With a clogged network, users will start abandoning BTC for alts. Change my mind

[Lorence.xD]

Not when the average guy using BTC doesn't even know how LN works and so few people/companies are accepting it.. The main problem is currently sitting on the main layer - second-layer solutions aren't imo real solutions to those issues.

It's not just the people's problem, everyone involved in bitcoin scene should do their part in making these problem go away, we can make infrastructures for the network so it can help with the speed and the people has to learn more about bitcoin and ways to do a faster transaction, with whining we will not get any progress.

[ranochigo]

What makes me think it's safe is because my funds are safe in it and I haven't had any issue using it for years now.

An analogy (May be it will drive the point deeper): That couples this day indulge different sexual positions while making babies and neglecting the missionary position hasn't taken away the effectiveness of the old missionary style adopted by our forebears while birthing our grandparents, and our grandparents while birthing our parents you know?  .

Each to what works for them. I am very comfortable with the BC wallet even to the point that I choose it over the Electrum wallet, any day any time.

Okay. If that is your definition of competency, then so be it. Even if Blockchain.com is competent, it's just a matter of time till it gets hacked through one of its many attack vectors. I personally wouldn't choose a wallet that doesn't want to adopt opt-in RBF, correct fees estimation and general terrible UI. But yep, if track record is any indication, I would steer clear of them.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=581411.0
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/02/24/blockchain-and-darknet-hacks-lead-to-epic-bitcoin-losses/?sh=27acdaef35e5

[Pandji02]

Yes, people will leave bitcoin for alts. However, it will not change anything. Bitcoin will go higher and higher and price just because its bitcoin. Form of religion here

[Mpamaegbu]

Okay. If that is your definition of competency, then so be it. Even if Blockchain.com is competent, it's just a matter of time till it gets hacked through one of its many attack vectors.

Well, I like to lead my life on experience rather than hear say. Since I haven't had any issue with it I don't think it will be a learned and wise thing to right them off. The wallet may have a cog in its wheels but this I haven't encountered anyway. May be because I don't hold much sats in my entire portfolio or may be those who notice these issues you talk about are the whales or regular users. BTW, Electrum with all its negative reports, hacks and phishing issues, still get patronage isn't it?

[ranochigo]

Well, I like to lead my life on experience rather than hear say. Since I haven't had any issue with it I don't think it will be a learned and wise thing to right them off. The wallet may have a cog in its wheels but this I haven't encountered anyway. May be because I don't hold much sats in my entire portfolio or may be those who notice these issues you talk about are the whales or regular users. BTW, Electrum with all its negative reports, hacks and phishing issues, still get patronage isn't it?

It's far easier to get phished when you're using an online wallet. Electrum, by comparison is actively developed and new features are always added. Any security issue is always fixed fairly quickly; error from server displayed in rich text was mitigated by DOSing the older versions. Not really sure why would Blockchain.com even be in this discussion if anything they contribute to both the high fees and the congestion.

Not really alot of bad reports about Electrum in this aspect, as compared to Blockchain.com or that's from my experience. But okay, it's your choice. Let me know if you'd like to have another discussion on another topic. Any further discussion will make this off topic.

[pooya87]

You are absolutely right but the problem is that there is no alternative worth going to!

If we look back at the history, during 2017 which was the biggest and longest spam attack against bitcoin that led to the longest high fees, we saw that altcoins gained a lot of traction and some of them even went up in price by a lot because of this "migration".

But the problem is that there is no altcoin that could offer what bitcoin does in terms of security and decentralization or even ease of use. Majority of them are very centralized and have very weak security. Not to mention that almost all of them are copies of bitcoin and suffer a worse case of fee market and fee spikes compared to bitcoin.

For example during 2017 the shitcoin called ETH was advertised to be "better" than bitcoin and people were fooled into thinking it is cheap and since the creator and major shareholder Vitalik promised them fees won't go up higher than a cent, they started buying this shitcoin. This shitcoin's pumpers even started the campaign called "flippening" but  after ETH fees surpassed $10 and continued increasing people realized it was all lies and started dumping it.

You see in the end even if such migration happens from bitcoin to altcoins, it will be short lived because they will all come back to bitcoin in the end when the low fee "good" experience ends and they start facing the truth.

Here is my failed attempt at finding a "better" or at least "as good as" altcoin and so far I've only gotten 1 reply introducing an altcoin that has one of the worst scaling issues among altcoins:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5315116.0

[Mpamaegbu]

But okay, it's your choice.

You will surely make a good and  astute marketer or public relations person, honestly; and joking apart. I like your resilience in trying to snap me out of my old way. However, what is sophistication when one isn't safe with it. Electrum's attempt to keep on improving on its app still exposes its users to vulnerability, isn't so? Wouldn't it be wiser to stick with the angel one knows rather than the one unknown? Nevertheless, let me quickly add that I once used Electrum in 2017 or so (at the same time I started using BC) but had to quickly abandon it because of several reported scaring phishing hacks. May be one day I will go back to it. Never say never 🤗

PS: This is also my last response to this.

[NeuroticFish]

You are absolutely right but the problem is that there is no alternative worth going to!

I agree 100%.

I am by far not a Bitcoin maximalist. The first coin I ever had was an altcoin. I am not afraid of using altcoins.
But... although altcoins can be in theory an alternative for the big fees (they always were, especially an alternative for the high withdrawal fees at exchanges), in reality they are suitable only in case of relatively small funds.

The problem is that many still expect to transfer faucet money for free on Bitcoin blockchain. I think that people will have to start moving bigger amounts at a time, or learn to wait.
Indeed, this can be a problem when you buy something and the payment time can be critical, and for this sole case here OP is right. I hope that LN won't stay too much longer in "beta" stage.

[20kevin20]

Everybody can choose the fee he wants to pay and miners can choose the fee they want to earn with a tx. So when you don't like high fees, than don't pay it. If nobody pays high fees, than the miner will accept more tx with a low fee.

Well, even if I do not want to pay high fees, the current conditions of the mempool are basically forcing me to do it. But as long as the block size limit is reached continously for months, this will be a never-ending problem. Unless more txs can be included in blocks, there are going to always be high fees since some people need to pay more for faster confirmations..

Using a BC wallet is kind of old school, you know. However, the good side to me is that it's very safe. I don't think your perception of it is accurate that it isn't safe. I have been using BC for 4 years now and haven't had any issue with it.

Unless they somehow prove the service is truly non-custodial, I cannot call it a safe option.

And as far as BCH and LTC are concerned, their transaction fee is very low. But the volatility is on the higher side. So if you are converting your BTC to BCH and then again to BTC, you may incur losses due to the volatile exchange rates. Also, the liquidity is also not that good for these coins.

If I move to alts, it makes no sense to keep swapping from BTC to alts back and forth. Volatility is quite high with BTC too since it grew more than 1,400% within ~1 year, isn't it?

Like I said, the fee spikes are not permanent, when they decide to leave, there will be a reset and as soon as the fee rate is back to 1 sat/vbyte, they will be back  

So I don't think Bitcoin usage is going to decline because of temporary fee spikes.

Well, this is a quite contradictory argument. If fee spikes makes us leave, then the usage implicitely drops. And if in the future we will only have a clogged mempool and an userbase that keeps leaving and coming back, this would be a quite annoying ride tbh and after a few attempts of one user to come back I don't see it going very well.

Still better than African countries where people have to feed whole families for $100 a month. Bitcoin is global and if some guy in Silicon Valley can pay 100 thousand dollars for it then it's going to trade for that. That person is not going to care that an average person in Romania will have to save up for years to be able to afford it. If that guy decides he wants a transaction confirmed now and pays $100 for it, he's going to get it and all the others will have to wait because they can't beat that price. I know it's not fair to you, but to a guy who has the money it is fair. He pays premium so that he doesn't wait.

I agree with most of your text here, although I find it quite funny how whenever the no of txs in the mempool drops everyone goes wild advertising BTC for how cheap you can move money through it.

Paying a premium to advance in the queue is fair enough imo. However, that isn't the problem. It's that the BTC blockchain cannot scale to sustain a higher number of transactions. Unless it will, there will only be more and more people with more money than you paying a higher fee than you do to advance in the queue. If the mempool wasn't clogged, it would not be an issue. But look how many txs are clogged since January.

This is the poor vs the rich, where the rich are under a large advance. If Bitcoin offers a decentralized economy where the Elites are still the ones to benefit off it while the poorer & average have to wait for months to have their money, then what exactly have we solved?

I disagree here. People don't necessarily deeply understand the technology to be able to use it. I mean, a lot of people don't understand crap about BTC but yet they are able to use it. It's just that people refuse to try out Lightning wallets simply because most big exchanges don't accept LN deposits yet. Also knowing that there are Lightning wallets out there that are easy to use, such as Phoenix Wallet[1].

[1] https://phoenix.acinq.co/

Bitcoin itself is quite hard to understand as a newbie, let alone LN. This is why most newbies (or less-experienced) users will stay away from it. It took even me quite a while to understand what second-layer solutions mean and why LN is incompatible with non-LN wallets.

You are absolutely right but the problem is that there is no alternative worth going to!

There might not be any worthy alternative, but people will still prefer to choose convenience. Most users don't even care about privacy, let alone how decentralized or centralized a blockchain is. If users leave towards other coins due to the current issues BTC is facing, then Bitcoin will start losing ground in favor of literally shitcoins.

The problem is that many still expect to transfer faucet money for free on Bitcoin blockchain. I think that people will have to start moving bigger amounts at a time, or learn to wait.
Indeed, this can be a problem when you buy something and the payment time can be critical,

Start moving bigger amounts as a time or learn to wait. Isn't this an issue though, since this isn't what Bitcoin was supposed to be?

I've moved large amounts and I am also patiently waiting. These aren't amounts of which confirmation time I care about. However, it's been over a month and I'm still waiting. After one month, is it still me who's the issue since I have not "learned to wait" or could it be the BTC network that might be sitting under some serious scaling issues?

[pooya87]

There might not be any worthy alternative, but people will still prefer to choose convenience. Most users don't even care about privacy, let alone how decentralized or centralized a blockchain is. If users leave towards other coins due to the current issues BTC is facing, then Bitcoin will start losing ground in favor of literally shitcoins.

Well then these people have no reason to use cryptocurrencies in first place. Using something PayPal for example is A LOT more convenient and has far less risks than cryptocurrencies do, the value of their money is also saved since it is USD and it doesn't suddenly tank overnight.

So I disagree with saying it is for "convenience". People who move to altcoins are either doing it for short term to get a bad experience before they come back or they go there because they think that altcoin is going to give them more profit than bitcoin which again has nothing to do with usage and convenience of it.

[LoyceV]

I've said it in 2017 and I'll say it again: high fees are bad for adoption. I don't really care how, but Bitcoin needs to scale!

For example, due to the necessary fast confirmation, only in the past two months I have spent more than $200 in fees for a handful of txs.

Was that really necessary? I still make on-chain Bitcoin transactions, but with some planning managed to keep fees a lot lower. For instance, I now use Bitcoin on the Lightning Network whenever possible. And sometimes, when that isn't possible, I am indeed forced to pay with Forkcoins or altcoins to avoid paying very high fees on very low amounts.

I have over 10 payments that I've sent with a previously decent fee (6-8sat/vbyte) that haven't been confirmed although it's been about two weeks ever since they've been broadcasted.

This is what I mean by "planning": would it have been possible to combine those transactions (by using "pay to many")? Avoiding fees by combining transactions and reducing change outputs is really worth it, and it helps everyone else too when you occupy less block space.

with a clogged network, current (or future) Bitcoin users will start leaving Bitcoin for alts. Change my mind.

I can only speak for myself: I may be using some alts/Forks for some payments, but only to optimize my fee payments. I'll never exchange my Bitcoin for alts other than spending small amounts.
I could even argue the other way around: I've used altcoins to buy Bitcoin Lightning Network on an instant exchange. This gives the best of both worlds: I get rid of a shitcoin, pay low fees, and get the real Bitcoin with low fees on LN in return.

Lightning network is available, but not knowing why people are not just adopting it, this is one of the best solution for fast transaction and cheapest fee.

Not when the average guy using BTC doesn't even know how LN works and so few people/companies are accepting it..

"The average guy" doesn't really know how to use Bitcoin either, and just "trades" it on an exchange. For LN, I recommend anyone to try this:

I've tried many (but won't mention the inconvenient ones). I now only use BlueWallet and Phoenix Wallet. The former has custodial LN, the latter non-custodial. Both on Android, both wallets take care of channels (they charge a small percentage fee for this), incoming capacity and connectivity. There's not much you have to setup manually (just create your backups).

You can actually buy Bitcoin LN for as little as $1 worth of shitcoins.

refuse to try out Lightning wallets

locking up BTC to play a partner. in a game of joint bank account chequebooks in a millisat denomination.. is not continuing to own bitcoin

I know you don't like Bitcoin LN, and that's fine. I like it, I use it, and it works just fine Second layer Bitcoin is as safe as it gets. There are much worse "alternatives": people are actually throwing Bitcoin to all kinds of BS tokens on shitcoin chains! And unlike LN, they hand over large amounts of Bitcoin to third parties for this. When you withdraw Bitcoin from Binance, it shows all kinds of BS that isn't Bitcoin:

Who falls for that?! At least LN is still the real deal and can be settled on-chain. "Tokens" are just a scam waiting to happen.

I'm pretty sure Lightning wallets were never meant for storing all your holdings; pretty much like your physical pocket cash wallet.

That is how I use LN. If it fails, I lose some pocket change. But it has saved me more in on-chain fees already than I've ever had in LN at once.

It's kinda sad though that I can't easily demonstrate Bitcoin to nocoiners anymore. It used to be possible to give someone $20 worth of Bitcoin, and they could make many transactions to experience how it works. Those times are gone on-chain, and I don't really want to spend $200 just to demonstrate Bitcoin (and waste it on fees).

[pooya87]

It's kinda sad though that I can't easily demonstrate Bitcoin to nocoiners anymore. It used to be possible to give someone $20 worth of Bitcoin, and they could make many transactions to experience how it works. Those times are gone on-chain, and I don't really want to spend $200 just to demonstrate Bitcoin (and waste it on fees).

One could argue that one of many purposes of TestNet is exactly this, to give people free "bitcoins" so that they could use it with no worries (about losing money) and learn how things work.

[LoyceV]

One could argue that one of many purposes of TestNet is exactly this, to give people free "bitcoins" so that they could use it with no worries (about losing money) and learn how things work.

That's true. But what's the fun in that? Part of the fun is the value it has. After all, it's much nicer to get real money than Monopoly money.
Besides, I don't know anyone who started their Bitcoin experience on Testnet. I'd say Testnet is more for experienced Bitcoin users with a certain need.

[Rizzrack]

I don't think the fees are too high.
~80 sats/byte is pretty decent overall. It's the price increase that made that fee mean more in USD.
See below a graph of BTC fees:



The fiat equivalent for the current BTC fees are high atm and personally I don't think using alts during times like this is a bad thing.
The more people use a certain coin, the more congested it will get.

There is no magic solution for scalability. It will be a mix of things IMO. The LN will help, taproot will allow more tx in a block so smaller fee ones catch the train faster, future 2^nd layer solutions... maybe they decide to even increase the block size at some point, who knows... But each will add to it gradually.
If you want to spend $2 either use LN or the alt of your choise.
It's a free market at the end of the day. If everyone would make 5sat tx then everything would be OK, but it's a bidding war ...

[NeuroticFish]

Start moving bigger amounts as a time or learn to wait. Isn't this an issue though, since this isn't what Bitcoin was supposed to be?

You do have a point. But since Bitcoin is 0.21.0 (basically a beta), not even 1.0, I will still say that patience is the key.

I've moved large amounts and I am also patiently waiting. These aren't amounts of which confirmation time I care about. However, it's been over a month and I'm still waiting. After one month, is it still me who's the issue since I have not "learned to wait"

After a month?! This means you've used (way) under 10 sat/vByte... People reading your topic will expect you've paid 100s of sat/vbyte and that's why you are complaining...

or could it be the BTC network that might be sitting under some serious scaling issues?

Here you are right. Bitcoin does have scaling issues. I cannot deny that part.
(And this is an obstacle for adoption by the average Joe.)
But I've already said that we need LN, didn't I?

[20kevin20]

Was that really necessary?

Unfortunately, yes. There was no other alternative - confirmation within the next few blocks was quite essential.

This is what I mean by "planning": would it have been possible to combine those transactions (by using "pay to many")?

Unfortunately, a combination wasn't possible since I paid through various non-linked addresses.

I don't think the fees are too high.
~80 sats/byte is pretty decent overall. It's the price increase that made that fee mean more in USD.

You're right, and this might get worse as the price of BTC grows. I wouldn't mind paying even 200sat/vbyte if it wasn't worth so much in its fiat equivalent.

You do have a point. But since Bitcoin is 0.21.0 (basically a beta), not even 1.0, I will still say that patience is the key.

I think patience should slowly be put to the side right now because there's currently a domino effect going on where corporations and Elites are moving their funds into BTC. Since this is happening and big money is moving around the blockchain, things might get sped up in such a short timespan the system would quickly get overloaded. It already is, and this is a quite strong warning sign imo.

People usually care only about either how much money they can make off a shitcoin or how fast their money moves from point A to B. Not caring at all whether the blockchain is truly decentralized as advertised or not. So at the end of the day, if Bitcoin loses ground in front of falsely advertised shitcoins, it's bad.

After a month?! This means you've used (way) under 10 sat/vByte... People reading your topic will expect you've paid 100s of sat/vbyte and that's why you are complaining...

There are batches of transactions that I have sent within the past few months. For some of them, I've paid max fees so that my tx could be included within the next blocks. These are the ones I talked about when I mentioned paying $200 for a handful of txs in a matter of weeks. For other transactions, I've paid less since I only wanted them to be confirmed within days. But there are also some txs for which I've paid under 10sat/vbyte since I did not care when they'd get confirmed.

The issue is, back in 2020 there were lots of times during which all my 1-2sat/vbyte txs have been confirmed within at most a few days. LoyceV has a thread where he announces every time the mempool is so clear you can send money for almost nothing.

What I would expect is that for max fees you get the money confirmed within a few blocks, for half the fees within a few hours and for under 10sat/vbyte within a few days. If it takes months, I think it's pretty bad.

[coolcoinz]

If I were to change anyone's mind about it, I'd say that I know many users of Bitcoin who were in the space in 2015, 16, 17,18 and they are still here, not even considering abandoning bitcoin.
High fees are an issue but not to the current users. It's more about new ones. Those who did not make some money holding for a few years are facing high price, high fees and expect a low possible return of investment compared to what they could expect 3 or 4 years ago. Those people are going to turn away from bitcoin, not the ones who bought 3 or 4 years ago.

[Lordhermes]

A lot of clients complained about the excessive charges paying for a transaction thereby causing them considering ripple or other alternative coins. I therefore came to understand that the richer will dominate the usage of Bitcoin in the future.

On that note, many alternative coin withdrawal charges had been increased in the recent time especially the usdttrc20 token from $0-$1, so I see the uptrend in the alternative currencies usage in terms of withdrawal purposes.

[ReiMomo]

Like what happened now, I have a transaction of bitcoin that comes from signature earning, I was paid for the network for more than $5 for the low priority. I have a choice to choose the altcoin that has low fees, I'm I guess prefer to use this just to save my fees. But I have nothing to do is to accept it blindly.

I guess that is right, bitcoin is for the rich people that didn't mind the fees and that can afford whatever the fees it is. If every one of us looking to alternate coins, what will happen to bitcoin? I guess we must have an adjustment, if we have a bulk transaction it is better to use the lightning network, and if in a single transaction we use a segwit address.

[verita1]

I am not going to give up bitcoin. I receive and buy bitcoin and hold. But the fees are very high just like ether. I have turned to other altcoins like Dash and BNB for my daily needs.

I don't know how the bull run will end. It is the only strategy I have devised to avoid high fees. It is true that we are waiting for dapps to be able to use more bitcoin is the impression that I have of our crypto space.

Sometimes I think that the current situation forces us not to spend bitcoin and hold or at least only use what we need. It is something that indirectly teaches us to save.