Say it again? Bitcoin transaction fees expensive?

[Nalbo]

Surely, it's cheap for large transaction. But still a nightmare for small ones. You now can't pay your bill with Bitcoin as you might spend more money on the fees itself. Lightning network seems to solve some problems but it's mass adoption would bring another problem to the bitcoin network.
So, no, bitcoin transactions are not cheap.

[partysaurus]

Another proof that bitcoin transactions is still very cheap, the transaction below moves $500,000 million with less than $5 fees. This is a Binance external transaction. So for those proponents who says that bitcoin fees is expensive and slow, take a look, as everything is transparent on the blockchain network.



https://twitter.com/whale_alert/status/1134411929072676864

payed a 5 dollar fee for a 50 dollar transfer that is super expensive, would not have dont the transfer if i saw the fee earlier. and you cant take a 500 million transfer and compare it . it is 5 dollar no mather the size.

[mk4]

payed a 5 dollar fee for a 50 dollar transfer that is super expensive, would not have dont the transfer if i saw the fee earlier. and you cant take a 500 million transfer and compare it . it is 5 dollar no mather the size.

I mean, why did you choose a $5 fee when you're just moving $50 in the first place though. Unless you use some centralized wallet, you can set the fees to something like 50-80 sats/b and it would be confirmed probably in hours.

[ranochigo]

I mean, why did you choose a $5 fee when you're just moving $50 in the first place though. Unless you use some centralized wallet, you can set the fees to something like 50-80 sats/b and it would be confirmed probably in hours.

What's the point then? I would understand if its just to move your coins to consolidate them or for something that isn't urgent at all. If I were to go to purchase something in a physical store, I probably won't stand around for hours just to wait for a confirmation. There's also a risk that the fees would surge to a point for which my transactions would take days to confirm.

[mk4]

What's the point then? I would understand if its just to move your coins to consolidate them or for something that isn't urgent at all.

Well, this was actually my assumption, because it's pretty pointless to use non-lightning BTC right now for merchant payments.

Read my first reply on this topic if you haven't:

To be fair, Roger Ver and other big blockers are complaining about the "high transaction fees" in the form of coffee-value transactions though, for the typical person trying to go on his day; not multi-million dollar transactions. Still great to be able to transfer huge amounts of money with just a fee of a few dollars though.

[Ibizugbe1]

Bitcoin transaction fee when network is congested is cheap when moving a high volume amount of bitcoin as compared to the traditional system. But paying $5 for a transaction of $30 is really not a good economic calculation, still faster than the fiat though, when priority fee is been used.

[jakelyson]

You will not expect a normal Joe to move millions of dollars worth of BTC, don't you?

Bitcoin transaction fee when network is congested is cheap when moving a high volume amount of bitcoin as compared to the traditional system. But paying $5 for a transaction of $30 is really not a good economic calculation, still faster than the fiat though, when priority fee is been used.

Bitcoin has its advantage when moving money worldwide over fiat, but still cannot be used to make payments for daily use. And I think that should be the target.

[amrulshare]

it depends on our needs and how much value we have, if viewed from an economic standpoint, the cost is still not representative for secondary costs in general.

[tornadouk]

Having not used Bitcoin for a few years, I was shocked at the transaction fees to send a small amount from Binance to LBC, think I paid close to $4.50.

[Artemis3]

You should not forget that bitcoin transactions can be set by yourself and not the other way around. Are you not in a hurry? Set it to 1sat/B and relax. Wait a day or so, don't worry. If you used a wallet with rbf such as Electrum, you can later change your mind and add more tx fees to "accelerate it".

Real world wire transfers across borders can take days, and even within a country from a different bank. So you shouldn't be too picky.

The "pay now" scenario will be handled by off chain solutions such as Lightning Network, it only needs to get some more traction or another off chain solution (such as Litecoin) to be supported by smart wallets able to do the p2p exchange among them (as they are both segwit).

[o_e_l_e_o]

I've always thought these kind of comparisons are kind of disingenuous. Yes, they might appeal to people who don't understand that fees are based on transaction data size and not transaction value, but they are not an accurate representation of what fees are really. It can cost 10 cents to move a billion dollars, or it could cost 10 dollars to move 5 dollars, depending on how many UTXOs you are spending and the current mempool status.

We should be aiming to be more honest and educational when discussing fees, rather than just going for sensationalist headlines.

[1Referee]

Having not used Bitcoin for a few years, I was shocked at the transaction fees to send a small amount from Binance to LBC, think I paid close to $4.50.

Perhaps you should provide more information than saying I paid X fees for a transfer.

Poor fee estimation on the client side in most cases leads to people overpaying with 50%. I have seen it happen myself that clients recommend me a fee that makes zero sense. Most people will probably go with what the client recommends but that's not a good thing, and leads to even higher fees if enough people do it simultaneously.

Another thing is that high fees are the result of multi input --> single output transactions. You think it's just a regular transaction, but under the hood multi input transactions take up more block space and thus require a higher than average fee.

My highest regular size transaction fee so far is still sub $1.

[gentlemand]

Fees seem to be veering wildly. My latest one was 3-4 days ago and that was made up of around 16 inputs. The overall fee was 68 cents and was confirmed next block. I think I got lucky with that one.

[rdbase]

Surely, it's cheap for large transaction. But still a nightmare for small ones. You now can't pay your bill with Bitcoin as you might spend more money on the fees itself. Lightning network seems to solve some problems but it's mass adoption would bring another problem to the bitcoin network.
So, no, bitcoin transactions are not cheap.

This is were it is imperative with larger transactions it is a dream compared to if you were wanting to send this amount using other means such as a money transfer service or even through a bank. They would ask you many many questions of this transaction of this amount and probably want to contact the local authorities in this case if it were done by basic means.

[hatshepsut93]

Average joes generally don't move half a billion dollars on a daily basis, just so you know 

It's really manipulative to bring events like this to debunk the fact that BTC transactions are expensive, everyone with a little bit of understanding of Bitcoin knows fees are tied to transactions (bytes, to be precise), not the amounts, so there's generally some lowest threshold that you have to pay to get your tx confirmed quickly, and it often happens to be a few dollars of value. I personally have to optimize by transactions by monitoring the mempool manually, because paying a few dollars to move $20 is retarded, and it just kills any ability to make small purchases, so I probably won't be using BTC as a currency until LN will be  more widely adopted or the fees will go to a few satoshis per byte.

[Pagri]

Undoubtedly bitcoin is still very cheap for those who make movements of such magnitude, but for those who can only afford to move a few satochis without a doubt the cost of transactions start to seem a little expensive, and if we take into account that in real life most of our transactions are to cover minimum payments (a coffee, a cigarette, groceries, etc.), then the price to pay for using the bitcoin starts to seem a bit expensive compared to other payment systems.

[bittick]

When it comes to transaction it is the size that matters not how much btc you sent or received, that is what make bitcoin really suitable for rich peeps but for low money brat that is a burden, most of the people that trying to gather btc by small amount to a single wallet usually have so many input in their transaction resulting bigger transaction size, I guess that is the problem.

[syaripudin]

it's looks cheap in the sense because the transaction is worth 500btc but if the transaction is small the 5$ fee will be expensive. also most users only send small amount of btc/mbtc and so the 5$ fee is expensive for them since the transaction is small.

I agree with what you say, transaction costs are quite cheap for that amount, but for people who can send small amounts if they are charged the same amount of $ 5, the tax costs will be quite expensive because the transactions they can do are not worth the costs that must be incurred

[DatKing]

If Bitcoin transactions are faster now it is awesome. When it comes to transaction fees, they may be seem cheap on a 500k transaction but they seem expensive on a small amount of transaction.

[Hersix]

I think people that complain it's because if you withdraw $50 you get like $5-10 cut from all exchanges and transactions, so you end up with $40.
In big transactions, now it's cheap, but in really low transactions (like $50 or less) it kinda sucks