BTC Transaction Fees - What is the answer?

[thebanker28]

Bitcoin transaction fees, and associated confirmation times on the network are on a steep upward curve. Have a read of the linked article. What do you think the answer to this is? Do the transaction fees limit Bitcoin to an "invest-able" or can it ever become a daily currency?


"Fees for sending money over the distributed-ledger network have risen nearly 19-fold, from 13 cents per average transaction in the second quarter of 2016 to $2.40 in the same quarter of this year, according to researcher CoinDesk."


http://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/business/paying-15-to-send-25-cost-has-bitcoin-users-rethinking-practicality-20170929

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[webtricks]

If we compare present fees to previous months, there has been quite downfall in it. It had crossed $5 back then but now it is $1.2~
Thus, the situation is not much alarming if one's transaction is confirming within 10-15 minutes with fees of just 1 dollar.
So even if $1 is high for using Bitcoin for daily transactions, it isn't much high for making remittance or overseas payments. So it can act as tough competitor to Paypal or MoneyGram. If such utility to Bitcoin can be created, it is already better than just being investment.

[zoelhack]

Bitcoin transaction fees, and associated confirmation times on the network are on a steep upward curve. Have a read of the linked article. What do you think the answer to this is? Do the transaction fees limit Bitcoin to an "invest-able" or can it ever become a daily currency?


"Fees for sending money over the distributed-ledger network have risen nearly 19-fold, from 13 cents per average transaction in the second quarter of 2016 to $2.40 in the same quarter of this year, according to researcher CoinDesk."


http://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/business/paying-15-to-send-25-cost-has-bitcoin-users-rethinking-practicality-20170929

not by increasing the amount of the fee it makes the transaction that we do so quickly processed, but as far as I know there is a saying if the amount of the fee in the zoom then it will add load load in a block that will appear to bring the transaction

[joebrook]

Bitcoin transaction fees, and associated confirmation times on the network are on a steep upward curve. Have a read of the linked article. What do you think the answer to this is? Do the transaction fees limit Bitcoin to an "invest-able" or can it ever become a daily currency?


"Fees for sending money over the distributed-ledger network have risen nearly 19-fold, from 13 cents per average transaction in the second quarter of 2016 to $2.40 in the same quarter of this year, according to researcher CoinDesk."


http://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/business/paying-15-to-send-25-cost-has-bitcoin-users-rethinking-practicality-20170929

I am yet to understand the dynamics that makes the transaction fees go way up and later come down. I am also guessing that just as bitcoins value is so volatile, the same can be said for the transaction fees because it follows the same exact trend as bitcoin when it rises and falls.

[dasdo]

Big commissions are certainly not pleasant. But constantly going works, updates, scaling - are trying to solve this problem and reduce the commission price. I think it's just a matter of time. There are many other crypto currencies, where very cheap commissions.

[SimonJones]

If the fee can remain as it is, it is still much better than paying with banks.

[GreatOrchid]

The fees are going up, but the price is going up too, so you can not complain about that. In 2016 the price of bitcoin was less than $800, and now it is upto $4200 each one, so in fact, you are paying the same in BTC, but it is more money in usd at the moment. They are low compared to banks, but higher than paypal or any other payment processor, but nobody can complain about bitcoin, it has a lot of features that probably we are ignoring
.

[cng-]

Fees will be solved with layer 2 solutions that can scale up and reduce transaction costs. That is why I personally don't think that increasing block size will do any good. It is an inefficient and ineffective solution to a much much bigger problem that it is trying to solve.

[Aamir1]

The fees are significantly high, that's for sure, but not if we compare them to other sources of transacting money from one place to another. Bitcoin has changed the face of online transactions and we cannot deny that fact at all. And, if the fees are higher than what they used to be in past, then the price is also not the same which it used to be back then. If that time, i had $20 worth of bitcoin, then today i have $80 worth of bitcoin though the amount of bitcoin is the same in my account. So i don't think we should be complaining about the fees knowing all the advantages bitcoin provides to us, and maybe, we will see lower fees again in future.

[thebanker28]

I dont fully understand the dynamics of what drives the transaction price either, to my understanding (which may be flawed) the transaction cost is adjusted to incentivize miners to process the transaction into the next block. The amount of transaction per second has a big bearing on the price also, at busy times I believe the cost is significantly higher / or the wait time is longer. Without fundamental change the charges are only likely to go up and up, and while I agree that in many case they compare favorably to Paypal et al. the point is that the cost should realisically be in the same region as sending an email.

Then again, this is just my opinion - and may be flawed.

[Askab]

The fees are too high, takes a significant portion out of small transfers. Maybe we should spread the load over more coins.

[freebutcaged]

Miners need to include more transactions in blocks, even with the blocks of size more than 1MB fees sometimes are high but not that much, even we

Have no 1MB limit anymore miners are mining their usual small blocks, I thought they would at least include a few hundred more transactions, I don't

Know what is their excuse now? they added a few KB to some but not all of  the blocks and the backlog reduced, rarely we have more than 5000

Unconfirmed transactions, they must increase their block size 1MB more then we'll only pay a few sats and they will get less money.

[kimochidesh]

People adopt Bitcoin as transaction method coz of the decentralized fast method for payment with low transaction fees. Low transaction fee was one of the best features which makes Bitcoin so popular.
High transaction fees and slow confirmation will definitely pull back Bitcoin and discourage its users. So I think in such situation users will like to shift to Altcoins Like ETH as it also serves same features i.e decentralized and fast processing with much lower fees in comparison.

[stompix]

The article talks about both tx fees and private fees you pay when you buy sell coins on an exchange.

To send the $25 from the United States, Nuzzi used a credit card to buy an equivalent amount of bitcoin on exchange Coinbase Inc., which charged a 3.99 percent fee this month. Then he paid a bitcoin network fee of $1.34 to send the payment to the U.K.
While converting bitcoin to pounds was free on the exchange Coinfloor, Nuzzi had to pay $13.56 to place the money in a U.K. bank account. He ended up paying $15.90 to get the payment through.

The example is a bit extreme but it does show one thing.
For small amount and if you need fiat at the end of the process, bitcoin is not the cheapest options.
When you send large amount over 1k, it starts to look far better.

I dont fully understand the dynamics of what drives the transaction price either, to my understanding (which may be flawed) the transaction cost is adjusted to incentivize miners to process the transaction into the next block.

Users compte for the space in the next block. Higher fees go faster cheaper tx might never get a spot.
Pretty simple.
More transactions, higher demand for space, higher fees.

[bettercrypto]

If we compare present fees to previous months, there has been quite downfall in it. It had crossed $5 back then but now it is $1.2~
Thus, the situation is not much alarming if one's transaction is confirming within 10-15 minutes with fees of just 1 dollar.
So even if $1 is high for using Bitcoin for daily transactions, it isn't much high for making remittance or overseas payments. So it can act as tough competitor to Paypal or MoneyGram. If such utility to Bitcoin can be created, it is already better than just being investment.

I agree this simply show that the August hardfork is quite effective in minimizing transaction and making confirmation faster.  I was onced paying a high amount for transaction and after the hardfork, I pay less and it confirms much faster than before.  There is nothing we can do about transaction fee, unless the code themselves fixed it, we will be paying whatever the price of the current setup for transactions fee.