Bitcoin transaction fees are too high, obstacle for adoption and in general

[GreatArkansas]

I see people paying USD 10 for an item, and then paying USD 30 in fee for the BTC transaction, and I realize that this is not sustainable. And its impossible for BTC to become a mainstream payment method if the price is increased with x3 when you buy something.

Where did you see that? I have never ever paid 30 USD in fees on transactions with 1 input 2 output or 2 input 2 output. If you are going to send $0.5 to 20 users, then you'll have to pay $30 in fees but in the situation that you describe, there is no way someone had to pay $30 in fees in this year.
(....)

This is a very rare case, where the transaction fee could end up high like this especially before, the bull market, where the price of Bitcoin is at its peak, and multiple all-time highs were created, that's the time that I can recall that this kind of high transaction fee happened.
I can feel what OP is saying here, Bitcoin for this kind of payments is not that really good, but I believe there will be more technology will come to solve this issue of Bitcoin.

[Edwardard]

Bitcoin's success means higher fees.

Well thats not true. Bitcoin's tx fee were way higher while the prices were way too low a few years back. But later, after the segwit implementation, the fee has been reduced drastically compared to what it was before. We will always have more new solutions in the future too, so cant say that its success will be directly proportional to the fee.

[DeathAngel]

15 sats per byte to get included in the next block currently. I don’t mind paying less than $1 to transfer money anywhere in the world on the most secure network in the world, with no middlemen.

https://mempool.space

[stompix]

Well, currently there is no more than a $3 dollar transaction fee and you are saying people have to pay $30 dollar fee on 10 dollar worth of transactions. You can check for yourself from the Bitcoin Fee Graph that it was in the previous month when the fee reached to 30 dollars but after that, like after 18 May, the fee begins to reduce and now it ranges from 3 to 5 dollars if i am not wrong. And, i think it is still not that much for those who are making millions of dollars of transactions because they are still paying less than 10 dollars (max) to transfer funds from wallets to other wallets or exchanges.

This is just a simplistic and overly optimistic take.

There are a couple of issues with this take and a lot of people ignore a ton of problems:
- you can't always use just one input if you constantly deal with BTC, at one point you will have a ton of dust that you will need to consolidate and it will cost you twice as more to use that.
- when you pay with BTC there are cost for the seller too, he does receive the BTC free of fees, but he MUST USE them, so he will pay also to move that money, even if it's consolidating, moving to cold storage, moving to an exchange!

But the worst thing is the take that all you have to do is wait, seriously?
That was supposed to be an economically viable alternative when you have to wait for weeks to make a transaction that is finally cheaper than a WU transfer?

Oh, but it's good for people making millions and moving millions every day! Suddenly from hating the bank and the rich elite controlling the economy, now we cheer for a solution that is 10 times more expensive than a CC but it's doing great at moving billion for a bunch of dollars
This is copium! Pure 100% fentanyl free copium!

Bitcoin needs to scale! That's it! Simple!

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

Well, you will have to get used to it. This is what is will be like in the future. Bitcoin's success means higher fees.

I really do understand that it's something we are going to get used to, but speaking for ourselves as early Bitcoiners, it might not really have much of a negative impact on us, but for newcomers, can they cope? If they are in the situation of buying, say, $10 of Bitcoin for the first time and they are to spend $30 in fees, it will discourage some people and make some people more skeptical about the technology, mostly people who will know about Bitcoin for the first time in their lives.

When I first bought my first Bitcoin some years ago, around 2019, I didn't buy a whole lot of Bitcoin, and I didn't spend up to $2 on fees, so imagine if I were to spend $30 on fees when I wanted to buy $100 worth of Bitcoin. It would really make me feel biased that I had to just receive $70 worth of Bitcoin if I spent $30 on fees.

I just wished for the Bitcoin transaction fee not to go so high that newbies could not afford it when they wanted to buy their first Bitcoin, because Satoshi said Bitcoin is for everyone, both the common and uncommon man, and some common men, could not afford to spend a lot on fees.

Cheers 🥂, Dr.Bitcoin_Strange 👺👺

[Mr.suevie]

Well, you will have to get used to it. This is what is will be like in the future. Bitcoin's success means higher fees.

I really do understand that it's something we are going to get used to, but speaking for ourselves as early Bitcoiners, it might not really have much of a negative impact on us, but for newcomers, can they cope? If they are in the situation of buying, say, $10 of Bitcoin for the first time and they are to spend $30 in fees, it will discourage some people and make some people more skeptical about the technology, mostly people who will know about Bitcoin for the first time in their lives.

When I first bought my first Bitcoin some years ago, around 2019, I didn't buy a whole lot of Bitcoin, and I didn't spend up to $2 on fees, so imagine if I were to spend $30 on fees when I wanted to buy $100 worth of Bitcoin. It would really make me feel biased that I had to just receive $70 worth of Bitcoin if I spent $30 on fees.

I just wished for the Bitcoin transaction fee not to go so high that newbies could not afford it when they wanted to buy their first Bitcoin, because Satoshi said Bitcoin is for everyone, both the common and uncommon man, and some common men, could not afford to spend a lot on fees.

Cheers 🥂, Dr.Bitcoin_Strange 👺👺

Well said Dr.strange, it will definitely affect those newcomers like myself although I will count myself as a partial newcomer as I have already started my bitcoin investment and my investment and portfolio is looking stronger everyday but what about the folks that don't want to use it as an investment and only for transacting purposes? They will definitely see it with another motive as it will be really absurd to spend more than half of your money as fee trying to pay for a service rendered to you.

[hatshepsut93]

This is not sustainable over a longer time. Bitcoin popularity might be increasing but with fees like now it will never really work.

If this is not sustainable, then people will use Bitcoin less, if Bitcoin is used less, the fees will drop, if the fees will drop, Bitcoin will become used more, if it's used more, fees will rise, if fees will rise, someone will make a post on Bitcointalk how this is not sustainable 

This problem has existed for many years, and Bitcoin is still the #1 coin with no competition. Countless coins claimed to have solved scalability, and they are in dust now.

[BitDane]

Bitcoin is still undergoing development and the two soft forks that happen in Bitcoin development is somehow related to minimizing transaction fee.  If we look at the history, Bitcoin first implemented  segwit.  A bitcoin update that reduces the size of transaction, thus making transaction fee lower.  Then comes taproot that further reduce the transaction fee.  Before the ordinal issue, Bitcoin transaction are cheap, until someone uses BRC 20 token to congest the network and eventually increase the transaction fee exponentially.

[mk4]

Bitcoin is still undergoing development and the two soft forks that happen in Bitcoin development is somehow related to minimizing transaction fee.  If we look at the history, Bitcoin first implemented  segwit.  A bitcoin update that reduces the size of transaction, thus making transaction fee lower.  Then comes taproot that further reduce the transaction fee.  Before the ordinal issue, Bitcoin transaction are cheap, until someone uses BRC 20 token to congest the network and eventually increase the transaction fee exponentially.

These updates sure did technically decrease transaction fees, but the effects were (expectedly) minuscule. Segwit was mostly for increased block capacity, while Taproot was mostly for better functionality via the Lightning network.

[Z390]

Many people don't know this but it is the truth about Bitcoin, you are all buying bitcoin today to hold for the future so that you can sell at a higher value but you are complaining about the transaction fee.

If you want Bitcoin to reach a new all-time high in 2025 then you should know that the gas fee will never be the same but if using Bitcoin as means of payment and it is the only thing that matters to you, then do not expect 200,000 dollars per Bitcoin for you to be able to take profit.

Bitcoin will remain in the same place in terms of value if we all want cheap transaction fees, the more value Bitcoin has, the higher the transaction fee will be.

Get used to this right now OP, because sooner or later, the transaction fee will increase.

[stompix]

Bitcoin is still undergoing development and the two soft forks that happen in Bitcoin development is somehow related to minimizing transaction fee.  If we look at the history, Bitcoin first implemented  segwit.  A bitcoin update that reduces the size of transaction, thus making transaction fee lower.  Then comes taproot that further reduce the transaction fee.  Before the ordinal issue, Bitcoin transaction are cheap, until someone uses BRC 20 token to congest the network and eventually increase the transaction fee exponentially.

You have to realize how minimal those gains were when we're talking about global adoption.
Even with the extremely small size of brc20 minting that pushed the number of confirmed daily transactions to a record of +600k, it's still on average around half a million, Mcdonald's has 70 million customers a day, just as an example.

If a 2 million tx made out of ordinals ravaged the network this badly, how are we going to deal with a million users daily?

This problem has existed for many years, and Bitcoin is still the #1 coin with no competition. Countless coins claimed to have solved scalability, and they are in dust now.

Maybe because what they fixed was not actually what people want?
The market hs shift is terrible, there is less and less action on blockchain that has a counterpart in the real world, we have insane flows that are basically just people sending coins from and to exchanges, and in the case of altcoins through that defi and "investing" platforms.
The other coins have failed because they failed as an investment tool, what they offered was simply in no demand.

Now, what if Bitcoin hadn't had this problem at all, maybe we would already be further down the road of adoption?

[new19980]

the biggest issue is when withdrawing btc from exchanges to
your own wallet Binance has a fees of 0.00025 btc for normal btc and 0.0005 btc for segwit which
 is too high around 7$-14$ and hitbtc worst i think its 0.00075 btc

[dezoel]

I'm not sure what you are talking about, Bitcoin transaction fees are not as high as you are saying at the moment, you will barely have to pay $3 or something for the priority transaction if you are using the lightning network and for the lowest fees it is just a few cents per transaction. We know that the network gets congested sometimes but that is not the case right now.

The scalability issue will surely be solved if it's seen to be too much of an issue in the future but for now, the network does pretty well in normal times, it is only a few occasions when transaction fees go very high just like what happened recently.

[southerngentuk]

The state of bitcoin was pretty bad last month, but for now on the bitcoin network, it is improving, and it is likely that fees will continue to stabilize and become more affordable over time. So if you are still too heavy on the issue of fees, it is better to use other networks, such as Matic. I find the network to be quite good, and it is a practical solution to avoid high fees and longer confirmation times. Also, I have seen a spike in ETH network gas fees in the past few days, so I don't recommend using this network to transact payments.

[hatshepsut93]

The other coins have failed because they failed as an investment tool, what they offered was simply in no demand.

What they offered was nothing, they only promised high tps blockchain without actually demonstrating that it has the claimed capacity while also remaining decentralized. And of course the developers never had interest in delivering, they already got filthy rich from their premine.

If there was a coin that had better scalability than Bitcoin without any downsides, it would have been still alive today at at least $2 or #3 spot and slowly replacing Bitcoin. But there is no such coin.

[Fivestar4everMVP]

The high fees is truly a menace that needs to be tackled heads on, it shouldn't be given any breathing space until the goal is achieved, and what is the goal if you ask me?

I understand that the current transaction fees for bitcoin is at the $3 range at the moment, for me, that is still pretty expensive for a bitcoin newbie who is just gathering funds to buy bitcoin and withdraw to his or her wallet, bitcoin should have a transaction fee that is not more than $0.5 at most, this is how Marchant and business men and women can also be motivated to implement bitcoin payments into their businesses.

[serjent05]

Please some intelligent involved developer read this and get motivated!

Developers are doing their best to solve the high transaction fee issue.  Developers had implemented two soft fork in order to minimize the transaction fee.  The first one is segwit and the latest one is the taproot.  The current high fees is due to the Bitcoin Ordinals feature that enables the creation of NFT that congest the network.

The developer knows what they must do, so I think there is no need to remind them about the urgent need for Bitcoin to scale.

[BVeyron]

Hi,

I just wanted to share my thoughts about the high Bitcoin transaction fees.

I see people paying USD 10 for an item, and then paying USD 30 in fee for the BTC transaction, and I realize that this is not sustainable. And its impossible for BTC to become a mainstream payment method if the price is increased with x3 when you buy something.

I understand that the "network is congested" and im sure people are working on it. But in my opinion this should be top priority no 1! It is hard to explain to people all the time that they should use LTC or ETH or something else when we just started to get people to trust Bitcoin.

What is my suggested solution? That the people that can actually do something about this, the people involved in the development, start to act like grownups and sort this issue once and for all!

Im not going to solve it, not with this article and not by complaining. But others can and they should!

This is not sustainable over a longer time. Bitcoin popularity might be increasing but with fees like now it will never really work.

Please some intelligent involved developer read this and get motivated!

<3

That's a tough problem. The problem with all the digital money systems (both crypto and fiat) is that its highly dependent on data traffic volume and data processing power. So increasing number of NFT minters loads all the mining facilities, so that it becomes impossible to make transactions in time. The only way to deal with the problem is to raise transaction fees, it reduces the overall number of transactions, since people start refusing to make them (the law of market). That's why such things ($10 purchase, $30 fee) happen.

[southerngentuk]

The high fees are actually a barrier to entry and discourage some individuals from accepting Bitcoin. While Bitcoin's transaction fees are high at certain times, it is worth noting that fees are not fixed and can change depending on network conditions. During times of low network activity, fees can be significantly lower. Additionally, using certain strategies, such as optimizing transaction settings, choosing the right fees, or using second-layer scaling solutions like the Lightning Network, can help reduce fees. In the meantime, you should consider alternative cryptocurrencies for specific use cases where fees are lower or transaction times are faster.

[stompix]

The other coins have failed because they failed as an investment tool, what they offered was simply in no demand.

What they offered was nothing, they only promised high tps blockchain without actually demonstrating that it has the claimed capacity while also remaining decentralized. And of course the developers never had interest in delivering, they already got filthy rich from their premine.
If there was a coin that had better scalability than Bitcoin without any downsides, it would have been still alive today at at least $2 or #3 spot and slowly replacing Bitcoin. But there is no such coin.

And this shows basically that the price is more important than usage, any normal business that would have experienced this type of congestion would be bankrupt, a bank raising the fees this much would be left with no customers, but since crypto on-chain usage is like 1% of the importance of trading and investing, here we are. And here we will be at the next spam wave since nothing is really being done.

That's a tough problem. The problem with all the digital money systems (both crypto and fiat) is that its highly dependent on data traffic volume and data processing power. So increasing number of NFT minters loads all the mining facilities, so that it becomes impossible to make transactions in time.

That's not how the network works, that's not how sanctions are being confirmed.
It takes a script that can run on a Pentium 1 to generate 10000 ordinals, it takes the same hashing power to create a block right now even if it's empty or it has 4000 transactions in it.