Transaction fee has gone up by 10x during the last two weeks

[Sithara007]

I have noticed that the transaction fee has gone up tremendously during the last two weeks. I am using Blockchain.com wallet, and until two weeks back I was paying somewhere between 1-3 Satoshi per byte for my transactions. But now the default fee in Blockchain.com has increased by more than 10 times, to around 40 Satoshis per byte. And I checked bitcoinfees.earn.com as well, and according to it, the fee needed for instant confirmation is around 220 Satoshi/byte.

I am not saying that at current levels this fee is unaffordable. But what if there is another 10x increase in the transaction fee? Are you willing to pay 2,000 Sat/byte for instant confirmations?

[gvoice24]

yeah i'm also facing same problem. $1 sending fees $2.5+...Is it a joke?

[pooya87]

~~ the default fee in Blockchain.com ~~ And I checked bitcoinfees.earn.com

just so you know, both of these sites are unreliable when it comes to fees. blockchain.com is known to give weird suggestions (usually too low) and bitcoinfees always suggests a much higher fee for high priority transactions and causes a big overpay for those who rely on it.

you are correct though, fees have indeed increased over the past weeks due to the price rise and the large number of people who are both selling and buying bitcoin.

[Kakmakr]

Agreed. I use Electrum and the recommended fees are much higher than what it was a week ago. It is understandable if you look at the Mempool for the last 30 days --> https://www.blockchain.com/charts/mempool-size?timespan=30days

This is why the Lightning Network was developed, to reduce the amount of micro transactions that are causing this on-chain congestion and resulting higher fees.

Let's use the Lightning Network for all the micro transactions and we will have much lower fees for on-chain transactions. 

[partysaurus]

I have noticed that the transaction fee has gone up tremendously during the last two weeks. I am using Blockchain.com wallet, and until two weeks back I was paying somewhere between 1-3 Satoshi per byte for my transactions. But now the default fee in Blockchain.com has increased by more than 10 times, to around 40 Satoshis per byte. And I checked bitcoinfees.earn.com as well, and according to it, the fee needed for instant confirmation is around 220 Satoshi/byte.

I am not saying that at current levels this fee is unaffordable. But what if there is another 10x increase in the transaction fee? Are you willing to pay 2,000 Sat/byte for instant confirmations?

yes i have noticed that to, and the time it takes for it to clear gone up alot too, had to wait 6 hours for my last transfer. tryed a higher fee and still had to wait 2 hours. thats not very fun miss the days when a transfer took one hour the most lol.

[crwth]

If willingness to pay, no but if needed to, no choice. I do it. It's definitely not what we want, knowing that there are other money transfer methods to compare to. It's just that it has made things a lot easier when Bitcoin is invented, but I guess the congestion is one of the things that need improvement? I'm not technical in terms of the development of BTC, but it could be one factor.

[joniboini]

yeah i'm also facing same problem. $1 sending fees $2.5+...Is it a joke?

Usually, that won't happen, unless you somehow screw up the tx.

you are correct though, fees have indeed increased over the past weeks due to the price rise and the large number of people who are both selling and buying bitcoin.

Thought the same thing. The increase in Bitcoin price has lately increase tx activity. Pretty sure it's just trader doing their trading, or noobs wanting to join the ride of the recent bull run.

I am not saying that at current levels this fee is unaffordable. But what if there is another 10x increase in the transaction fee? Are you willing to pay 2,000 Sat/byte for instant confirmations?

If it were me, I'd rather use LN (assuming I never send a huge amount of Bitcoin per TX).

[Ailmand]

I could also notice the increase in fees these days which is getting quite hard for traders to deal with. LN is a better choice nowadays. I would only be willing to pay higher if I wouldn't get any choice but this one is also bothering. Sounds like they're taking advantage of the market situation.

[okala]

When ever the price of bitcoin move above 7,000 the transactions fee always go high and I have noticed this since 2017 bull run, I don't know why it so but having a high transactions fees kill's little transactions. I guest the bitcoin network need some more development in the area of network congestion which always lead to high fees whenever the market go bull.

[jseverson]

I am not saying that at current levels this fee is unaffordable. But what if there is another 10x increase in the transaction fee? Are you willing to pay 2,000 Sat/byte for instant confirmations?

Then you don't use it. That's the harsh reality of our current situation. Bitcoin isn't ready for primetime.

If you want a workaround, you could set up a hot Lightning wallet when fees are low enough so you'll be able to spend regardless. It's not as widely used yet, but situations like these are precisely why people should be using it. Hopefully, this happens before a significant part of the market is priced out because of rising mining fees.

[dothebeats]

I'd stick to whatever fee I'm using as confirmation times don't matter much to me, and RBF is also a thing now so I'd just adjust according to whatever suitable fee my tx needed in order to get faster confirmations. I don't know much about other people though, but one can always move funds around still, and the higher fees only constitutes to the priority for your tx, not the confirmation forthe tx per se. Also, this only happens because most people wants to get a taste of the price action, but once everything normalIze, fees would also come down.

[Haunebu]

What is so surprising about any of this op? Everyone knows that TX fees goes up everytime BTC surges and goes down when BTC value falls owing to the volatility of the market.

Do you remember the insane TX fees during the crazy rally of 2017? Segwit and LN can help to a certain extent in these situations.

[edisystem]

It's remind me like what happened on 2017, the transaction fees increased so high back then when the bitcoin price increased so high. It seems happened again today.

It's still fine actually, i'm using under normal fees and it only takes hours to confirmed yesterday. The unconfirmed transaction is a bit bigger than usual though.

[stompix]

Sent a transaction two days ago with 10sat/b, still unconfirmed, send another one yesterday morning with around 30sat/b , got confirmed a few hours ago.

Still 50k unconfirmed tx in the mempool and looking at the fees structure no chance for fees under 20 to get confirmed today, you would need 20 blocks just to clear the backlog to give those a chance.

At least veriblock is not going full throttle again, that would make it even worse.

yeah i'm also facing same problem. $1 sending fees $2.5+...Is it a joke?

Usually, that won't happen, unless you somehow screw up the tx.

2.5$ is around ~125sat/b with 2/2 inputs outputs so, if you want confirmation below 4 blocks, yeah, prepare to pay that much

[Kemarit]

Do you remember the insane TX fees during the crazy rally of 2017? Segwit and LN can help to a certain extent in these situations.

But we are still a far cry if we are talking about the rally in 2017. That's why the OP is asking if we are willing to pay that exorbitant fee's assuming that we will have a bull run to get to another all-time-high. It will be a huge problem if the fee's goes off the roof again together with the price. I guess we have no choice though, unless majority will use Segwit in moving their funds around.

[stompix]

I guess we have no choice though, unless majority will use Segwit in moving their funds around.

We are a few inches from achieving majority:
https://transactionfee.info/charts/payments/segwit

Currently, we have 45% of all transactions being segwit, but that alone can't do wonders, a few exchanges and gambling website batching transactions and it will have a bigger effect.
The only solution would be LN but usage is still low, and I doubt more than 10% of people who have done a normal tx have also tried LN.

And I must confess I haven't tried it either till now.

[BlackFor3st]

It will really depend to our usage if we really need an instant transfer because there is an urgent usage of it then I am pretty sure that you will not mind paying any amount of transaction fee as long as you can get your money in time.

But if you are not in hurry then you have plenty of option whether to use an instant transaction fee or not. We have different styles and wants so we can't really predict what others want and hate. In my case, I am patient person so this kind of issue is not a big problem for me especially if I am not in hurry.

[mindrust]

I got 115 inputs in my wallets right now and when I use electrums auto fee, it tells me that I have to pay 0.01289437BTC -75.3sat/b (~$100) for fees.

I would rather wait 2 weeks and pay 5-10sat/b (no more than $10) to consolidate my inputs. $100 is nuts.

[Genemind]

It's the fact that we should take that every time the price of bitcoin increases, the transaction fees increases as well.
Sometimes, it all depends on an exchange. That's the reason why as much as possible, I don't do unnecessary transactions to get rid of expensive fees.

[traderethereum]

I am trying to send $100 from my wallet into the other bitcoin wallet address, and I see in my mycelium, I need to pay the fee for about $2-$4.
If I use Normal transaction which needs 30 minutes, I should pay $1.91 for the lowest fee, and if I use Priority, the fee is about $2.51.
So I tried with the Normal transaction with paying the fee $2,14, and I only need to wait for less than 30 minutes to arrive in the other wallet.
I don't mind to pay that fee because I will sell the bitcoin if the price can increase more than $7,500 and if the price is going down than that price, I will keep it for a while until the price can increase.
That is one of my strategy to cover the fee which is increases