only part time on it. Those are the things that we take for granted and that is why I fully understand on why banks charge high for it.

[dinofelis]

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?

Bitcoin was designed this way.  Bitcoin has two scarcity parameters:

1) the limited number of coins (21 million in the end) --> high market price of a coin

2) the limited amount of room on the block chain (1 MB per 10 minutes)  --> high price of a byte on the block chain.

It might very well be that what becomes the ultimate expensive thing, is "room on the block chain" and not so much the "token that you need to write stuff on that block chain".  In as much as the fundamental economical value of bitcoin is its "immutable ledger" (to record stuff in), and not so much the token that goes around on it, the really expensive stuff will be the "byte on the block chain" and not a bitcoin.

The scaling difficulties reside in the fact that it is difficult to find consensus on releasing a scarcity parameter that constitutes the wealth of part of the community.  Increasing the block size, is somewhat akin to increasing the number of coins.  It would be very difficult to come to a consensus to augment the 21 million coins to, say, 5 billion coins.  Because the holders of bitcoin wouldn't like their expensive holdings to be debased.  

In the same way, the "producers of block chain" that can sell the limited amount of room at increasing prices (the fees) are reluctant to debase their wealth, which is scarcity of room they can sell, in a specific way.  

For the moment, the scarcity is not the leading "market price" in bitcoin: most people still think that the valuable thing in bitcoin is the token (a bitcoin) and not the "byte on the chain".  So the second scarcity parameter is still less "sacred" than the first.  But with increasing fees, the importance of the value of a byte on the chain will make this more and more THE value proposition of the bitcoin chain, and bitcoin will then simply be an application token to pay your fee to buy bytes on the chain.

[dothebeats]

Somehow you must understand that bitcoin's price a year ago was about $400-$500. Back then, you can get a transaction at high priority by paying 100 sat/byte. Right now, the price is a staggering $2800 and, well, some of the miners opt out tx with low fees to get the higher fee tx on their block, allowing them to get more btc in return (and possibly voice out that bigger blocks are needed for the future, perhaps?) Whatever the case is, there are some things that are controlled by politics and not purely economics, in this case, bitcoin's fees.

[Prodigan786]

The main reason is bitcoin price goes high compare to dollars so looks like high transaction charge. Even as a bitcoin enthusiasts we should avoid micro transaction it makes even small difference . And obviously as your question mentioned it's seems like becoming rich people's fund transfer medium

[White Christmas]

3$ transaction fee to withdraw 25$

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

Exactly its fees was getting higher and higher. Its like you are losing more bitcoin when ever you transact with other. But the high is fees is for those who wants to have a fast transaction thats why they say that bitcoin is for the rich right now.

[Dudeperfect]

No actually but I agree that the issue of high transaction fees must be resolved as soon as possible to prevent the OP's statement from becoming a reality. There are many business willing to use bitcoin for their transactions since it is cheaper than fiat transactions but as the fees are not stable, the businesses are going on wait and watch mode. Even though the fees are less that fiat transaction fees (on international level), we should somehow reduce it for improvement on local transactions.

[eann014]

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

When I am going to transfer my funds in an account there is no fees for me, I withdraw everytime I want and when I buy load in my btc wallet it also have  a rebate which ia good for me. I don't know what you meant to say, because there is no problem with bitcoin for me.

[vrm86]

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

When I am going to transfer my funds in an account there is no fees for me, I withdraw everytime I want and when I buy load in my btc wallet it also have  a rebate which ia good for me. I don't know what you meant to say, because there is no problem with bitcoin for me.

Actually fee MUST be paid to network for processing payment in any reasonable time. Do you mean deposit fiat money to buy bitcoins? If so, that's not the problem which we are discussing here.

[Ayiranorea]

3$ transaction fee to withdraw 25$

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

Exactly its fees was getting higher and higher. Its like you are losing more bitcoin when ever you transact with other. But the high is fees is for those who wants to have a fast transaction thats why they say that bitcoin is for the rich right now.

That might be one among the reason why bitcoin is suggested to be the asset or the currency for the richest. Now too transaction fee is not that big, but considering the small volume transactions the fee is big but for large volume transactions the fee doesn't look big. This too shows the richest​is the beneficiaries.

[Xester]

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

When I am going to transfer my funds in an account there is no fees for me, I withdraw everytime I want and when I buy load in my btc wallet it also have  a rebate which ia good for me. I don't know what you meant to say, because there is no problem with bitcoin for me.

Maybe he was referring to transaction when you will pass or pay or transfer bitcoin to other address.  Me too, I do mot experienced such thing because I can do what I can on my bitcoin.  Maybe he is referring to some transactions that is why he have some issues with transaction fees.

[Pettuh4]

3$ transaction fee to withdraw 25$

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

Exactly its fees was getting higher and higher. Its like you are losing more bitcoin when ever you transact with other. But the high is fees is for those who wants to have a fast transaction thats why they say that bitcoin is for the rich right now.

I don't think it's for the rich only, there needs to be clarity for all to know that as Bitcoin prices, demand and number of transactions goes up there's also a corresponding increase in transaction fees; that's how it was made to function and so if hitherto your 0.001 was 1$, it is now 3$ and so paying a weebit more to transfer shouldn't be a problem for me but it seems one people are having a hard time paying extra. It's just not for the rich only but the poor can use them in small satoshis too.

[South Park]

Well not really, because if we compare bitcoin right now with the other online transaction or method of payments we will certanly see that bitcoin has more fees, PayPal and similliar payment method have fixed fees unlike bitcoin which is a growing currency that has an unstable price, and it may be true that it is relativly cheaper compared to sending money worldwide but that only comes for physical transaction not online and bitcoin is an online currencu that can't opaerate without internet.

But the greatest difference is that paypal is not a currency in itself, paypal is just a service that allows you to pay for something online, bitcoin in the other hand is a completely new concept, and truth to be told we still do not know if it is going to work long term, the developers are trying to find ways around some of the problems of the network.