BTC mempool cleared out completely for the first time in 3 mths - ‘historic’ pic

[Cryptodaddy05]

https://flic.kr/p/GrHtxw


Ohh what a feeling!!

[Xynerise]

Cause: Many people aren't using bitcoin as before

Consequence: fees are very low. Even 1 sat per byte confirms very quickly.


While lower fees are a good thing, lower bitcoin transactions means losing adoption -- or maybe transactions are being batched more efficiently?

[HeRetiK]

Cause: Many people aren't using bitcoin as before

Consequence: fees are very low. Even 1 sat per byte confirms very quickly.


While lower fees are a good thing, lower bitcoin transactions means losing adoption -- or maybe transactions are being batched more efficiently?

It's more likely that less people are now sending coins from and to exchanges, now that the market has finally cooled down a bit. I doubt that adoption has changed all that much over the last month, it's not like you flip a switch and all of a sudden everyone stops or starts using Bitcoin in earnest.

Of course one can only speculate over the cause though. If you walk the paranoid route you could even argue that it was just spam attacks all along and that those have finally subsided. Or maybe Coinbase simply got their shit together.

[eternalgloom]

Cause: Many people aren't using bitcoin as before

Consequence: fees are very low. Even 1 sat per byte confirms very quickly.


While lower fees are a good thing, lower bitcoin transactions means losing adoption -- or maybe transactions are being batched more efficiently?

You can see a drop in the number of transactions confirmed per day, but I don't think the drop in activity is big enough to fully explain it.
Increased efficiency might also play a (small?) part.

Just compare both charts:
https://i.imgur.com/nW0LzVf.png (number of confirmed transactions per day)

https://i.imgur.com/WWAmjE5.png (Mempool size)

Does anyone have another theory?

[mocacinno]

Cause: Many people aren't using bitcoin as before

Consequence: fees are very low. Even 1 sat per byte confirms very quickly.


While lower fees are a good thing, lower bitcoin transactions means losing adoption -- or maybe transactions are being batched more efficiently?

You can see a drop in the number of transactions confirmed per day, but I don't think the drop in activity is big enough to fully explain it.
Increased efficiency might also play a (small?) part.

Just compare both charts:
https://i.imgur.com/nW0LzVf.png (number of confirmed transactions per day)

https://i.imgur.com/WWAmjE5.png (Mempool size)

Does anyone have another theory?

What do you mean by increased efficiency? The diff is still rising a little bit, the average time between two blocks is still ~10 minutes...
I did notice more and more people are using segwit wallets, that might result in slightly more transactions per block (i see a lot of blocks that are 1,1-1,5 Mb in size nowadays). This does not account for the drop we're seeing tough.
An other explanation might be that a few people might actually be using the LN, altough i doubt that at this point this would contribute largely to the drop we're seeing...

The only reasonable explanation is that somebody (a person, a group, several people, several groups) for some reason stopped broadcasting an insane amount of transactions. Given that the drop was achieved in a relatively short time, it is my hypothesis that a group or organisation was behind the massive amount of transactions. The reason behind this flood is unknown and might be bening (for example, a large group of traders, or a network that uses these transactions for alternative purposes), accidental or a malicious spam attack (either for political or financial reasons)... We'll probably never know. The only thing we know is that, for now, they stopped flooding the network.

[Carlton Banks]

I'd love to know the answer to this question:

Who is paying 200, 500, 800 or even 1000 satoshis per byte under these conditions? WTF

Why even pay 50? Why 10!!!?

[NeuroticFish]

I'd love to know the answer to this question:

Who is paying 200, 500, 800 or even 1000 satoshis per byte under these conditions? WTF

Why even pay 50? Why 10!!!?

Many have no other choice. Many web services have fixed withdrawal fee and the value was not updated since last year.
The result is that they pay huge fees because of no good enough programming.

[nc50lc]

@OP-Author, use this to display the image:

Code:

[img height=360 alt="can't load img"]https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4722/26545275368_870f76f865_k.jpg[/img]

Maybe there's no "less adaption" scenario happening.
I have seen a lot of newbies last December saying "I'm not going to use Bitcoin until transactions get resolved" or similar rants.
They must have stopped sending small amounts by learning from their mistakes, people learns faster than we think.
Or just a dismissed spam transactions attack.

[Cryptodaddy05]

@OP-Author, use this to display the image:

Code:

[img height=360 alt="can't load img"]https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4722/26545275368_870f76f865_k.jpg[/img]

Maybe there's no "less adaption" scenario happening.
I have seen a lot of newbies last December saying "I'm not going to use Bitcoin until transactions get resolved" or similar rants.
They must have stopped sending small amounts by learning from their mistakes, people learns faster than we think.
Or just a dismissed spam transactions attack.

Thank you @nc501c for that advice on posting the actual pic - I thought it was quite a dramatic one, and possibly historic as BTC sets off on a year of major developments. I hadn’t posted a pic here before, and did fiddle round with the controls for quite awhile before resorting to a link.good to see my pic in all its glory hehe.

And in relation to what you also said I’ve found that I was able to buy and use ETH as a currency for the last 2 months, with ETH buy/sell pairs for all the alt coins I wanted to buy on the three exchanges I use. Bought some more BTC at its lower prices too, to hodl long term as a backbone of my crypto portfolio - although I didn’t quite get the $6,200 low as the automated orders for my BTC buy orders on my BTC/ETH buying service here down under strangly wouldn’t go through that evening haha. Guess all hell was breaking loose, but happy with the prices I did get around that time. But yeah you certainly notice the fees eating into the order at that stage, on top of the hefty commission -  and you noticed the long delay in the BTC arriving in the wallet. But fees and delays are all part of the crypto game you have to play I guess - as long as you get what you want in the end!

I see BTC is down $1,500 from its high this evening, and looks like it will drop another $500 to complete a classic head and shoulders pattern since Feb 16. Hard to know what it will do then, but feeling it will start going up to the $19,500 I expect by mid-may - rather than do this collapse to $3,000 some chartists expect. I’ll be buying again at !9,700 and under, and hopefully fees will remain low after their mysterious sudden drop.

[LoyceV]

I'd love to know the answer to this question:

Who is paying 200, 500, 800 or even 1000 satoshis per byte under these conditions? WTF

Why even pay 50? Why 10!!!?

People who use wallets with a crappy fee estimate.

Many web services have fixed withdrawal fee and the value was not updated since last year.

I paid 50 and 20 yesterday, and indeed the exchange and wallet didn't give me a choice. Many exchanges still charge 0.001 or even 0.002 BTC per withdrawal, even if they don't pay that much fee. It's about time they lower it.

[Lucius]

I'd love to know the answer to this question:

Who is paying 200, 500, 800 or even 1000 satoshis per byte under these conditions? WTF

Why even pay 50? Why 10!!!?

Many have no other choice. Many web services have fixed withdrawal fee and the value was not updated since last year.
The result is that they pay huge fees because of no good enough programming.

This is true,some exchanges did not change fees at all-as if nothing had changed.I try to withdraw from one not so popular exchange and withdraw fee is 120 000 satoshi,that's crazy.I guess that there are those who still think that high fees are necessary among ordinary users,and this site for suggested fees which has often been posted on forum does not help at all.Since it is show in top of Google search results,people still pay much more than we should pay.

[monsterer2]

I'd love to know the answer to this question:

Who is paying 200, 500, 800 or even 1000 satoshis per byte under these conditions? WTF

Why even pay 50? Why 10!!!?

You don't trade, do you?

[Carlton Banks]

I'd love to know the answer to this question:

Who is paying 200, 500, 800 or even 1000 satoshis per byte under these conditions? WTF

Why even pay 50? Why 10!!!?

You don't trade, do you?

I'm not seeing 1000 satoshis per byte fees to withdraw from any exchange websites I'm currently registered with, to answer your question.

[monsterer2]

I'd love to know the answer to this question:

Who is paying 200, 500, 800 or even 1000 satoshis per byte under these conditions? WTF

Why even pay 50? Why 10!!!?

You don't trade, do you?

I'm not seeing 1000 satoshis per byte fees to withdraw from any exchange websites I'm currently registered with, to answer your question.

It's not withdrawal that causes people to pay those size fees, its getting deposits confirmed quickly enough to get into a trade.

[Stedsm]

I think that people started shifting to alts because of such a huge increase in fee levels. Either they started keeping some in BTC and sold some to alts and withdrew OR bought alts completely to convert to fiat in order to save those huge fees. This is where the total number of transactions started to tumble down (I can confirm this as I've checked the charts). After this, when miners started to notice that they're losing over their shares, they started coming back to old school mining (based on fee) and transactions got confirmed almost immediately for all levels. I guess scaling still needs a solution but what's happening is really better for Bitcoins.

I'd love to know the answer to this question:

Who is paying 200, 500, 800 or even 1000 satoshis per byte under these conditions? WTF

Why even pay 50? Why 10!!!?

People who use wallets with a crappy fee estimate.

Even I paid less than $0.3 for a transaction, and I congratulate everyone for those old days coming back with such lesser fee.
@Carlton, we're required to pay some amount of fee (even if it is between 1-10 sats per byte) for their mining work, if we don't pay, give me one reason why we should expect its value to be over $10k? Why should we even give a value to it?

Many web services have fixed withdrawal fee and the value was not updated since last year.

I paid 50 and 20 yesterday, and indeed the exchange and wallet didn't give me a choice. Many exchanges still charge 0.001 or even 0.002 BTC per withdrawal, even if they don't pay that much fee. It's about time they lower it.

We need to take a communal stand for this to take place, as I believe exchanges are still showing their arbitrariness and thinking that they are supreme over their users. They should really lower it down back to 0.0002 max (even if they want it double than normal). Even 0.00005 BTC is good for them because they process all their withdrawals in batches.

[pereira4]

It's just not possible to accurately assess the situation thanks to complete fucktards called Roger Ver, Jihan Wu and probably Craig Wright too, spamming the network when there are bull runs.

Naturally, during bull runs idiots FOMO into exchanges and fill the mempool up, but to what extent? We don't know, because it's precisely when bitcoin FOMOs that these BCash scammers spam the network to make things worse.

Now with segwit, transaction batching, and soon lightning network too, they will have it way harder to fill the blocks with trash.

When the next bubble to $100k happens, we will test the technology improvements in a real life scenario. For now, be happy to get BTC back again for cheaper prices while all the idiots that came from the latest FOMO sell.

[Carlton Banks]

It's not withdrawal that causes people to pay those size fees, its getting deposits confirmed quickly enough to get into a trade.

You're very wrong. Users control the fees when sending to exchange accounts. So they can pay < 10 satoshis per byte and get their deposit confirmed in the next block (any time earlier on today, at least).

[monsterer2]

It's not withdrawal that causes people to pay those size fees, its getting deposits confirmed quickly enough to get into a trade.

You're very wrong. Users control the fees when sending to exchange accounts. So they can pay < 10 satoshis per byte and get their deposit confirmed in the next block (any time earlier on today, at least).

Now yes. When bitcoin was rallying, no.

[tokexchain]

https://flic.kr/p/GrHtxw


Ohh what a feeling!!

The supernodes are working their magic, gotta get one of those one day... #BitcoinVacuum #SuckingSatoshis