Why are transactions much faster now?

[Don Pedro Dinero]

Today I set a transaction with the lowest fee and I was warned with a notice that with such a fee, the transaction could take days to be confirmed. I confirmed it because I wasn't in a hurry at all. That was about a couple of hours ago and it already has 8 confirmations.

I've checked mempool's unconfirmed transactions and there are about 72.000 whereas that figure hasn't been below 200.000 for quite a while.

Any specific reason for that? Has the price anything to do with it?

[TryNinja]

(IIRC) the hashing power increased by ~20% in the last few weeks, lower transaction volume and the mempool is empty again[1].

P.S: That's a good time to move your funds to a Segwit address. Do it!

[1] https://dedi.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#24h

[bill gator]

Last night I cashed out a small amount of coin just to cover some daily expenses, because long-story short the bank I use to deal with my bills and such did their best to complicate my week; this caused me to have a need I am resentful about, cashing out some of my coin. I was extraordinarily upset about this, because of the fees I assumed I would be coughing up just to move my coin.

To my surprise I used the minimal fee as you seem to have done as well, and to my surprise I got an almost instant confirmation; it took a couple hours for the remainder recommended confirmations, but without much fee or time there it was.

It seems the absurd fees lately have caused an extremely significant chunk of bitcoin users to migrate over to SegWit, Alt-coins temporarily, and as TryNinja has pointed out the hashing power has increased as well. We're lifting strain off of the 1MB blocks, while also moving those people to less constrained methods of sending, 2MB Segwit, Forks, Alts, etc.

This adds up to, less people everyday trying to funnel themselves through that small 1-MB hole.

[edgycorner]

Yup, looks like mem pool cleared for a while and 20+ sat/byte were enough to confirm a transaction.

https://i.imgur.com/UrS3xBb.png

But then again some exchanges are still dumping transactions at 200+  

Low fees holiday is over, is somebody trying to hurt the bitcoin network by shitting with high fees transactions?

[Don Pedro Dinero]

Thanks for your explanations, it looks pretty clear to me now. It seems that I have also been a tiny part of the solution, as I’ve been using a Segwit address already for 6 weeks.

I would like to ask one question more: why has the hashing power increased in the past weeks? I’ve googled about it and it seems that the power can be increased by new miners starting to mine bitcoin or switching to bitcoin but that seems unlikely to me because the price is lower now, so it’s not that profitable, right? Also, because of better hardware (more efficient) but I don’t think there has been a significant hardware upgrade recently.

[Anti-Cen]

[1] https://dedi.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#24h

Are fees below $1 yet like most other coins because it has been fees that has killed Bitcoin

Segwit will have to wait for me until Jaxx or Exodus Eden implement it because I don't want too
many wallets and the small one that don't have ShapeShift are a turn off for me.

[btctousd81]

new transactions count are less as compared to before and this gave time to clear up backlog.

or

old transaction from mempool dropped.

[Kakmakr]

Thanks for your explanations, it looks pretty clear to me now. It seems that I have also been a tiny part of the solution, as I’ve been using a Segwit address already for 6 weeks.

I would like to ask one question more: why has the hashing power increased in the past weeks? I’ve googled about it and it seems that the power can be increased by new miners starting to mine bitcoin or switching to bitcoin but that seems unlikely to me because the price is lower now, so it’s not that profitable, right? Also, because of better hardware (more efficient) but I don’t think there has been a significant hardware upgrade recently.

There were talks about Chinese miners moving their operations from China to other countries and I wonder if these mining farms has contributed to the increase in hashing power, if they have done this and are possibly operational again? Most of these things will be hush hush, until the whole operation has relocated. 

There are also talks about massive Canadian / American mining farms being funded, so this might have an impact too. I am just glad that Bitcoin mining is moving to other countries now. The Chinese monopoly over Bitcoin mining was never a good idea.   

[TheQuin]

I would like to ask one question more: why has the hashing power increased in the past weeks?

Hash power is always increasing as more ASICs are manufactured. The supply of ASICS is the limiting factor as at today's prices mining Bitcoin will be profitable.

https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate?timespan=2years


The balancing factor is the difficulty. This adjustment occurs every 2016 blocks and the most recent one has just hapenned. The result of this is that blocks will now be found a little more slowly and fees will probably increase again over the next few days.

[audaciousbeing]

(IIRC) the hashing power increased by ~20% in the last few weeks, lower transaction volume and the mempool is empty again[1].

P.S: That's a good time to move your funds to a Segwit address. Do it!

[1] https://dedi.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#24h

I actually witnessed same thing and I was surprised when I was about to login into blockchain, I didn't get the normal notification of the network is full at this moment and the likes. Then I tried sending to my surprise 1.75$ equivalent in BTC was the amount to be paid as fees for the regular option which is really surprising but I thought I was only one not knowing s lot of people want answers.

I agree this is just the best time to move to SegWit as suggested by you because we don't know what might happen to the pool by next week then people use that as an excuse not to move to SegWit. This is hope that it can only get better moving to SegWit then lightning network.

I would like to ask one question more: why has the hashing power increased in the past weeks?

Hash power is always increasing as more ASICs are manufactured. The supply of ASICS is the limiting factor as at today's prices mining Bitcoin will be profitable.

https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate?timespan=2years


The balancing factor is the difficulty. This adjustment occurs every 2016 blocks and the most recent one has just hapenned. The result of this is that blocks will now be found a little more slowly and fees will probably increase again over the next few days.

This is another discouraging news it means there is no time to waste.

[Lun4t1c]

Today I set a transaction with the lowest fee and I was warned with a notice that with such a fee, the transaction could take days to be confirmed. I confirmed it because I wasn't in a hurry at all. That was about a couple of hours ago and it already has 8 confirmations.

I've checked mempool's unconfirmed transactions and there are about 72.000 whereas that figure hasn't been below 200.000 for quite a while.

Any specific reason for that? Has the price anything to do with it?

Since the market is on a big dip the number of transactions is limited. Because some or most of them hodling their coins. So in my opinion the current market affects also the speed and number of transactions done in a specific time.

[Carlton Banks]

Today I set a transaction with the lowest fee and I was warned with a notice that with such a fee, the transaction could take days to be confirmed. I confirmed it because I wasn't in a hurry at all. That was about a couple of hours ago and it already has 8 confirmations.

*Transactions* are the same speed they always were. It's *cheap transactions* that are quicker to confirm.

The choice is always:

• Pay higher fees, get faster confirmation
• Pay lower fees, get slower confirmation

If anyone's thinking "but low fees are confirming fast, so that's wrong", then try paying less than 10 satoshis per byte. It'll still take many hours, or even longer than that, for your transaction to confirm.

There's still more than 100 MB of less than 10 satoshi per byte transactions queued in large mempools: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue (check the bottom graph)

[fhl182]

People just abandon bitcoin and moving to cryptocurrencies. Why do they need a store of value if they can have both store of value and a currency? So, why should one use bitcoin and not litecoin or monero? The reason? Because public invested in bitcoin brand so much?

[armandoz]

now so many believe in bitcoin and not hard to in cash and they are participating the bicoin and many bank involve. before one bank in manila i heard that if they know that your money come from bitcoin they will force to the owner of account to widraw it or transfer to other bank. and the other hand  if you like to transfer money from bitcoin need a reliable person to help you to in cash money and interogate if no proper document or ebidence where it come from your money. now there is big change and i'm glad to know and happybecause  everything is change and the people understand gradually what is bitcoin. and some start to study bitcoin asking how to become member and what need to do or how much need to invest.

[onnz423]

Segwit adoption is increasing, reducing the number of transactions on the legacy mempool. I have noticed when sending transactions from a legacy address that even low fee transactions are confirmed relatively quickly now, certainly the fees issue are starting to become less of a concern recently.

[ranochigo]

Segwit adoption is increasing, reducing the number of transactions on the legacy mempool. I have noticed when sending transactions from a legacy address that even low fee transactions are confirmed relatively quickly now, certainly the fees issue are starting to become less of a concern recently.

There's no such thing as a legacy mempool. Based on statistics, the percentage of Segwit transactions in blocks is still about 12%. It's pretty much the same as when the fees were high. The only reason why the fees are low right now is that the number of transactions paying high fees is decreasing, not related to Segwit.

[digaran]

People just abandon bitcoin and moving to cryptocurrencies. Why do they need a store of value if they can have both store of value and a currency? So, why should one use bitcoin and not litecoin or monero? The reason?

Reason is not because of people abandoning Bitcoin, no body has moved to other coins because they all were pumped after Bitcoin, all the Bitcoin investors are also alt coin investors, selling Bitcoin to buy alt coins is not abandoning Bitcoin.

Because public invested in bitcoin brand so much?

Because if you have a decentralized currency and have everybody accepting it, you don't need any other currency, moreover, if you have a payment processor accepting 75-100 different coins, you could use a coin with low fees and fast transactions.

Btw, I think that I was one of the first beggars to use a Segwit address for signature payment. (note, as the rule of a man has got to eat applies here, merit me for I am begging for it).

[Bazinga442]

I believe it's the improvement in technology and the prompt response of consumers of bitcoin

[Thirdspace]

the minimum network free dropped lower because mempool size is getting smaller
mempool size is smaller because less people make bitcoin transactions
less people create transactions because bitcoin price is dropping
why they dont sell when price drop? more users become HODLer and wait for price to back up

and if you check mempool stats, 90% of unconfirmed txs set fee 20s/B or less
it seems people are fed up with high tx fee and decided to just go with low fee and wait for eventual confirmation

[Anti-Cen]

There's still more than 100 MB of less than 10 satoshi per byte transactions queued in large mempools: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue (check the bottom graph)

I get paid in £-Notes and we measure data in megabytes not bytes these days so dress it up what ever way
you like but the fees are high

See https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html
Says the fees are $12.56 for just storing 256 bytes of data and it's not my fault that 20,000 fulls nodes
repeat the same work because I did not ask for them all to be here and 1000 would do the trick