[2017-06-09] Rising Network Fees Are Causing Changes Within the Bitcoin Economy

[TwoTimes]

Bitcoin’s value has grown significantly this year making people’s digital asset holdings worth quite a bit these days. Alongside this, bitcoin mining fees have swelled almost in unison with the price rise and some people have been paying an average of $3-4 per transaction. The rising fees continue to cause concern for bitcoin proponents and businesses using the digital currency for daily operations.

Now bitcoin-focused businesses are pivoting away from using bitcoin for their services or are having customers pay the higher fees. Bitcoin.com has reported on well-known companies such as Coinbase, Xapo, and Bitpay telling their users they can no longer pay the fees themselves. Since then there have been many other startups that have had to pivot their business model due to the rising network fees. Kraken announced on June 8 it was raising its bitcoin withdrawal fees to (0.0025BTC or $7 USD) due to increasing network fees.

Read More Here >>> https://news.bitcoin.com/fees-causing-changes-bitcoin-economy/

[richardsNY]

I very much support exchanges to raise the fees as it is insanely annoying that they have been sticking to prehistoric fees for quite a long time. I personally would prefer to see exchanges offer people a manual option to set fees (with of course a minimum threshold). Other than that, as more and more exchanges and services start raising their fees, the flood of complainers becomes only larger. Just browse through various Xapo fee threads, and you'll see how faucet farmers are going nuts....