[Apr 2024] Fees are HIGH, wait for opportunity to Consolidate your small inputs

[stompix]

As individual devs, we can build stuff like Casey did, but there's only much we can do before our work needs a bigger endorsement by someone with more influence, in order for people to actually use it, in the same way of RGB / LN / Silent Payments / Liquid / your various mining technologies like Stratum and so on.

I don't know, I have a different way of seeing things probably but for me all this stuff it's pretty simple:
- Bitcoin means freedom, you don't need to ask anyone permission what to do with your coins
- Bitcoin is a free market, it answers to the laws of offer and demand, nothing else

Then:
- by the laws of economics when there is the demand for something, aka backspace why not acknowledge the problem?
- if people don't want to use LN as it's either too much of a headache, too complicated, or has no actual use for their needs, how do you think they will embrace it? By force? lol! Cause that has worked wonders in the past!

Since you saw my post in the other thread, what slippery slope do we choose here:
- ban ordinals, ban brc20 then orc20 tokens, then ban tumblers and mixers? Ban consolidations as you can just use coin control?
- raise the block limit once and see what happens, then raise it again if somehow we find people stupid enough to pay more than 40 million a day in fees continuously?

Anyhow, I think we're deviating from the main topic here and I'm spamming Loycev's topic, since I was the one that started it.
That said, I think there is a new adjustment needed to the title, after seeing this topic:
Delay your Bitcoin transaction for this week| Volunteer campaign
Something like, don't you dare consolidate your inputs, not you mo******! 

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[LoyceV]

Anyhow, I think we're deviating from the main topic here and I'm spamming Loycev's topic, since I was the one that started it.

I don't mind, I'd say a discussion about what causes high fees fits within the scope of this topic.

[Pmalek]

Unfortunately, Bitcoin doesn't solve poverty issues, does it? it simply gives you a means of payment that are not controlled by a single entity, whether someone can afford to use it or not is beyond the inner workings of BTC

It's not only a poverty issue. I have to agree with what LoyceV said. I see no reason to use Bitcoin with the current fee requirements unless I absolutely have to despite living and/or working in a western nation and earning enough money. You are not going to be able to sell that story to someone who asks you to explain the benefits of Bitcoin to them. Saying that it gives you the freedom to do with your money what you want won't be enough. The second question will be how much is all that going to cost me? And when you tell that person it could be $10 or $20 regardless of the amount you spend, they'll laugh and walk away. Bitcoin is useful if it does better than what traditional payment systems can offer. Sadly, that is currently not the case.

[mikeywith]

I don't think a few percent is going to help, and I'm pretty sure they'd also fill it if blocks were 4 times bigger. It would just take a bit longer.

There is a direct correlation between block time intervals and fees, when the demand for block space is pretty large, every second matters, on the 5th of May, the average block time was 12.01 mins which helped in making things worse.

on a side but related note, Luke Dashjr seems to be pretty upset about what's happening with fees and he is calling for "actions", it will be an interesting scene to watch, I doubt mining pools will signal any change in that regard since they all are enjoying the extra profit.

Let's look at the bright side, Segwit adoption has not increased for nearly a year now, it has been stuck at a 90% level, but it jumped to 95% in no time.

Saying that it gives you the freedom to do with your money what you want won't be enough. The second question will be how much is all that going to cost me? And when you tell that person it could be $10 or $20 regardless of the amount you spend, they'll laugh and walk away. Bitcoin is useful if it does better than what traditional payment systems can offer. Sadly, that is currently not the case.

This debate is déjà vu, to be honest, I will start and finish by saying that almost nobody uses BTC for daily payments, you may know a person or two, but the percentage of people who use BTC for daily payments rounded to the nearest whole number is basically 0, BTC gained most of it's value for being a "store of value" even when fees are dirt cheap it is still expensive and slow to most payments, even if fees were 0 (cash is, most local payments are) how are you going to convince someone to wait for an average of 10 mins to get his coffee?

It almost feels like the whitepaper is being universally misunderstood, P2P e-cash does not necessarily mean (cheap, can buy coffee, fast), or none of that, it simply means P2P, BTC is not suitable for daily payments because it's too secured for that, it's a part of its strength not weakness, if you want to convince someone to use BTC you will have better luck (by a few orders of magnitude) if you focus on the value aspect and to show them the chart of Bitcoin, people care more about preserving their wealth and increasing it, than finding an alternative for the grocery store checkout, because honestly, nobody seems to have a problem using their credit card or cash to pay for a cart full of vegetables.

You are going to add to that that "bad money drives out good", we will need to get rid of all the government-printed money first, only then we will be forced to spend dear bitcoins.

Anyway, I am pretty sure this wave is going to be over soon and we will go back to normal the moment this hype is gone just like any other sort of hype/fomo we had in the past, more things will come in the future and clog the network for a few days and then disappear, I don't think we need to worry about it, it will resolve on its own.

[JayJuanGee]

Anyway, I am pretty sure this wave is going to be over soon and we will go back to normal the moment this hype is gone just like any other sort of hype/fomo we had in the past, more things will come in the future and clog the network for a few days and then disappear, I don't think we need to worry about it, it will resolve on its own.

I get the same sense that "we" are not in "emergency status" yet merely based on some high fees and some delayed transactions, and surely there are a lot more tools (other avenues to transact / abilities to monitor nuances) today as compared to what was happening in late 2017 and into early 2018 (backlog mostly resolved by the end of January 2018).

If any of us might believe that some kind of an "emergency status" exists, then we are going to consider that emergency measures might need to be taken, and surely we had not seen any kind of a sustained fee spike since February - even though this last go around in the past week or two has built up a pretty decent sized backlog, yet interesting to see if the fees are going to be sustainably high.. and the backlog will sometimes allow for the miners to start eating into the backlog and it is not like the miners are not processing transactions  - which would be another issue if there were a bunch of blocks with zero or near zero transactions.

Of course, trying to look on the bright side would be if there can be ways in which more lightning wallet services develop and build, and even if some of those "emergency status" developments might have more KYC, there are also ways that many of us can be inspired to run our own nodes too.. and then just having funds in various places in the case that we want to transact.. and surely worse for individuals/businesses who may well have developed their own systems and habits based on expectations that on-chain transactions would stay at or near 1 sat per vbyte or expecting that the worse case scenarios might cause the higher fees to be 50 to 100 sats per vbyte, when we are currently having those levels of new transaction attempts being rejected within that 50 to 100 sats per vbyte range - which might have had been the top of the expected price range for some people (maybe especially some of those who are currently more upset and/or feeling locked out of carrying out onchain transactions because they are feeling priced out).

Of course, coin control is empowering, even if it might not exactly bring down the fees.. and even RBF is useful and helpful, even though that might not resolve issues, either, but individual users can be inspired to learn about wallets that have these options and to be able to figure out how to use such features, too.  

To some extent, it might go back to Loyce's question.

One thing I don't understand: why do fees jump from say 200 to say 300, and not to 201? Is this still the default of many wallets? You can be ahead of the rest with just 1 sat/vbyte, and by making 100 sat jumps, everyone else has to do the same thing and still none of the transactions get confirmed any faster.

Coin control, knowledge about how the transactions work and how the mempool works and coin control can vary through different kinds of wallets, and even knowing that some wallets have more coin control abilties than others can help to resolve some of these kinds of issues, and yeah it could be frustrating if someone might be expecting to transact BTC onchain for around 200 sats per vbyte and then see that the next higher priority option that is being provided by the wallet is either try for 200 sats per vbyte or to go to 300 sats per vbyte,^** and if everyone does that it can seem like a pretty big ass problem (or a self-fulfilling prophecy if everyone is using the same kinds of wallets, which we should expect that there is a decent amount of wallet variance these days, too), yet a lack of options in regards to how much the wallet is suggesting is largely a bigger ass problem for people who have such a low time preference that they cannot figure out how to coin control their transaction, or they are using wallets that do not allow coin control and we see exchanges not really giving options regarding how much it is going to cost (and maybe even exchanges might have to start providing options at some point?).. so we might learn NOT to get stuck with our coins on exchanges (especially the ones that we might want to have in a place to move them, if there were to be some kind of an "emergency" need to transact during high fee times like this).. and yeah, if you are dealing with strangers you might want your transaction to go through in the next block versus being able to low ball the transaction in terms of sending to yourself or to a trusted (known) person... and yeah, if you are forced to transact, then either you have to suck up the cost or if someone is forcing you to transact in BTC on chain, then you are having them cover the fees.. because they are the one with the seemingly low time preference and perhaps no other value transaction options.

** edit.. after I posted, I realize that the 200 versus 300 sats per vbyte is not even realistic any more.  That might have been more of a current issue one or two days ago, but currently we would be more realistic to be talking about 40 versus 50 sats per vbyte in terms of the incremental jumps between regular priority transactions as compared with higher priority transactions.. and even wallets will differ in terms of what they are suggesting in order to have decently high odds of get the transaction into a block within an hour versus getting the transaction into the next block.

[LDL]

High fees , Can't withdrawal my Small amounts

For quite some time now, there has been a lot of difficulty in Bitcoin transactions for higher fees. Especially I have been withdrawing small amount of bitcoins in my Mycelium wallet and Electrum bitcoin wallet for a few days and while withdrawing those bitcoins I withdraw several times but it keeps failing due to extra fees. Fees are slightly lower today compared to other days, but fees in Mycelium wallet and Electrum wallet are still the same.

My Mycelium wallet Fees more than $12



My electrum wallet Fees



But mempool show .



https://mempool.space/

All screenshot taken at the same  time of withdrawal.

[LoyceV]

My Mycelium wallet Fees more than $12

Don't use "Normal" priority, I always thought that's just to prevent people from complaining about unconfirmed transactions. My Bitcoin Core shows 46 sat/vbye is enough for a 4 block target. Johoe looks about the same. So, in Mycelium, use Low-priority, and pick 49 sat. Or use a different wallet that allows more freedom to select exact fees.

For the record: striking out part of the address like this doesn't help to hide it.

[Volgastallion]

I dont use Mycelium but.. what its that no sense?.

How and why the "economic" fee with 2 hour of confirmation have only 50 c of USD in diference with the Normal and less than 1 usd with the Priority one?

[ormatr]

Why Bitcoin fee has gone so high these days?

is it because number of transactions per day have gone up from 400k to 600k? https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactions.html#3m

[LoyceV]

Fees are the lowest they've been in a while. 5 sat/vbyte seems to be enough for a quick confirmation. Use this if you can

[LoyceV]

Bump: you might even get away with 3.2 sat/vbyte this weekend

[stompix]

Use this if you can

Seems like at least someone has taken your advice:
https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/3JSdUu1ivm3rqMvuCTAdAj6Dc2hdVhHiEe

I've countered over 15k inputs being consolidated just here today, not spending time tracking if it's a tumbler or an exchange but this guy with his few addresses has used just today about 10 blocks today at least. While they will go down to 2-3 probably this weekend I doubt we will see too soon blocks with empty space, there are probably a ton of users waiting for this breather just to consolidate.

Also, a sudden increase in hash rate is also helping,
Current Pace:   106.2707%  (1472 / 1385.14 expected, 86.86 ahead)
86 blocks more than normal, about 8 blocks a day extra.

[philipma1957]

Use this if you can

Seems like at least someone has taken your advice:
https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/3JSdUu1ivm3rqMvuCTAdAj6Dc2hdVhHiEe

I've countered over 15k inputs being consolidated just here today, not spending time tracking if it's a tumbler or an exchange but this guy with his few addresses has used just today about 10 blocks today at least. While they will go down to 2-3 probably this weekend I doubt we will see too soon blocks with empty space, there are probably a ton of users waiting for this breather just to consolidate.

Also, a sudden increase in hash rate is also helping,
Current Pace:   106.2707%  (1472 / 1385.14 expected, 86.86 ahead)
86 blocks more than normal, about 8 blocks a day extra.

in the last two days we are plus 60 blocks so a lot of gear went on line.

[BlackHatCoiner]

blocks will have to increase in size at some point the future there is no denial about it

There is denial about this, for if there wasn't, we'd have already switched to Bitcoin Cash. But I'm looking forward to see how the block size limit increase proposal will look like.

It's the same here, why everyone assumes there will be 7 times more people spamming the chain with brc-20 with the same fees?.

I have already pointed you out that the car analogy is flawed in the past. The median fee will surely go down, but the transactions will increase (or at least, the total size to be confirmed). Not because we will have 7 times more people doing transactions (as in cars), but more transactions made by a few people. Just take the BSV as an example, which is barely used as currency, and the blocks were filled with movies, because it's simply cheap and possible.


Btw, sorry for bumping these. I just noticed they're posted in May. Scaling is always relevant anyway.

[mikeywith]

There is denial about this, for if there wasn't, we'd have already switched to Bitcoin Cash. But I'm looking forward to see how the block size limit increase proposal will look like.

I am talking about the future, you are referring to the past and present, we didn't switch to Bcash because the majority of people don't think it is/was necessary to raise blocksize, and there is a great argument to support the lack of need for a larger blocksize, the majority of blocks are not close to being full, there was never a time in the past where fees skyrocketed and stayed there forever, it was always a matter of spam attacks, ordinals, some fud causing people to rush and send their coins to exchange to sell.

At one point in the future, I imagine that full blocks will be the norm, fees will be high and remain high, and people would want larger blocks, not too long ago we had those NFTs and ordinals bring fees to very high figures, lasted only a week or so and created a huge mess, I think if something comes along and afford to stay there for a few months without showing any signs of weakening, it would be near impossible not to ask for large blocks.

How soon would that happen? no clue, but sometime in the future.

[BlackHatCoiner]

we didn't switch to Bcash because the majority of people don't think it is/was necessary to raise blocksize

It's somewhat peculiar because one would anticipate that the majority would appreciate the low fees associated with an 8 MB block size, or the 32 MB block size offered by the Bitcoin Cash fork (Bitcoin Cash ABC). However, evidently, they didn't. There seems to be a factor preventing people from transitioning to the fork, and that factor is the people themselves. Instead of assuming that everyone will eventually embrace the switch, I believe we should analyze why we are reluctant to switch.

At one point in the future, I imagine that full blocks will be the norm, fees will be high and remain high, and people would want larger blocks

Which, if implemented and consented by the network, we will inevitably find ourselves caught in a continuous cycle. The blocks will eventually become full once more; there's no reason to believe otherwise. It's illogical to assume that the blocks will remain full with the current limit, but there won't be enough users to fill new blocks. Then fees will rise again, and people would want larger blocks. If this cycle continues, we will find ourselves trapped in a loop. Eventually, Bitcoin would transform into a Visa data-center, with decentralization scarcely discernible.

Probably why we are reluctant to switch.

[JayJuanGee]

we didn't switch to Bcash because the majority of people don't think it is/was necessary to raise blocksize

It's somewhat peculiar because one would anticipate that the majority would appreciate the low fees associated with an 8 MB block size, or the 32 MB block size offered by the Bitcoin Cash fork (Bitcoin Cash ABC). However, evidently, they didn't. There seems to be a factor preventing people from transitioning to the fork, and that factor is the people themselves. Instead of assuming that everyone will eventually embrace the switch, I believe we should analyze why we are reluctant to switch.

At one point in the future, I imagine that full blocks will be the norm, fees will be high and remain high, and people would want larger blocks

Which, if implemented and consented by the network, we will inevitably find ourselves caught in a continuous cycle. The blocks will eventually become full once more; there's no reason to believe otherwise. It's illogical to assume that the blocks will remain full with the current limit, but there won't be enough users to fill new blocks. Then fees will rise again, and people would want larger blocks. If this cycle continues, we will find ourselves trapped in a loop. Eventually, Bitcoin would transform into a Visa data-center, with decentralization scarcely discernible.

Probably why we are reluctant to switch.

I find it a bit strange that each of you mentioned (or maybe you just made a kind of mistake?) that bitcoin is directed by what the majority wants, which seems to me to be a strange way of being technically imprecise in your word choice.

[BlackHatCoiner]

There is a majority that directs Bitcoin. We can debate on whether that majority is users, money, or certain groups, but there is a majority of "something" that makes it working. Just as there's a majority of big blockers who're responsible for the operation of the Bitcoin Cash network.

[JayJuanGee]

There is a majority that directs Bitcoin. We can debate on whether that majority is users, money, or certain groups, but there is a majority of "something" that makes it working. Just as there's a majority of big blockers who're responsible for the operation of the Bitcoin Cash network.

To me, that still does not sound like the correct way of framing the matter (or "what is consensus" in bitcoin in comparison/contrast to some shitcoin), yet I am not going to pursue the matter at this time.  Perhaps if I sleep on it, or I think about the topic for a few days, then maybe I might be able to better pinpoint where lies my contention (if I might not end up conceding in some kind of a way?)...

Not trying to be too difficult.. even though maybe I am?   ..

And, maybe my quibble was getting too far from this thread topic, and Loyce will extinguish further attempts to "contribute" in this direction?

[LoyceV]

At one point in the future, I imagine that full blocks will be the norm, fees will be high and remain high, and people would want larger blocks

The problem with larger blocks is that it's not enough for scaling. It will work for a while again, until blocks are full again. Then rinse and repeat.
If Bitcoin ever reaches mass adoption and has many users, we'll need several GB per block. At that size, you can't have decentralization anymore, so as much as I'd want to see larger blocks, that's not a long-term solution.