[2018-02-28] Bitcoin SegWit Transactions Now Hitting All-Time Highs

[cybersofts]

Bitcoin SegWit Transactions Now Hitting All-Time Highs




As a result of the latest Bitcoin Core 0.16 update, the usage levels of Bitcoin SegWit have been taking off. This significant uptick in usage levels can also be attributed to a number of major exchanges and wallet providers such as Coinbase and Bittrex finally implementing this technology into their platforms. This uptick means that there could be a significant decrease in global bitcoin transaction fees and times.





The Advantage

Segregated Witness (SegWit) is a way of bundling transaction together into blocks, which is a much more efficient way for transactions to be processed.

The Bitcoin network has experienced high levels of congestion since its popularity exploded in 2017, with issues abound as to how to scale the network. This led to higher fees and slower transaction times which were turning a lot of people away from using Bitcoin.

The adoption of SegWit is aimed at drastically reducing this level of congestion.

The main issue that has been holding back the widespread adoption of SegWit across the space is that it has to be specifically enabled on wallets and exchanges. This means you need to have specific SegWit wallet addresses and these cannot be used to bridge non-SegWit and SegWit transactions.


Growing Adoption

Thankfully, the adoption levels of this technology have been growing rapidly in recent days due to the new update and the adoption by exchanges.

The use of SegWit as a percentage of total daily bitcoin transaction had been averaging around the 15% mark for some time up until last week when these events have caused a steady uptick in adoption levels.

In the past 24 hours alone, SegWit usage levels have hit peak levels of adoption at the 30% of total Bitcoin transactions mark.

Monday the 26th of February saw the release of the latest Bitcoin Core update labeled v0 16.0 and this provided full support to SegWit scaling technology.

There are other improvements that have been made as part of this update, but SegWit support and adoption is the major aspect that most people are focusing on. Since SegWit was initially released in August 2017, widespread adoption of this technology has been something that Bitcoin users have been constantly requesting.

While a lot of the significant wallet provides and exchanges have taken their time implementing this technology, eventually growing pressure from their users as a result of slow transaction times and high fees pushed them to do something.

This adoption will also lead to further significant improvements to Bitcoin in the future, such as the implementation of the Lightning Network which might allow transaction times and fees to trend close to zero.

This is an exciting time for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a whole as a breath of fresh air has been blown into the markets, with prices reacting positively to this news.


Source: https://www.ccn.com/segwit-transactions-now-hitting-all-time-highs/

[Coffee135]

Too bad that was cancelled a global transition to SegWit2x. Only one news of this provoked the growth of prices up to $ 20,000 in the past year. The cancellation of this transition provoked a fall in prices. This is my opinion. I don't believe that two systems can exist in parallel. I'm looking forward to the good news of missing transaction issues this year.

[Kprawn]

I think most people need a little push, before they enter the swimming pool. The push was definitely some exchanges and

other services that decided to play ball. These exchanges obviously saw what happens when people are given a choice,

because other services was keen to fill the gap, where these exchanges dropped the ball. We suddenly saw a increase in

decentralized services and things like Robinhood coming to the scene.  

[TooDumbForBitcoin]

Too bad that was cancelled a global transition to SegWit2x. Only one news of this provoked the growth of prices up to $ 20,000 in the past year. The cancellation of this transition provoked a fall in prices. This is my opinion. I don't believe that two systems can exist in parallel. I'm looking forward to the good news of missing transaction issues this year.

Bitcoin doesn't needs onchain scaling methods at the moment. Segwit and Lighting wll be enough

[Hexah]

That would be a great relief to investors, traders and bitcoin enthusiasts. But Lightning network will give shine to Bitcoin again if it's implementation will be done.

[Vektrum]

If you still have a network of lightning, which can mainly handle transactions with small amounts due to security problems with transactions, it will be even very good. Finally, bitcoin will be able to earn at full strength. Within a few days, the crypto-currency market should be revived and the crypto-currency should begin to rise in price.

[richardsNY]

Bitcoin doesn't needs onchain scaling methods at the moment. Segwit and Lighting wll be enough

It actually does need to also scale on-chain, but that's not going to happen (at least not short to mid term speaking) with how devided the economical entities in this market are. Don't forget that off-chain transactions are an optional feature, which basically means that there will be loads of people and services transacting on-chain, which at a later stage might again result in network cluttering, even with SegWit fully utilized. For that reason I'm very interested in seeing how everything will play out when we experience high volume usage on and off-chain at the same time. Initial LN tests are great and very promising, but the real test starts when the mass jumps in....

[darkangel11]

Too bad that was cancelled a global transition to SegWit2x. Only one news of this provoked the growth of prices up to $ 20,000 in the past year. The cancellation of this transition provoked a fall in prices. This is my opinion. I don't believe that two systems can exist in parallel. I'm looking forward to the good news of missing transaction issues this year.

Bitcoin doesn't needs onchain scaling methods at the moment. Segwit and Lighting wll be enough

2x was the answer to BCH and since the solution that BCH has given us failed to take it to the moon, despite all the money spent by Roger and all the network spamming, middle fingers and advertising BCH as the new king, the idea was abandoned. You're right, we don't need it for now, and the fees that we have and low transaction times (even without lightning) are a great proof of this.

[aso118]

It seems strange that Segwit adoption is increasing rapidly after the transaction fees have fallen to low levels. Segwit transactions will not help a user to save much on fees and therefore there is no automatic incentive. Segwit adoption increasing to an ATH shouldn't be really making news. Users will gradually transition to Segwit; once a user starts using Segwit I see no reason why they should switch back.

[BitHodler]

Segwit transactions will not help a user to save much on fees and therefore there is no automatic incentive.

Have you used SegWit? I got first block confirmations with less than 1000 satoshi in fees, which is a pretty sweet form of incentive for people to actually start adopting SegWit for once.

If you calculate the fees legacy transactions need, then it's safe to say that your legacy transactions are 5-10 times more expensive on average than SegWit transactions. I have done quite some testing to find out.

I think if the unconfirmed transactions remain below 5000, I could even get sub 2 block confirmations with just a few hundred satoshi in fees. Currently, the number of unconfirmed transactions is increasing again.

We'll know in the next 24-48 hours whether or not this is the start of another spam attack. +22,000 unconfirmed transactions right now.