bitcoin transactions costs in the future

[Wingo]

Given the price of large and more efficient panels needed to power a mining hardware that consumes a lot of energy, a small scale or medium scale miner might not have the amount of money to buy those. And it will take a longer time for that investment to return. Also, when the price dumps, it is another loss for the miner. Another is the halving of generated bitcoins for every block, there will be lesser and lesser bitcoin produced in the future. It's not that easy to start with buying a pricey solar panel.

[GreenStox]

Given the price of large and more efficient panels needed to power a mining hardware that consumes a lot of energy, a small scale or medium scale miner might not have the amount of money to buy those. And it will take a longer time for that investment to return. Also, when the price dumps, it is another loss for the miner. Another is the halving of generated bitcoins for every block, there will be lesser and lesser bitcoin produced in the future. It's not that easy to start with buying a pricey solar panel.

electricity that uses solar panel power does provide a lot of benefits because the energy produced can be used for mining or other activities, but the most terrible threat is when bitcoin has reached the maximum production limit which means that it can't be mining anymore, mining equipment not used to mine bitcoin anymore.

[raven7886]

I think the easiest way to drop the rates would be staking, with staking at least we are going to get rid of most of the machines which would help people mine via their richness (not fair I know) and there would be less transactions. So the question is will you be willing to let rich people become richer in bitcoin world as well (after they did that in our current monetary system anyway) and just pay less fee's on your transactions or do you want business operators (not like they are poor neither) control the mining and pay more transaction fee's.

I personally would love a bitcoin with staking involved, I know it won't be profitable for small investors like me but neither is mining so at least if rich are getting richer let me pay less transaction fee for it.

[stompix]

I think the easiest way to drop the rates would be staking, with staking at least we are going to get rid of most of the machines which would help people mine via their richness (not fair I know) and there would be less transactions.
~
I personally would love a bitcoin with staking involved, I know it won't be profitable for small investors like me but neither is mining so at least if rich are getting richer let me pay less transaction fee for it.

Staking will not make the bitcoin blocks bigger or faster.
PoS,  PoW, Pooh  the network will have the same capacity.
And so there will be no small fees for you either.

electricity that uses solar panel power does provide a lot of benefits because the energy produced can be used for mining or other activities, but the most terrible threat is when bitcoin has reached the maximum production limit which means that it can't be mining anymore, mining equipment not used to mine bitcoin anymore.

You still need mining to solve blocks even if the reward drops to zero.

With just one nuclear plant we can literally cover ALL bitcoin mining operation electricity requirements and then some (a lot more) which is why if we want free bitcoin transactions we should totally focus on nuclear plants.

i don't follow your logic. how does this equate to free bitcoin transactions?

People think that if you have more miners you process more transactions and mine more bitcoin, or that the fees are imposed by the miners to cover electricity costs.
I'm pretty sure 90% of the forum doesn't have a clue how mining, miners, nodes, and blocks work.

[playboy654]

By the development of technologies the expenses for the miners will get decreases over the years so you no need to worry about the charges on future but the value of Bitcoin transaction fee might be high in future due to the increase in the value of Bitcoin prices against dollar value.

[BitHodler]

I personally would love a bitcoin with staking involved, I know it won't be profitable for small investors like me but neither is mining so at least if rich are getting richer let me pay less transaction fee for it.

Staking adds more problems than it solves. I have never really liked the idea of using coins as voting or power mechanism. We have seen a few exchanges already abuse their role as custodian by staking people's coins.

If you want low fees, use LN. The fees are either 0 or a few satoshis at most depending on the number of hops. The more people signal that they are ready to use LN, the more incentive exchanges have to actually start supporting it.

Instant and near free transactions, who doesn't want that? It will also end the complaining of people to a larger degree.

[Betwrong]

Since the block reward is 12.5 BTC currently, the main source of miners' income is block rewards and not the transaction fees. Yes, miners would rather include the txs with the highest satoshis/byte ratio because you are getting additional $1k+ per block due to this policy, but overall the $100k current block reward is enough to include even the txs with lowest fees possible. And in May 2020, when halving occurs, it is pretty much possible that the USD price of BTC will be at least 2 times higher than it is today, and thus we will have a similar situation. My point is that I don't expect the rising of transaction fees in the next several years.

[Ranly123]

The source of future transactions

One of the biggest critics made to bitcoin so far are the expensive costs that a transaction can reach when the network is overloaded. However on long run, specialists and enthusiasts defend it's not a problem, as the hardwares, responsible for the mining operation are evolving, getting more powerful to process the transactions faster and with less effort. What doesn't change is the fact that miners have to earn money from this operation anyway, as electricity isn't for free and their equipments are expensive.

So I would like to add a possibility: if the necessary energy to move the mining activity was supplied *for free*, could btc transactions be executed for free as well? As the world is evolving, renewable sources of energy are becoming even more popular and sustainable (taking our daily needs in consideration). Elon Musk's Tesla has already made a 100mw battery, and the conclusion is that it's paid back in 20 months, an incredible economy compared to the expensive electricity we use yet.

Now think if a solar energy farm with a battery like that were used to create bitcoin transactions. It's an infinite and free source or energy, right? At least after the investment is paid back. My doubt is how miners could return the fees to the transaction senders in this case. Would it be possible? Would you like to add any thoughts?

Tesla 100mw battery in South Australia

If all miners are using renewable energy, then that would mean lower transactions fee. I don't know if I'm correct or wrong but in a simple thinking it would be better to use renewable energy to mine to preserve mother Earth.

[boyptc]

My point is that I don't expect the rising of transaction fees in the next several years.

You have a point because last 2017, the fees increased due to the network spam and that led everyone to be pissed off by just sending $5, everyone has to pay for more than that.

But I think that after just a couple of years, a lot has changed and we may not experience it by next year but who knows?

[jakoylantern]

For me, bitcoin transactions costs in the future will be faster if you paid a much more substantial amount to make your transactions faster. Yes, it is still the same this days, but if you are comparing the operations costs if you are using some renewable energy, you still need to calculate your ROI to make it lesser value if you want. Also, in business, you want to make a profit right, and these days, no one will work for free, especially if they know how much you earn. But the transaction price will always be depending on the current value of the bitcoin.

[klaaas]

But the transaction price will always be depending on the current value of the bitcoin.

No, It depends on how much people want tot pay overall for a fast transaction. If we as a whole decide to pay lesser fees the speeds will be the same.

[leavolnhals]

I think not. If the power supply is free, the miners still have to find a place to place digging equipment and cost more to buy materials and insurance.
There are lots of costs to spend on miners. therefore, there won't be anything free. If there are too many such promotions, Blockchain will be a redundancy.

[Betwrong]

My point is that I don't expect the rising of transaction fees in the next several years.

You have a point because last 2017, the fees increased due to the network spam and that led everyone to be pissed off by just sending $5, everyone has to pay for more than that.

But I think that after just a couple of years, a lot has changed and we may not experience it by next year but who knows?

Yeah, look at the diagram showing Confirmed Transactions Per Day:

https://www.blockchain.com/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all

We are almost at the same level regarding the number of transactions as we were in December 2017, when people were paying $30-$60 per transaction, but today you can pay 92 satoshis/byte (or around $1.8 for transaction of an average size) for your transaction to be confirmed within 35 minutes. It's hard to not spot the difference since it's huge. And, of course, if you are not in a hurry, you can pay 3 satoshis/byte, or just around $0.06 for your transaction currently, and it will be confirmed within 3 hours anyway. So, things have improved a lot in this regard.

[unusualfacts30]

Even using the renewable source of energy, you still need to cover the initial investments of the equipment used. So you still need to charge fee for every transaction, though you have the option to lower such charges. And in that regard, future bitcoin transaction fees might be lower as compared to current rates, even if you want to add more satoshis to accelerate your transaction.

pretty much this. I don't think it would be completey free but it can definitely be much lower if you're talking about using renewable energy. There is still cost associated with equipment that you'll have to purchase and their maintenance and so on but it would be much cheaper than today.

[FanEagle]

I think with lightning network and anything else that will put on top of that the transactions will be fine even without the electricity costs. I don't know how miners will profit from it in the end because I am not a miner and I haven't dealt with the operations of a mining place however I know how it will affect the users since I am a user.

I have been looking into getting a ledger nano just so I will be capable of sending and receiving on the best possible ways, that way I can pay less transactions via lightning network when available or segwit right now. Which means for the customers the future is not for electricity costs or some better mining equipment or something, the future is better core development codes for bitcoin itself which could make it cheaper.

[stompix]

I think with lightning network and anything else that will put on top of that the transactions will be fine even without the electricity costs. I don't know how miners will profit from it in the end because I am not a miner and I haven't dealt with the operations of a mining place however I know how it will affect the users since I am a user.

I have been looking into getting a ledger nano just so I will be capable of sending and receiving on the best possible ways, that way I can pay less transactions via lightning network when available or segwit right now. Which means for the customers the future is not for electricity costs or some better mining equipment or something, the future is better core development codes for bitcoin itself which could make it cheaper.

If miners will not get a profit, they will stop mining.

If this happens there are two things that will follow
- hashrate will drop, the network will be less secure, anyone could buy the mountains of scrap mining gear that will be sold at scrap metal prices and guess what they might do with it
- if miners really stop completely (which is an impossible scenario since you will need only a simple computer to mine a block once difficulty will die down) there will be no more transactions, no more opening and closing channels in the LN ..no bitcoin whatsoever. So, you as a user with your ledger you will be just as the rest of us...f****! 

[boyptc]

My point is that I don't expect the rising of transaction fees in the next several years.

You have a point because last 2017, the fees increased due to the network spam and that led everyone to be pissed off by just sending $5, everyone has to pay for more than that.

But I think that after just a couple of years, a lot has changed and we may not experience it by next year but who knows?

Yeah, look at the diagram showing Confirmed Transactions Per Day:

https://www.blockchain.com/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all

We are almost at the same level regarding the number of transactions as we were in December 2017, when people were paying $30-$60 per transaction, but today you can pay 92 satoshis/byte (or around $1.8 for transaction of an average size) for your transaction to be confirmed within 35 minutes. It's hard to not spot the difference since it's huge. And, of course, if you are not in a hurry, you can pay 3 satoshis/byte, or just around $0.06 for your transaction currently, and it will be confirmed within 3 hours anyway. So, things have improved a lot in this regard.

I recognize and appreciate those changes and sure it has been one of the best after all of those times that we've pay for a high fee just because we wanted to send a certain amount to exchanges, casinos, etc.

In short, things are becoming better now.

[nerlial]

In the future, everything is possible, we can only fantasize. Maybe the PoW algorithm will be noticed on the PoS.

[Betwrong]

~
I recognize and appreciate those changes and sure it has been one of the best after all of those times that we've pay for a high fee just because we wanted to send a certain amount to exchanges, casinos, etc.

In short, things are becoming better now.

Yeah, exactly. Many people, and I mean Bitcoin-oriented ones, still think that if we had the the same amount of translations per day as we had in December 2017-January 2018 we would have the same high transaction fees, but this is not the case currently. And all they need to do to check whether it's true or not is to examine the diagram from this link: https://www.blockchain.com/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all
The situation with the fees have been improved big time since then, and I'm glad you can see that yourself.

[coin-investor]

Even using the renewable source of energy, you still need to cover the initial investments of the equipment used. So you still need to charge fee for every transaction, though you have the option to lower such charges. And in that regard, future bitcoin transaction fees might be lower as compared to current rates, even if you want to add more satoshis to accelerate your transaction.

This is a good idea to lower the price of transactions which is hounding everyone of us, just last week one of my transaction took me 4 hours to receive, but the biggest question is do we have good samaritans that will help set up this renewable energy for Bitcoin transactions and not charge us with the set up.