WARNING! Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

[NABiT]

Re: WARNING! Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

When is soon?

[pera]

I assume that people in this thread don't really understand how serious is the spam problem; it's totally unfair to criticize Gavin for doing this: actually this only shows why he deserves the status of project leader of the satoshi's client.
A proper solution will came some day, but meanwhile this is best thing for the good of Bitcoin's scalability.
If you need micro-transactions you may use for now litecoin or any other altcoin...

[joshburt]

I find this change distasteful and it’s a step on a slippery slope to transaction blacklisting.

[kokjo]

so all you people are talking about financial freedom and how banks are evil, but are not willing to accept simple supply and demand?

shut up whines! and just include a fee.

[Photon939]

Gavin needs to work more on coin and transaction priority than arbitrarily blocking transactions below a certain size.

You should be allowed to create as many satoshi size transactions as you want, you will just end up at the end of the line for unverified transactions and likely never get included in a block unless you pay significant transaction fees.

[misterbigg]

Bitcoin is not suitable for micro transactions.

Stop misusing the word. "microtransactions" are on the order of pennies, or tens of pennies. Perhaps almost a dollar. Bitcoin already supports these, although it could get prohibitively expensive as transaction volume goes up.

These are nanotransactions or picotransactions. It makes no sense for Bitcoin to support transactions worth hundredths of a penny.

[Come-from-Beyond]

Gavin Andresen has changed the Bitcoin code to block any output with a value of less than 54uBTC:
...

So, what happens when Bitcoin takes over the world economy, and 54 uBTC is worth a lot of money ($54 say)?  Then Bitcoin will only be usable for large-value transactions...  It will be more like the existing inter-bank wire-transfer system at that point...

Maybe use litecoin, that's one of the reasons it was created.

Minimal fee is 0.1 LTC. It's 35 cents. Too high for micro-transactions.

[jdillon]

I assume that people in this thread don't really understand how serious is the spam problem; it's totally unfair to criticize Gavin for doing this: actually this only shows why he deserves the status of project leader of the satoshi's client.
A proper solution will came some day, but meanwhile this is best thing for the good of Bitcoin's scalability.
If you need micro-transactions you may use for now litecoin or any other altcoin...

It is a serious problem.

But all he had to do is make a public blog post explaining what was going to be done and why and how long people have to change their business models. That's it.

Instead I am the first person to make the issue widespread public knowledge.

[miscreanity]

This does seem dangerous. Pool operators and independent miners have to be expected to have technical proficiency. Instead of this being an opt-out style change, it should be opt-in; preferably with a definable amount.

At worst, it should be a compile-time flag.

[pera]

Code:

p (pico) 	10^-12
n (nano) 	10^-9
µ (micro) 	10^-6
m (milli) 	10^-3

As: 1 mBTC = 0.001 and 1uBTC = 0.000001, so I think it's ok to say micro-transactions, no?

[soundasleep]

Bitcoin is not suitable for micro transactions.

Stop misusing the word. "microtransactions" are on the order of pennies, or tens of pennies. Perhaps almost a dollar. Bitcoin already supports these, although it could get prohibitively expensive as transaction volume goes up.

These are nanotransactions or picotransactions. It makes no sense for Bitcoin to support transactions worth hundredths of a penny.

At 54.3 uBTC minimum, this means that penny microtransactions can only happen if USD/BTC < $184; tens of pennies < $1842; dollar microtransactions < $18416.

If you believe some of the optimists none of these valuations are impossible in the future, so in the future perhaps Bitcoin will literally not be suitable for microtransactions, no matter your definition.

[gmaxwell]

So, what happens when Bitcoin takes over the world economy, and 54 uBTC is worth a lot of money ($54 say)?  Then Bitcoin will only be usable for large-value transactions...  It will be more like the existing inter-bank wire-transfer system at that point...

Then you just adjust the threshold down. The behavior isn't a protocol rule, miners can still include transactions with smaller outputs. The whole idea is just to prevent floods of transaction outputs which are uneconomical to redeem (e.g. costs more to redeem than the value of the txout returned), and to increase the cost of abusing the blockchain for data storage in that way.

[zamazama]

very disappointed about this move.

[Nancarrow]

Questions...
Is there a short and sweet explanation for why 54 uBTC was chosen, rather than say 17 or 68 or 3.9?
If the official client doesn't accept or relay "micro"transactions (sub-54 uBTC outputs), but other clients do, and these transactions end up in a block, does the official client still accept the block as valid?
Will there be an easy way for an end user of the official client to tweak that 54 uBTC cut-off point? A flag to pass to bitcoind, or at least a simple compile-time alteration?
Why was this move felt necessary when I thought the whole idea was that variable transaction fees would create a competitive market for including transactions? What does this move accomplish that transaction fees don't?

ETA: oh, never mind. It turns out I can actually follow some of the discussion on the pull request itself... thought it'd be way out of my depth.

[soundasleep]

For what it's worth, I'd rather that the Bitcoin network forced tiny transactions to wait 20-40 blocks, rather than banning tiny transactions outright. I'd also rather the client implemented overriding transactions (so you can reverse low-fee transactions that will never be accepted) than adding mininput parameters.

Justifying the 54.3 uBTC limit because it's "less than $X" is foolish because BTC decisions should not be made in terms of USD.

[malevolent]

It makes no sense for Bitcoin to support transactions worth hundredths of a penny.

If we see another 10x or 100x rise in Bitcoin value (don't say it's impossible when BTC was worth $2 1.5 years ago and $250 few weeks ago), those microBTC will be worth more and more.

may 5th 2013 the day bitcoin is only divisable by 4 and a half zeros

You can't divide by 0.

[bitcoiners]

This is bad news for Bitcoin.

Well, there is always Litecoin.

Cheers.

[crazy_rabbit]

Gavin Andresen has changed the Bitcoin code to block any output with a value of less than 54uBTC:

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/2577

Many Bitcoin users are going to be affected and see their funds blocked. For instance ASICMiner share payments, BitHits faucet payments, anyone depending on microtransactions. If you depend on small payments you need to change your business model now or find yourself shutdown overnight.

Gavin: It's sad that you aren't willing to speak about this publicly on the forums, rather than hiding away all the debate on GitHub away from the general public.

edit: To be clear, I like the patch: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/2577#issuecomment-17138223

What I don't like is when I realized not once had Gavin or anyone else in the development team made a public statement that this change was coming down the line. If I hadn't made this post, for all I know it would have been hidden away in the next Bitcoin-QT with no warning at all, right when we all have to upgrade before May 15th.

Why isn't think on your blog or someone else so people have time to change the way their businesses operate? Why the secrecy?

For the record, the forums no longer count as "public" as in "well informed public" but "public" as in "mob". I can understand why this wouldn't have been done on the forum. No offense, but you're a user with 28 Posts and you're essentially accusing one of the most important guys in bitcoin of some sort of underhanded secrecy. That doesn't mean that you can't be right, but still, it's a mob mentality down here, and there are thousands of us down here ready to tear anything apart.

[Daily Anarchist]

If the vast majority of the community doesn't like this move can't we just ignore the new patch and refuse to upgrade?

[crazy_rabbit]

This is bad news for Bitcoin.

Well, there is always Litecoin.

Cheers.

Uh, last I checked Litecoin is *more* expensive per transaction then Bitcoin. In order to fix the dust spam problem transaction fees are very high.