Angry at the high fees? That's what everyone predicted the future will be like!

[stompix]

Yes, another fee topic, deal with it! 

I know, nobody likes to pay fees, nobody! Me neither!
And if there is an exception for sure it doesn't want to pay high fees, so it's pretty understandable that everyone is unhappy about it!
But at the same time, why are you angry at the same situation everyone was believing in it and predicting it?

Every single time a newbie asked what would happen when there would be no mining reward he got the same response over 10 pages, miners will live on from fees, and the security of the blockchain will be generated from fees! And here we are, although the fees are not quite high enough yet!

The last block:
https://mempool.space/block/00000000000000000002745f5dc332c3f8373773c05f3507c51bbfb4e402359b
generated :

Total fees   ‎3.257 BTC$119,069
Subsidy + fees   ‎9.507 BTC $347,557

so in order for the fees to replace the reward, you would need twice as much already, even despite this:

Fee span   280 - 8,206 sat/vB
Median fee   ~299 sat/vB $15.31

To make it as short as possible, for the network to have the same security as now without a block reward we would need each block to have twice as big fees in the future, that's how things work!
So, are you angry with high fees? Yes, we all are, but, wasn't this the design?

Before anyone comes up with some myths about this, let's clear some things

1) More efficient gear isn't making the network more secure alone, what's making the network secure is the amount of $ to invest to generate that hashrate, so if you think more efficient gear will mean the network will be just as secure but cheaper, it's delusional.
Right now the network is guarded by 400Exahash, which alone doesn't mean a thing, you must translate those into 4 million $2000 a piece machines to understand the security right now, as it takes 8 billion to launch a 51% attack. This also doesn't mean that because the hashrate in 2013 was one million lower you could attack it at that time with just 8000$ 

2) Cheaper energy or solar or renewable or anything else, again won't solve a thing, even if we run our gear on 0.1 cents per kWh if the reward per day is just $1000 you will only be able to afford 1Gkwh, so anyone willing to spend more than $1000 on energy will have the upper hand!

So, as a conclusion or encouragement or whatever, don't be angry at the fees, they help secure the network, and this is how it was designed to be in the first place, otherwise, we would end up like Bitcoin Gold or Ethereum classic, shitcoins getting 51% attacked 3 times in a row.

And of course, for now, we could actually start using LN rather than complaining, but that would be a solution that involves doing something!

[1714802750]

1714802750

[Odohu]

At this point it is becoming confusing. I read somewhere that the high fees is as a result of Ordinal or NFTs on the Bitcoin network. According to the said comment, the Ordinals is a new trend that is massively being traded, hence the congestion of the Bitcoin network.

I do know that this is not the first time I'm witnessing the situation we are facing now. So it becomes confusing knowing what to believe to be the cause of the high fees and if there is any other way around it with respect to the future because fees like this is a kind of discouraging!

[stompix]

At this point it is becoming confusing. I read somewhere that the high fees is as a result of Ordinal or NFTs on the Bitcoin network. According to the said comment, the Ordinals is a new trend that is massively being traded, hence the congestion of the Bitcoin network.

Exactly!

So it becomes confusing knowing what to believe to be the cause of the high fees and if there is any other way around it with respect to the future because fees like this is a kind of discouraging!

I'm not discussing the cause here!
What I'm trying to point out is what the future everyone was talking about looks like!

Miners will need to get paid for securing the network, this is a must, you can't pay all those miners 2 cents fee unless you want only the same level of security as Ethereum classic, so the whole thing is pretty simple, nobody will force you to do a thing but
- if in the future we will pay 1 cent per tx we would have one cent worth of bodyguard
- if in the future we want to have the same level of security as now, we have to pay twice the fees we're paying in the last few blocks!

Again, nobody will be forcing you to do so, but....the are consequences if not!

But look at the bright side, most of us will be dead and buried by that time!

[TimeTeller]

At this point it is becoming confusing. I read somewhere that the high fees is as a result of Ordinal or NFTs on the Bitcoin network. According to the said comment, the Ordinals is a new trend that is massively being traded, hence the congestion of the Bitcoin network.

I do know that this is not the first time I'm witnessing the situation we are facing now. So it becomes confusing knowing what to believe to be the cause of the high fees and if there is any other way around it with respect to the future because fees like this is a kind of discouraging!

No matter what the reason of high fees these days, just look for alternatives to combat the high fees.
If you can use other top alts to trade, better look into this matter rather than look for such reasons why.
There will be no benefit of digging why, just find your other options to avoid such fees.
This maybe just another phase in btc, sooner or later, the fees will go down again.

[Zaguru12]

Yes, another fee topic, deal with it! 

I know, nobody likes to pay fees, nobody! Me neither!
And if there is an exception for sure it doesn't want to pay high fees, so it's pretty understandable that everyone is unhappy about it!
But at the same time, why are you angry at the same situation everyone was believing in it and predicting it?

Definitely this is predicted to happen but why someone like me is angry about this hike is because we are not paying for security of the network that will benefit us all but we are paying such high fee because some folks created garbage and some naive folks thinks they could make profit out of it. We are bin disturb with something worthless which will soon die down. If it was as you stated out for security purposes which won’t just happen out of the blue like this one, but will be gradual process and we would well informed of that.

No matter what the reason of high fees these days, just look for alternatives to combat the high fees.
If you can use other top alts to trade, better look into this matter rather than look for such reasons why.

This is for those that already have those Altcoins, if you don’t have you would still need to transfer your bitcoin to exchange to buy them which still requires transaction fee  and also not worth the hassle.
How About the safest option, leave off transaction with bitcoin for now and use fiat except on cases you are obliged to, this will soon die down

[BIT-BENDER]

- if in the future we will pay 1 cent per tx we would have one cent worth of bodyguard

We should be familiar this, the world most often work like this, you get the value of what you paid for. But my thoughts is it would be disastrous to have a future of Bitcoin where miners calls the shots in such a way, having the transaction security we have now at a very affordable price is an underrated flex I hope it doesn't get this bad like you said it would be a long time, regardless we hope for a sustainable Bitcoin future.

[avikz]

At this point it is becoming confusing. I read somewhere that the high fees is as a result of Ordinal or NFTs on the Bitcoin network. According to the said comment, the Ordinals is a new trend that is massively being traded, hence the congestion of the Bitcoin network.

That's exactly it is! Any form of NFT is disaster for any legit crypto network. We have seen the madness in ETH and now we are seeing it in Bitcoin. Is there a way to ban this nonsense entirely from Bitcoin network? Due to this high fees, Bitcoin is slowly becoming outdated compared to the innovation that are happening in mainstream financial world. Bitcoin transactions are becoming expensive to an extent where it is becoming irrelevant and if not solved immediately, might become irrelevant as a payment processor. It will then remain as an investment asset only!

[Hamza2424]

I'm not discussing the cause here!
What I'm trying to point out is what the future everyone was talking about looks like!

Miners will need to get paid for securing the network, this is a must, you can't pay all those miners 2 cents fee unless you want only the same level of security as Ethereum classic, so the whole thing is pretty simple, nobody will force you to do a thing but
- if in the future we will pay 1 cent per tx we would have one cent worth of bodyguard
- if in the future we want to have the same level of security as now, we have to pay twice the fees we're paying in the last few blocks!

Again, nobody will be forcing you to do so, but....the are consequences if not!

But look at the bright side, most of us will be dead and buried by that time!

Well, first of all, thank you, for bringing this here, as per Odhu I also think in the same way that the network congestion is due to the Ordinals, which is a fact as well, but I was compleltly ignoring the security concerns. The way you explained really changed my mindset, for good security what we need is to pay back better.

At the same time over time, it will inflate as well, No one forcing those who care to be willing to pay, and those who do not want to can move on.

To the end on the bright side, it's beautiful.

[Charles-Tim]

Ordinals and Inscriptions are making use of bitcoin as fee and depending on bitcoin blockchain for making transaction which leads to more mempool congestion, but miner are truly making more money from bitcoin transactions due to it. But bitcoin has been successful since 2009 to 2023 before there was anything like Ordinals and the network was growing and increasing in hashrates. Although, Ordinals are benefiting the miners but bitcoin can survive without it if the price continues to increase. I mean if bitcoin remain an appreciative asset.

[coolcoinz]

People are angry because of sudden spikes in fees, at least that's the way I understand the current situation.

If fees were slowly rising, acting somewhat like inflated goods, they wouldn't notice it, the same way people don't notice their taxes taking more of their income each year, as their income grows.
It doesn't matter to them that they are now paying $100 more every month, because their pay rose by $500, so it's understandable, after all they have more money so there's nothing to complain about, right?

In August, September and October of 2021 the price was reaching all time highs and the fees were lower than they are now. Lower prices with higher fees = failed expectations and angry crowd with pitchforks.
You say the fees were expected, I say the negative sentiment was expected as well.

[dothebeats]

- if in the future we will pay 1 cent per tx we would have one cent worth of bodyguard

We should be familiar this, the world most often work like this, you get the value of what you paid for. But my thoughts is it would be disastrous to have a future of Bitcoin where miners calls the shots in such a way, having the transaction security we have now at a very affordable price is an underrated flex I hope it doesn't get this bad like you said it would be a long time, regardless we hope for a sustainable Bitcoin future.

They process the payments. They make sure that each transaction transmitted is received and goes from the sender to its receiver. They should not call 100% of the shots but they are technically the backbone of the network. They are a substantial part at that. While I agree that the fees should remain economical to a lot of people, I can't also help to think that maybe we are really headed for a future wherein fees are high in order to compensate and motivate miners to continue hashing and help keep bitcoin safe from 51% attacks.

All I can say right now is, I don't have a choice but to wait until everything subsides before I start using bitcoins to move my funds again.

[wallet4bitcoin]

Frankly, the fees that are being charged are nothing compared to the fees that are charged by conventional banks so in comparison, I'll say it is awesome that the technology came to save the day but if we take a closer look at the fees in the blockchain network and the way its increasing, it leaves a very concerning question, will this fees keep increasing as the price of the coins appreciate?

Moving from cents to a few dollars and then hundreds of dollars (talking about ethereum)

[famososMuertos]

...//:::,,
And of course, for now, we could actually start using LN rather than complaining, but that would be a solution that involves doing something!

I understand you in the first instance, but being in sync with the idea of "acceptance" of high fees does not mean that this has to be the case, that is, we can understand  rates technicality is an important consideration, but! from the point of view of the common user, the technical equivalence of their vision is irrelevant, that is, "why" .

Then, in my case if compared to Swift transfers, know, these prices (today) are still (in the limits) an advantage to do it via bitcoin, but in that idea, if I am a 100% bitcoin user, the fees They are reprehensible.

In any case, in addition to LN, I think that low priority (+ RBF) works if you take precautions not to have emergencies.

[Mate2237]

The fee now is getting high and I think it is not a good omen in the future. When I made at transaction on the month of September, the transaction was 0.00002 if I am not mistaking but now the transaction I made on last Sunday was 0.000075 and for the fee has increased. Me, I was not expecting bitcoin transaction fee to increase because from the white paper bitcoin can be used to buy things online and of the fee is high then that purpose will be defeated. Because it is not nice for you to buy something in the market with bitcoin and you want to pay with bitcoin

And if the fee is high then will affect your transaction so instead you use fiat to pay. If Miners need fees to keep the system running they have to consider that not everyone has enough bitcoin to transfer from one wallet to another. So they have to know that. Yes the prediction is always there to remind users.

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

So, as a conclusion or encouragement or whatever, don't be angry at the fees, they help secure the network, and this is how it was designed to be in the first place, otherwise, we would end up like Bitcoin Gold or Ethereum classic, shitcoins getting 51% attacked 3 times in a row.

Unluckily for me, this is going to be a setback in my business for customers who are going to be paying with Bitcoin.

What surprises me is that you say that this is how it was designed to be. Whereas, just as Odohu has said, I thought it's the ordinal stuff that is making the fee hike, or are you, @stompix, suggesting that since the system was designed to be so, it might even be worse in the future? Also, since it's the ordinals that are causing the fee to hike now, in the future, what else could cause it to spike if not the ordinals?

This is not the first time I have experienced this high fee saga; as a matter of fact, the last fee spik, I spent like $10 trying to withdraw Bitcoin worth $60. It's not funny, though, but that's what we agree to, but it's going to discourage new Bitcoiners.

We do say that one can invest a small amount in Bitcoin. What if the person wants to invest $10 in Bitcoin and is going to spend that amount just on a fee? Ah!!

[hatshepsut93]

At this point it is becoming confusing. I read somewhere that the high fees is as a result of Ordinal or NFTs on the Bitcoin network. According to the said comment, the Ordinals is a new trend that is massively being traded, hence the congestion of the Bitcoin network.

I do know that this is not the first time I'm witnessing the situation we are facing now. So it becomes confusing knowing what to believe to be the cause of the high fees and if there is any other way around it with respect to the future because fees like this is a kind of discouraging!

Ordinals or whatever are just using the scarce block space which drives the fees up. The fees would be high anyway because of how limited the blockspace is.

Currently the fees are high because there's a lot of market activity, which means a lot of coins moving in, out and between exchanges. And I would expect the fees to get even higher when the big bull run starts, we could totally see $10-20 per transaction.

[examplens]

At this point it is becoming confusing. I read somewhere that the high fees is as a result of Ordinal or NFTs on the Bitcoin network. According to the said comment, the Ordinals is a new trend that is massively being traded, hence the congestion of the Bitcoin network.

Exactly!

So can't this be considered the opposite of what you wrote in the first post?
Aren't a bunch of miserable transactions with overpaid fees a kind of attack on the network? this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5473421.0

I understand that miners are fine with this.

No matter what the reason of high fees these days, just look for alternatives to combat the high fees.
If you can use other top alts to trade, better look into this matter rather than look for such reasons why.

This follows on from what I wrote above referencing Bitcoin users to altcoins. No, I don't want to use any other altcoin instead of Bitcoin.

[philipma1957]

you have to understand there are big players that think watts to dollars.
 Foundry turned my down at their pool as I only have 5ph. You need 20 ph to mine with them. So I can not tell you how much they grab for the fees.



For a 35-40% hash rate pool if they can push fees to 2-3 coins a block they get .40 x 144 = 58 blocks a day with an extra 1.5 btc or
87 to 100 btc. They may only spend a few btc to cause the issues. All they need do is hook up with 1 other large pool and they can do this 2-3 coin  fee per block move every few months.


see both  this quote belong and read this link. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2634505.0

here we go

block.      fee
816941 - 1.83
816040 - 2.11
816039 - 2.37
816038 - 2.56
816037 - 2.29
816036 - 2.10
816035 - 2.54
816034 - 2.41
816033 - 2.36
816032 - 2.35
816031 - 2.26
816030 - 2.30
816029 - 2.37
816028 - 2.76
816027 - 2.99
816026 - 2.54
816025 - 2.57
816024 - 2.87
816023 - 3.01
816022 - 3.04
816021 - 3.26
816020 - 2.43
816019 - 2.72
816018 - 2.89
816017 - 2.96
816016 - 3.20
816015 - 2.50
815014 - 2.42
816013 - 2.01
816012 - 2.21
816011 - 2.42
816010 - 1.90
816009 - 2.08
816008 - 2.00
816007 - 2.17
816006 - 2.22
816005 - 1.43
816004 - 2.06
816003 - 2.03
816002 - 1.69
816001 - 1.31
816000 - 1.76
815999 - 1.09
825998 - 1.31
815997 - 1.30
815996 - 1.47
815995 - 1.41
815994 - 1.71
815993 - 1.57
815992 - 1.81
815991 - 1.46
815990 - 1.28.

51 blocks at 2 btc a block vs .25 so 88 extra coins in fees a very rough estimate.



lets see how long this can be done likely under 4 days or 560 blocks

the high fees go back to 815867 so

816042
815867
      175 blocks for fees in the 1 - 3 btc a block

so maybe 1.75 coins a block vs maybe .25  is 1.5 x 175 blocks or 225-250 extra in fees.

this will not last a long time 3-5 days max.

tack on 20 more block with fees over 1.3 btc so

816062
815867 is 195 straight high fee blocks

which can be done with willful manipulation by large pools btw you do not need ordinals to do it.

[stompix]

At this point it is becoming confusing. I read somewhere that the high fees is as a result of Ordinal or NFTs on the Bitcoin network. According to the said comment, the Ordinals is a new trend that is massively being traded, hence the congestion of the Bitcoin network.

Exactly!

So can't this be considered the opposite of what you wrote in the first post?

No, is just assessing two situations, with both being completely true

1) Is the recent fee increase caused by Ordinals? YES!
2) To keep the network secure in the future when there is no block reward, are we going to have to pay the same inflated fees? YES!

I just used the current mempool situation to describe the future scenario, because if I had done so when the fees were 1sat/b nobody would have paid attention, now, things are different!

What surprises me is that you say that this is how it was designed to be. Whereas, just as Odohu has said, I thought it's the ordinal stuff that is making the fee hike, or are you, @stompix, suggesting that since the system was designed to be so, it might even be worse in the future?

Exactly, it was designed to be like this, the network will run on fees once all the coins are mined!
Remember? We had 21 million topics about this!
So when this is going happens it will be pretty much like a security company, if the fees it gets from transactions are 5$ it will act just like a police officer who is paid the minimum wage on his retirement day, if the fees are in the millions, then you can afford one full battalion of bodyguards.

Definitely this is predicted to happen but why someone like me is angry about this hike is because we are not paying for security of the network that will benefit us all but we are paying such high fee because some folks created garbage and some naive folks thinks they could make profit out of it. We are bin disturb with something worthless which will soon die down. If it was as you stated out for security purposes which won’t just happen out of the blue like this one, but will be gradual process and we would well informed of that.

Well, technically even now we're paying for the security, since more fees mean more miners, but a bit irrelevant.

And yes, I know pretty well the change will be gradual, what I'm trying to tell people is that the image they chanted so easily when they were typing what will happen when all coins are mined is this one!

So it's not going to be a walk in the park, oh miners will live on from fees, and everything is fine, but it will be more like what we see now!
Some really need to understand that the reason why they can send money to another country is completely secure with no chance of transactions being reversed or censored does not happen magically, it's possible with $30 million being spent each day on that security!

Bottom line, prepare to pay up once the money printing is done!

[philipma1957]

likely this is 100% Binances doing look at their pool size


https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/pools

Summary of Mined Blocks.
Miner / Pool.     Percent.     Blocks Mined
Foundry USA.  28.675%.     158
AntPool           26.316%      145
F2Pool             13.067%        72
ViaBTC            9.256%          51

Binance Pool.   5.808%          32      this alone with ordinals tossed in can do a lot of harm

Mara Pool        4.537%           25
Unknown         3.630%           20
SBI Crypto       1.633%            9
BTC.com          1.633%            9
Poolin              1.633%            9
BTC M4            1.452%            8
Braiins Pool      1.452%            8
1THash            0.363%            2
Ultimus           0.363%             2
Zulu Pool        0.181%              1

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

Remember? We had 21 million topics about this!
So when this is going happens it will be pretty much like a security company, if the fees it gets from transactions are 5$ it will act just like a police officer who is paid the minimum wage on his retirement day, if the fees are in the millions, then you can afford one full battalion of bodyguards.

Fee is definitely not going to be friendly then.

[dansus021]

Bitcoin ordinal should have system like Zksync roll up or something like that so basically like other EVM layer 2 they should contain all the transaction in one block so the ordinal should have verificator but I dont know if this gonna possible on Bitcoin Network and I dont know if NFT still popular nowadays.

Yes high fee is a shit  I really dont like it and LN maybe the solution for now since big exchange like binance also start accepting it

[nutildah]

Although still too high for my tastes, fees have already come down about 50% since this topic was opened, so that's good at least.

I do blame Binance for listing $ORDI and basically being the first major exchange to implement Ordinals support. They benefit from fees being high for several reasons, not just because of their BTC mining pool:

- they can pass the costs off to their customers in the form of a bigger withdrawal fee
- this makes people not want to withdrawal their coins from the exchange (more liquidity for them), and
- they can point to BNB as a "cheaper alternative" than Bitcoin.

[avp2306]

Although still too high for my tastes, fees have already come down about 50% since this topic was opened, so that's good at least.

I do blame Binance for listing $ORDI and basically being the first major exchange to implement Ordinals support. They benefit from fees being high for several reasons, not just because of their BTC mining pool:

- they can pass the costs off to their customers in the form of a bigger withdrawal fee
- this makes people not want to withdrawal their coins from the exchange (more liquidity for them), and
- they can point to BNB as a "cheaper alternative" than Bitcoin.

Binance is smart as fuck since that is really happening now. They want people to think that they don't have any choice but to deal with their own coin as they offer more cheaper fees than dealing with directly to BTC or any other alts listed on their exchange.  The only thing we can do now is to deal with current situation since if we push to transact with high fees for sure we will get hurt with that.

For now let see if some may find a solution regarding to these issue so hopefully we can deal with bitcoin in future with more lesser fees.

[philipma1957]

Although still too high for my tastes, fees have already come down about 50% since this topic was opened, so that's good at least.

I do blame Binance for listing $ORDI and basically being the first major exchange to implement Ordinals support. They benefit from fees being high for several reasons, not just because of their BTC mining pool:

- they can pass the costs off to their customers in the form of a bigger withdrawal fee
- this makes people not want to withdrawal their coins from the exchange (more liquidity for them), and
- they can point to BNB as a "cheaper alternative" than Bitcoin.

I have figure 10 or more cases that a company spending 10-25 btc can generate 200 btc fee costs.

They all involve major players and in every case they can profit by doing it.  Ordinals are but 1 method.

[PrivacyG]

So when this is going happens it will be pretty much like a security company, if the fees it gets from transactions are 5$ it will act just like a police officer who is paid the minimum wage on his retirement day, if the fees are in the millions, then you can afford one full battalion of bodyguards.

Is it going to be like that though?

I see it in a different way.  By the time all Blocks are mined, there should be SO many more people involved in Bitcoin.  SO many more users.  This will increase number of Txs but probably on another Layer because I doubt the majority of Txs will happen on chain.

With more Bitcoin users come more Txs and with more Txs comes more Fees.  I keep seeing the price of Bitcoin as some sort of 'Bitcoin price has to be high enough for Miners to continue mining', which to me seems logical.  Bitcoin price by then should be unimaginably high.  Fees can not be too high because who in the world would pay a lot of money for one Tx then.

This means price has to grow enough every time for Fees to be worth collecting by Miners.  Am I wrong?

On the other hand there will be more Miners too I guess.  I do not know.  Just dispatching my theory over here in the wild.  Maybe has some sense.

[adaseb]

These fees are high due to a combination of bitcoin hitting new yearly highs and people sending BTC to exchanges to sell and take profit. Another reason is that Binance added ORDI and some other exchanges added SATS and it’s whats causing the mempool to be full.

If you really have an important transaction to make, then try and time your transaction time on the weekend. Usually late Saturday early Sunday there is little activity. If you wait until NY time especially on Monday the fees will most likely spike again. Same with Ethereum.

[libert19]

Yeah well, such fees will be stopping new people from getting into/using BTC as well, who want to pay $10 fees for a transaction? Lightning isn't widely adopted yet and not all exchanges support it, some like Binance recently added it's support but they require kyc.

High fees help with security and help miners feed their families is not worthy argument, imo.

[Patrol69]

Bitcoin's high transaction fees frustrate me after a few days. I haven't seen any permanent solution to Bitcoin's extra transaction fees so far. If I have to pay 10 to 15 dollar transaction fee to trade the amount of BTC that I need to trade, it is a big loss for me because I am not that big of an investor. I have stopped doing Bitcoin transactions now because of the extra transaction fees. A few days ago Bitcoin transaction fees were somewhat normal but now Bitcoin transaction fees have become abnormal again. Even if I need to now, I have to wait to trade bitcoins because it is not possible for me to trade bitcoins with 10 to 15 dollars.

[pinggoki]

Yeah well, such fees will be stopping new people from getting into/using BTC as well, who want to pay $10 fees for a transaction? Lightning isn't widely adopted yet and not all exchanges support it, some like Binance recently added it's support but they require kyc.

High fees help with security and help miners feed their families is not worthy argument, imo.

That's only temporary as the fees will eventually subside and get to a point that you can easily move your transactions without worrying too much about the fees. In my opinion, this is actually a good thing for newbies because when they experience something like this that's totally defying their expectations on bitcoin, it might actually condition to not be easily brought down or panic when bear season starts. Finally someone said something about all of this fuzz about the high fees, people are getting the wrong idea that it's a bad thing for bitcoin and that this is like some kind of permanent thing.

[KiaKia]

Yes I have the same though about Bitcoin yesterday, the only way that Bitcoin miners can be happy about mining Bitcoin is if it keeps coming with surprise gains when they don't expect it, I feel like the miners are a big part of Bitcoin, they need to feel at home at times, it's good that they are In more profit while mining since few days now, and somehow I am starting to appreciate the existence of Ordinals.

Let's think about it, the existence of Ordinals on Bitcoin will surely make the transaction fee to fluctuates at times and in a bull market it's going to get more constant, but this will encourage the miners to keep doing their things, if Bitcoin mining isn't profitable anymore it makes no sense and it can affect things more than we could imagine, what do you guys think?.

I will like to know if anyone is having this same thought as mine, I made a transaction yesterday and I paid $1.8 to send my Bitcoin to another address I think it's still fair enough but when the market goes way higher let's not forget that miners also need to reap the benefits too, not just the investors.

[PrivacyG]

Lightning isn't widely adopted yet and not all exchanges support it, some like Binance recently added it's support but they require kyc.

Expect Centralized Exchanges to have more harsh user requirements.  It is useless to bring Lightning and all the other features in the world if Know Your Customer is almost everywhere no matter the country or service now.  There is barely any well known and trusted Centralized Exchange with no Know Your Customer requirement.  So instead of looking for that.  Just start using Decentralized Exchanges instead or Peer to Peer trading.

[Faisal2202]

- if in the future we will pay 1 cent per tx we would have one cent worth of bodyguard
- if in the future we want to have the same level of security as now, we have to pay twice the fees we're paying in the last few blocks!

Again, nobody will be forcing you to do so, but....the are consequences if not!

Good points, but you are talking about the future fee, while people who ask why the fee is rocketing are asking for the present time. Because in the future the block reward will decrease, ok, we got that, but now the reward is still 6.25 and the price of BTC in the future will be high enough in comparison to now that people might not hesitate to pay huge fees because inflation will be high also (as back then paying $10 for bread must be expensive, but now paying $10 is cheap). I hope you get my point.

Let's summarize it, in the future, everything will be way more expensive than now. The BTC price would be around $500k (maybe), and the fee for one transaction can reach around $10 to $300 (maybe, but let's assume). People will not hesitate to pay a huge fee, but now the price of BTC is around $37k, and the transaction fee is increasing w.r.t. the price tag while the block reward still holds the same. That's why people are asking the reason of high TX fee.

All this skyrocketing fee is due to the original shit, especially when the ORDI token based on the BTC blockchain causes the price to shoot up. Anyway, you make your points clear, and we all should keep them in mind, but my theory is that we should not panic to see the fee and should follow the tip of using LN you have developed, or maybe in the future we won't mind paying a huge fee as time passes.

[Aanuoluwatofunmi]

Remember? We had 21 million topics about this!
So when this is going happens it will be pretty much like a security company, if the fees it gets from transactions are 5$ it will act just like a police officer who is paid the minimum wage on his retirement day, if the fees are in the millions, then you can afford one full battalion of bodyguards.

Fee is definitely not going to be friendly then.

Or maybe should we expect the community to develop a long lasting solution to this bitcoin transaction fee being inflated on seasonal occassions, do we even think that the developers will all agree to erase the inscriptions or bring a perfect solution to settle the high fees, because i know we can't be left helpless with this in such kind of situations, even if the fees comes down now, how are we sure nothing is coming again in the near future to get things worst than before when the whole network is clogged by ordinals.

[m2017]

~snip

Considering the incredible opportunities that the bitcoin provides, then high fees are not so high against this background. Well, for example, sending bitcoin (in any quantity) to anywhere in the world for $15.31 - isn’t that funny? Any other way would have cost much more, and not at all faster. We need to learn to appreciate what we have.

If the fees directly affects the security of the bitcoin network, then it is not at all a pity to pay double the price. This can be regarded as a contribution to support the network.

[yazher]

Instead of complaining, we must look at its positive view and the opportunity it created for us to secure our assets because, without the help of bitcoins, we could still be prisoners to the banks and do everything as they say. Those transaction fees are nothing compared to what we have right now and the price of bitcoins is increasing and that's understandable to many investors because they already know this could happen every time the price of bitcoins increases due to the congested networks.

[Artemis3]

To make it as short as possible, for the network to have the same security as now without a block reward we would need each block to have twice as big fees in the future, that's how things work!
So, are you angry with high fees? Yes, we all are, but, wasn't this the design?

Before anyone comes up with some myths about this, let's clear some things

1) More efficient gear isn't making the network more secure alone, what's making the network secure is the amount of $ to invest to generate that hashrate, so if you think more efficient gear will mean the network will be just as secure but cheaper, it's delusional.
Right now the network is guarded by 400Exahash, which alone doesn't mean a thing, you must translate those into 4 million $2000 a piece machines to understand the security right now, as it takes 8 billion to launch a 51% attack. This also doesn't mean that because the hashrate in 2013 was one million lower you could attack it at that time with just 8000$  

2) Cheaper energy or solar or renewable or anything else, again won't solve a thing, even if we run our gear on 0.1 cents per kWh if the reward per day is just $1000 you will only be able to afford 1Gkwh, so anyone willing to spend more than $1000 on energy will have the upper hand!

So, as a conclusion or encouragement or whatever, don't be angry at the fees, they help secure the network, and this is how it was designed to be in the first place, otherwise, we would end up like Bitcoin Gold or Ethereum classic, shitcoins getting 51% attacked 3 times in a row.

And of course, for now, we could actually start using LN rather than complaining, but that would be a solution that involves doing something!

Wrong. It was expected for the success of Bitcoin, higher fees due to everyone transacting more bitcoins, not spam meme trash or outright parasite nfts, etc. Even before the spam attack, people were complaining that Bitcoin couldn't transact as many transactions as other systems. Well for sure with the spam it would transact less now, good for you?.

The spam sustains mining? No, it is the bitcoin market price. Mining will shrink no matter what, that is why there is a halving, there will be less and less bitcoins minted. The only reason this gets delayed, is because the market price of bitcoin rises. And this too, is slowing down, it will increase less and less, a repeat of the historical price of gold, as intended.

The security is not affected because the miners that are leaving, they do so because its so much more expensive to mine, and so is the 51% attack. This is something you don't see because you are looking at it linearly, and its not. THE reason mining diminishes, is because its too expensive to achieve, and that also makes the attack more expensive, with enough people leaving the diff goes back down attracting back some mining balancing itself. No, everyone won't simply disappear, there will be enough miners just less of them but still enough to make the attack cost more than the possible return. The last miners will be home miners who don't care to operate at a loss or from renewable energy, the opposite of what you claim. Investing now in renewable energy with the profits you made from mining, will ensure you will be there mining when all the others are gone, and gone they will be, maybe next halving or the one after it, it depends a lot in the market price of bitcoin.

The spam only halts normal transactions. The excuse that this makes mining profitable is a lie. Right now you can see it, it barely adds an extra bitcoin to the blocks. And yet, it makes the user experience awful for everybody else. Some pools are pushing the spam for cheap, so the spam is getting in while legit transactions are getting kicked out of the mempool.

The fact that you mention lightning network, means you have not tried to open a LN node when this mess is going on, you should try it and suffer. Oh, but what about using someone else's node? Sure, trust some stranger won't steal your coins or sell your info, just he opposite of what Bitcoin is all about...

Who benefits from this? Why, of course, those that claim that Bitcoin sucks, And THEIR "solution" is "better"... They are laughing while they see Bitcoin getting worse, and hey, they even get a few extra months of mining out of it, win/win!

Everyone here knows who are the losers from this charade. What do companies who mine to sell for fiat care, or those playing trading with futures pool capital, etc. The humble miner that kept all the coins will have the last word in the future when its not profitable to mine anymore. Look at Dogecoin, why are there people still mining an infinite supply coin? Do you think nobody will mine Bitcoin just because it becomes unprofitable to do so? And yes, it WILL become unprofitable, there is nothing you can do about it, the spam will not be enough to sustain it, all you gain from it may be days but the result is the same. Therefore your justification is invalid.

Spam cannot be justified, it doesn't bring anything, its actually taking away from a project with a goal which is to give the world a currency not made by the State. Make it worse, make it centralized and prone to abuse, while making some cash while laughing at the misery of others. No it won't destroy Bitcoin, eventually the spam will probably leave for elsewhere, but the path to abuse remains open and demonstrated plenty, so repeated occurrences can only harm Bitcoin reputation as a project whole and perhaps harm adoption for what it was intended (not a cloud data base, that's for sure, many better projects for that).

[stompix]

~
Fee is definitely not going to be friendly then.

One thing!
Probably I should have mentioned and bolded it in the first post!
I am telling people that we are going to have to pay those fees if we want the same level of security, not that we are required!

Is it going to be like that though?

I see it in a different way.  By the time all Blocks are mined, there should be SO many more people involved in Bitcoin.  SO many more users.  This will increase number of Txs but probably on another Layer because I doubt the majority of Txs will happen on chain.
With more Bitcoin users come more Txs and with more Txs comes more Fees.
~
This means price has to grow enough every time for Fees to be worth collecting by Miners.  Am I wrong?

You can't have more tx in the blockchain without increasing the block space!
Fees paid on the second layer, like LN don't go to miners they go to LN node owners.
So, no!  

Good points, but you are talking about the future fee, while people who ask why the fee is rocketing are asking for the present time. Because in the future the block reward will decrease, ok, we got that, but now the reward is still 6.25 and the price of BTC in the future will be high enough in comparison to now that people might not hesitate to pay huge fees because inflation will be high also (as back then paying $10 for bread must be expensive, but now paying $10 is cheap). I hope you get my point.

Doesn't work like that because paying for a product is not the product.
If you had the choice of paying 10$ of bread but it would cost you 0 with a vis card, 10 cents with Doge and 10$ with BTC, what ar you going to do?
Furthermore, this is what happens when the block reward is gone, I highlighted that in the first post.

Considering the incredible opportunities that the bitcoin provides, then high fees are not so high against this background. Well, for example, sending bitcoin (in any quantity) to anywhere in the world for $15.31 - isn’t that funny? Any other way would have cost much more, and not at all faster.

How many people do sent money outside their country every day? Like 0.01% of the population?
How many people pay under 100$ for their daily shopping? 90%?
You will need to pay $15 for a 3$ lipstick for the pig you're advertising  

The security is not affected because the miners that are leaving, they do so because its so much more expensive to mine, and so is the 51% attack.

Wrong, a 51% attack will become far easier
- an attacker doesn't have to be profitable and doesn't need to sustain this for months
- if miners drop from mining it means cheaper gear available at scrap price
- if miners stop mining it means more places with cheaper than normal electricity
- if miners go bankrupt it means somebody can get 5$ of the hashrate for a few pennies

The last miners will be home miners who don't care to operate at a loss or from renewable energy, the opposite of what you claim. Investing now in renewable energy with the profits you made from mining,

Yeah, BS!
People are arguing about making blocks bigger because nodes can't afford a 100$ drive and you think people in their home will run 3000W miners!
And pay for the battery to keep it running, cause what's $12 000 when $100 is too much?

The fact that you mention lightning network, means you have not tried to open a LN node when this mess is going on,  

You don't get hit by a car by crossing when it's a green light, not by praying it turns green when you're under its wheels.
If people had used LN normally till now most would have already had enough funds running in it to avoid complaining of not being able to send $30 without paying 10$, we had one month of 1 sat/b, and after 6 months of high fees, how many started using LN since then...crickets!

[franky1]

To make it as short as possible, for the network to have the same security as now without a block reward we would need each block to have twice as big fees in the future, that's how things work!
So, are you angry with high fees? Yes, we all are, but, wasn't this the design?

two things you are ignoring

1. fee's per transaction dont need to be twice as big.. instead number of transactions could be 4x as big meaning fees become HALF as much per transaction, whilst still offering 2x for the pool  .. see how math works

2. you also did not figure into it that if 2million asics costs $Xbillion amount of electric per year the PRICE IN DOLLARS per sat can increase without needing the sat per byte to increase.
infact with the prices per dollar increasing, the sat per byte should be dropping

the solution is not to get people to pay more per tx.. but instead make tx leaner, allow more tx per block so people can pay less individually but it accumilates to a worthy total

bitcoin was not designed to pay asic farms millions of dollars per block. asics farms were not even a thing when bitcoin was invented.. instead it was for a payment system for the unbanked to use to be better then the fiat banks fee's and methods .. where the monetary price value of the coin increased to cover costs..
CPU mining solo 1btc 10c
GPU pool mining 1btc $6
single asic owner pool mining 1BTC $300
asic farm pool mining recent gen asics 1btc 1btc $17k+
 simple economics

satoshi also mentioned about increasing blocksize, and efficient tx size for better tx count per block.. and yet 14 years later even when satoshi was talking about expecting 4200tx per block.. bitcoin is not averaging that amount it VERY RARELY peaks near it
https://api.blockchain.info/charts/preview/n-transactions-per-block.png?timespan=3years&h=405&w=720

and that 4200 number was based on 1mb blocksize. let alone 4mb so we should be averaging 16800tx per block average after 14 years

the first 13 years we didnt even get above 2600tx average..
recent year 4k on and off(mostly off)
but yes based on IF we actually cared about efficient use we should be well over 10k closer to 15k .. but we are not. so we are paying 4x more then we should due to lack of efficiency design tweaks

[serjent05]

I agree with the @OP stand but one thing is lacking here, and that is the development of Bitcoin.  I believe Bitcoin will continuously evolve and be upgraded to be suited to the needs of users and miners.  If there is no changes in the structure of the Bitcoin system scalability, with larger adoption up ahead, we might see a larger transaction fee than this.  So I am not surprised if one day only a few individuals can afford an on-chain transaction and many probably will be using lightning-network-like implementation.

So I think to avoid this kind of scenario, Bitcoin must scale.

~
Fee is definitely not going to be friendly then.

One thing!
Probably I should have mentioned and bolded it in the first post!
I am telling people that we are going to have to pay those fees if we want the same level of security, not that we are required!

Not necessarily need to pay, if only the Bitcoin scalability issue is solved, then we won't be paying the transaction fee that much.

[Myleschetty]

I think the reason people are dragging their feet about the high transaction fees associated with Bitcoin is that they do want to accept the benefits but ignore the drawbacks of the market experiencing large volumes of transactions. They want to see the price of the BTC holding rise or see widespread adoption.
They dislike the sacrifice it brought, but they welcome the advantage they will have from the market when BTC sees extreme traffic.
I accept this fact and choose to use the alternative. That's why I am never angry about the BTC tx fee.

[Lucius]

~snip~
So, as a conclusion or encouragement or whatever, don't be angry at the fees, they help secure the network, and this is how it was designed to be in the first place, otherwise, we would end up like Bitcoin Gold or Ethereum classic, shitcoins getting 51% attacked 3 times in a row.

I'm actually glad when the fees go up because then we see who are the ones who understand at least something, and who are the others who think that the fees should always be a maximum of $0.10, because not only is Bitcoin anonymous, but the transaction fee must always be super cheap.

On the other hand, the majority who withdraw their coins from CEXs never complain that they pay fees that are at a level even higher than the fees that happened these days - which means that they are ready to fill pockets of various crypto messiahs, but it is difficult for them to pay $2 to a miner for the transaction.

And of course, for now, we could actually start using LN rather than complaining, but that would be a solution that involves doing something!

For someone who has never used a non-custodial wallet, something like LN is a rather complicated science, and it will probably remain so for a long time.

[philipma1957]

LN has its own issues.

This fee level dropped a bit. last blocks are running a bit under 1 coin in fees.
See the pattern repeat year after year.



next spring with rewards 3.125 miners will really need fees to grow.


funny how

2016 25       coins to 2-3 btc fees not bad 
2020 12.5    coins to 2-3 btc fees bad
2023  6.25   coins to 2-3 btc fees = terrible
2024  3.125 coins to 2-3 btc fees = a miners dream a users nightmare

[joker_josue]

LN has its own issues.

This fee level dropped a bit. last blocks are running a bit under 1 coin in fees.
See the pattern repeat year after year.



next spring with rewards 3.125 miners will really need fees to grow.


funny how

2016 25       coins to 2-3 btc fees not bad  
2020 12.5    coins to 2-3 btc fees bad
2023  6.25   coins to 2-3 btc fees = terrible
2024  3.125 coins to 2-3 btc fees = a miners dream a users nightmare

Is there a way to control this escalation of future fees?

It's just that ways have gradually emerged for large miners to be able to influence network fees, and this could harm Bitcoin - a lot.
I believe that the entire Bitcoin community should think of something to avoid this control by (large) miners.

[philipma1957]

LN has its own issues.

This fee level dropped a bit. last blocks are running a bit under 1 coin in fees.
See the pattern repeat year after year.



next spring with rewards 3.125 miners will really need fees to grow.


funny how

2016 25       coins to 2-3 btc fees not bad  
2020 12.5    coins to 2-3 btc fees bad
2023  6.25   coins to 2-3 btc fees = terrible
2024  3.125 coins to 2-3 btc fees = a miners dream a users nightmare

Is there a way to control this escalation of future fees?

It's just that ways have gradually emerged for large miners to be able to influence network fees, and this could harm Bitcoin - a lot.
I believe that the entire Bitcoin community should think of something to avoid this control by (large) miners.

WELL all gear builders would have to have a world wide ban on mining. Frankly I can't see it as possible.

right now you have

buy and hodl
traders
users
miners
builders
software guys
pools

Blending all of the above is really hard to do.

As a miner high fees feel good.
As a seller of items using btc for my payment high fees suck.

So I am in a personal conflict of interest on 2 catagories.

I also trade a tiny bit the effect on trading is harder to understand
lastly I mine and hodl

so just me alone and I  am In a complex situation.

other absolute supermoon of btc price most of the time I have no idea what to root for ie multi hedged for safety’s sake.

[Davidvictorson]

I just paid nearly $70 in fees to move $300 between wallets. I have concluded within myself that I am going to avoid micro transactions as much as possible. Consequently, between miners that primarily self mine and miners that primarily host, I think that it is the miners with self mining that will benefit more from these high fees. What surprises me is that despite the high fees, it is not showing any negatives on bitcoin's price action.

[DaNNy001]

I just paid nearly $70 in fees to move $300 between wallets. I have concluded within myself that I am going to avoid micro transactions as much as possible. Consequently, between miners that primarily self mine and miners that primarily host, I think that it is the miners with self mining that will benefit more from these high fees. What surprises me is that despite the high fees, it is not showing any negatives on bitcoin's price action.

Wow that's some heck of a fee, a whooping 70$. For now I don't think I will be doing any transaction with Bitcoin as I have some asset in other cryptocurrency like USDT and will make due of those because I can't afford to spend that much in any transaction be it micro or macro. The lightening network solutions that was meant for this particular issues itself is slow in adoption, if not the lightening network would be the perfect resolved to this issue.

[tjtonmoy]

- if in the future we will pay 1 cent per tx we would have one cent worth of bodyguard
- if in the future we want to have the same level of security as now, we have to pay twice the fees we're paying in the last few blocks!

Again, nobody will be forcing you to do so, but....the are consequences if not!

I know this is a dumb question and I don't know much about it. That's why I'm asking. Can you please clear my doubt? We have lightning Network which good send Bitcoin faster and with low transaction fees. I don't know how that works and is it really the real Bitcoin we are sending, but is it possible in the future too only use lightning network in order to face this situation?
I get the idea of running everything and not getting any mining rewards for that. And only thing you get is the fee you get from completing in transactions. They are going to accumulate income from fees, so of course they will charge us more. But is there any other alternative for this? That's why I was talking about lightning network! Is it possible or I just sound totally dumb. 

I'm not asking from curiosity rather I really don't know anything about it. Hope you can help me.

[Fivestar4everMVP]

At this point it is becoming confusing. I read somewhere that the high fees is as a result of Ordinal or NFTs on the Bitcoin network. According to the said comment, the Ordinals is a new trend that is massively being traded, hence the congestion of the Bitcoin network.

I do know that this is not the first time I'm witnessing the situation we are facing now. So it becomes confusing knowing what to believe to be the cause of the high fees and if there is any other way around it with respect to the future because fees like this is a kind of discouraging!

Ordinals were indeed the cause of high fees on the bitcoin network, but not for this that we are currently experiencing, the congestion on the bitcoin network as a result of ordinals was something that happened several months ago, i do not think it is still the same reason that brought about the current congestion we are seeing at the moment.

Though i myself is also confused, but just as OP have said, the high fees help secure the network, but the truth is that, this is not entirely very nice, most especially for those who don't own a lot of bitcoins and does little transactions every day

Thank goodness for lightening network, but another problem we have here is that, not very many people know about this technology or how to set it up, i guess this is the time we start talking more about the bitcoin lightening network, so as to bring this awareness and knowledge to as many as possible, maybe this will also help to lessen the transactions on the main network, which will also bring fees down from its highs.

[SamReomo]

I agree with you with all those things that you have mentioned in your thread. I also believe that higher fees can incentivize the miners with better rewards for all the work they're doing for themselves and for Bitcoin community. Without miners we won't be able to do anything with Bitcoin and that's why I believe the high fees are more like thanksgiving to those miners who are doing the hard work of mining and making it easy for us to enjoy Bitcoin transactions.

Surely, the high fees have their own drawbacks but since miners are getting some good pay for their work and that's why we should accept it for the time being. I hope that soon we'll see good fees again and the transactions with low fees will also get accepted sooner than expected. This time the high fees are again on the network because of the ordinal thing but surely if miners are getting rewarded for your work then we should not a say a word in this matter.

I believe that in such times we can choose another altcoin based transactions if the transactions are that necessary and allow Bitcoin network to get stable once again in order to use it. I believe Monero could be a good choice for such times as transactions made with Monero are also decentralized in nature. I also agree that using of LN is another option for us and now LN is getting more widely accepted so it's going to be a good option for us.

[wallet4bitcoin]

It's undisputable. The more the prices of the coins get the more the fees increases. I don't see a cap being placed on the fees charged by Blockchains and this is a great concern for users especially the Ethereum Blockchain, the gas fees goes as high as $300 and its not even on priority fees.

Who wouldn't get angry, and worst of it all, you get to pay gas fee and the transaction fails.

[ragnise2]

I do know that this is not the first time I'm witnessing the situation we are facing now. So it becomes confusing knowing what to believe to be the cause of the high fees and if there is any other way around it with respect to the future because fees like this is a kind of discouraging!

[franky1]

miners currently get a block reward of 6.25 which at a years market average of $30k/btc =$187,500
(lets use this $187k as a mining cost break even per block)

when 1btc is $150k the 3.125btc $486k
pools wont need to be subsidised by fee's because they are getting 2.5x even after a reward halving

the cost to perform an attack raises by 2.5x simply by spot market change. without the need to include fee's becasue miners can then hash more feore next break even point

if you think pools need 3btc in fee in 2024, you dont understand economics

its much like saying in 2015
'next year reward halves from 25 to 12.5 we need to make fees per block total 12.5 to compensate'
no.. you instead need the market spot price to increase (as it does) then fee's still remain non-important


as you can see we didnt need in 2016 for fees to be 12.5 to compensate the halving
as you can see we didnt need in 2020 for fees to be 6.25 to compensate the halving
                                                                          18.75 to compensate two halvings  

fee's do not need to compensate halvings so no we dont need 3.125 fee's total per block in 2024

..
what we should do however is without causing individual users to pay $70 per tx (+3500tx average 2024) = $245k in fee's
we need to realise the spot market can take care of the reward value.. and increasing the number of transactions per block will take care of fee total

..
also by having excessive fee's means users dont use bitcoin and also pools sell coins cheaper because instead of having just 6.25($187k) cost/reward they have 432k of reward+fee for only $187k cost. meaning they can sell the coin 2.3x cheaper than the current price and break even, thus ruining the market value which then ends up needing more fee's in a snowball effect.

[stompix]

Not necessarily need to pay, if only the Bitcoin scalability issue is solved, then we won't be paying the transaction fee that much.

Unless that scalability involves cheaper and more fees rather than high but only 400k fees a day then there is no other scalability method that will work, and this one will only be solved with... increasing something.

2. you also did not figure into it that if 2million asics costs $Xbillion amount of electric per year the PRICE IN DOLLARS per sat can increase without needing the sat per byte to increase.
infact with the prices per dollar increasing, the sat per byte should be dropping

The whole Satoshi thing is irrelevant to a miner.
A miner pays $1 for equipment it pays 1$ for energy day, he knows he has to get more than 1$ to cover the cost and more than 0.003 to recoup the investment in a year. If the revenue per day goes below 1$ he shuts down as it's more profitable to buy the coin and wait.
As long as electricity is priced in $ and it doesn't fluctuate according to Bitcoin price it would be stupid to do the math otherwise.

bitcoin was not designed to pay asic farms millions of dollars per block. asics farms were not even a thing when bitcoin was invented.

The internet wasn't to replace television, but here we are, doubt people in 1970 thought they would have hundreds of petahash of porn stored in the cloud with 100 MW data center spread across the globe, but here we are, billions spend to store and deliver porn!
Because it's offer and demand that dictate everything in this world, not the intentions of the guy who designed it.

Is there a way to control this escalation of future fees?
It's just that ways have gradually emerged for large miners to be able to influence network fees, and this could harm Bitcoin - a lot.
I believe that the entire Bitcoin community should think of something to avoid this control by (large) miners.

Raise the capacity of the network.
Or play NIMBY and watch fees go the way home prices do in cities all over the world.

I know this is a dumb question and I don't know much about it. That's why I'm asking. Can you please clear my doubt? We have lightning Network which good send Bitcoin faster and with low transaction fees. I don't know how that works and is it really the real Bitcoin we are sending, but is it possible in the future too only use lightning network in order to face this situation?

Only LN? No!
You still need an on-chain transaction for starting to use LN, so the network capacity must still be large enouhg to allow millions of channels to be opened and closed. But since nowadays usage is limited, it would cover it pretty much, the long term it will still need a capacity increase.
We are billions! on this planet. There is no mass adoption without billions using it!

I get the idea of running everything and not getting any mining rewards for that. And only thing you get is the fee you get from completing in transactions. They are going to accumulate income from fees, so of course they will charge us more. But is there any other alternative for this?

Misconception.
The miners don't charge you anything, they simply include the biggest tx in terms of fee in the next block.
Think of it more like an auction than a ticket sale, you want to pay for what you do, if there are more people auctioning you have to pay more if there is only you you get it as cheap as possible.
The miner has no saying in this, 1sat/vb or 500 sat/vb if there is space he will include you.

The best analogy would be :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_what_you_want

Your customers pay more than normal on it, you're happy and you offer better services, they pay the same you offer standard service, they don;t pay at all you go bankrupt.  

So bottom line LN is a solution, but just as 1MB blocks were a solution till we hit a demand of more than 500k tx a day, LN won't be able to deal when it hits (if it ever does) numbers in the high tens of millions of daily usage.

~snip~
So, as a conclusion or encouragement or whatever, don't be angry at the fees, they help secure the network, and this is how it was designed to be in the first place, otherwise, we would end up like Bitcoin Gold or Ethereum classic, shitcoins getting 51% attacked 3 times in a row.

I'm actually glad when the fees go up because then we see who are the ones who understand at least something, and who are the others who think that the fees should always be a maximum of $0.10, because not only is Bitcoin anonymous, but the transaction fee must always be super cheap.

That's it basically, everything has a price, even privacy, you can go for free with tor and wait two hours for a movie or pay for a VPN and load it in seconds. Best way to hide your identity, a burner phone, but, that costs money! 
What I love about it is that when fees skyrocket there is always an ostrich who will come and say but Bitcoin was not supposed to be for small transactions, it's for moving large amounts of money, seeing how cheap it is to transfer millions for $5? Like that's the number one problem everyone faces, how to pay $ instead of $1000 when sending $40 million!

pools wont need to be subsidised by fee's because they are getting 2.5x even after a reward halving

Do me a favor and read the first post again:

Every single time a newbie asked what would happen when there would be no mining reward he got the same response over 10 pages, miners will live on from fees

[philipma1957]

I just paid nearly $70 in fees to move $300 between wallets. I have concluded within myself that I am going to avoid micro transactions as much as possible. Consequently, between miners that primarily self mine and miners that primarily host, I think that it is the miners with self mining that will benefit more from these high fees. What surprises me is that despite the high fees, it is not showing any negatives on bitcoin's price action.

Or it is and we should be at 41 to 45k. Not 37k

[franky1]

The whole Satoshi thing is irrelevant to a miner.
A miner pays $1 for equipment it pays 1$ for energy day, he knows he has to get more than 1$ to cover the cost and more than 0.003 to recoup the investment in a year. If the revenue per day goes below 1$ he shuts down as it's more profitable to buy the coin and wait.
As long as electricity is priced in $ and it doesn't fluctuate according to Bitcoin price it would be stupid to do the math otherwise.

and hobby miners around the world do that if their costs get higher then market rate. but hobby miners are not the value setters

asic farms PRE BUY hardware of 2 year life cycle. they also PRE BUY 2 year of xMW electric contracts. so they just mine no matter what as they have 2 years of electric.. (dont use it, lose it)
so they mine constantly and then tally up the rewards. and decide not to sell at a loss..

its this basic principle that causes the "support" line of value that sits below the market. where no one wants to sell below
this support line bottom them helps push the market price up..

its basic economics. if the cheapest way to acquire bitcoin on the planet (efficient mining) was $15k in 2022. no one on the same planet wants to sell below $15k. so market stays above $15k.
we are in 2023 in a support value bottom line of ~$24k so its safe to say the market wont bottom out below that.
the movement of the underling cost of most efficient also pushes the speculation for the rest up

EG it used to cost hawaii-japan $75k in 2021 104k in 2022 and now its 150k+ in 2023
if you learn about the value vs premium of world economics of bitcoin you then learn the window of which the market spot price speculates within

yep hawaii-japan being most expensive to mine so when in 2021 their mining cost were $75k they were the ones happy to market buy upto the $70k ATH of 2021
they would be the ones happy to buy upto $150k this year if speculation pushed so hard

we are no longer in the days where the value-premium window is $800-$20k in 2017 those old s9 asic cost days are over and the market has shown and proved it

[stompix]

its basic economics. if the cheapest way to acquire bitcoin on the planet (efficient mining) was $15k in 2022. no one on the same planet wants to sell below $15k. so market stays above $15k.
~
EG it used to cost hawaii-japan $75k in 2021 104k in 2022 and now its 150k+ in 2023
if you learn about the value vs premium of world economics of bitcoin you then learn the window of which the market spot price speculates within

yep hawaii-japan being most expensive to mine so when in 2021 their mining cost were $75k they were the ones happy to market buy upto the $70k ATH of 2021

Franky, just f*** stop!
Nobody cares about the electricity prices when it comes to the price of Bitcoin.
If it were like that and people in Japan would pay 70 000 then people in Venezuela would sell it for $10.

I mined it Europe at well below average electricity prices, I stopped mining with all of them selling a few when mining was not profitable anymore, no way in hell I'm going to pay more for a BTC because my electricity prices are higher than in Russia or China or India.
You're living a complete delusion, to you it would be normal for people in Japan to pay $5000 for a barrel of oil cause that's the cost they would have to pay to extract it from the bottom of Mount Fuji, no it doesn't work like that!!!

Also, stop with the numbers pulled out of your ass:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1167419/000107997321000537/ex99x1.htm

Whinstone’s comprehensive energy management strategy delivers best-in-class net energy costs of approximately 2.5 cents per kWh utilizing cutting-edge technology and comprehensive analytics to deliver industry-leading low cost, reliable and responsive power.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1507605/000149315219013483/ex99-1.htm

The Miners will be placed into service in a Co-Location hosting facility with electricity costs of $0.035 per KwH and $0.02 per KwH for the all-in hosting management.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1819989/000095017022008712/cifr-ex99_1.htm

Cipher’s weighted average power price is 2.73 c/kWh

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1710350/000121390022012660/ea156889ex99-1_bitdigitalinc.htm

Pro forma for hosting agreements signed to date, we expect to enjoy a competitive base power and hosting rate of approximately 3.7 cents per kilowatt-hour

Stoppppp!!!!!!!!!

[HideYourKeys]

Once the ordinals trend ends we will get back to "normal" fees

[serveria.com]

Yes, another fee topic, deal with it! 

I know, nobody likes to pay fees, nobody! Me neither!
And if there is an exception for sure it doesn't want to pay high fees, so it's pretty understandable that everyone is unhappy about it!
But at the same time, why are you angry at the same situation everyone was believing in it and predicting it?

Every single time a newbie asked what would happen when there would be no mining reward he got the same response over 10 pages, miners will live on from fees, and the security of the blockchain will be generated from fees! And here we are, although the fees are not quite high enough yet!

The last block:
https://mempool.space/block/00000000000000000002745f5dc332c3f8373773c05f3507c51bbfb4e402359b
generated :

Total fees   ‎3.257 BTC$119,069
Subsidy + fees   ‎9.507 BTC $347,557

so in order for the fees to replace the reward, you would need twice as much already, even despite this:

Fee span   280 - 8,206 sat/vB
Median fee   ~299 sat/vB $15.31

To make it as short as possible, for the network to have the same security as now without a block reward we would need each block to have twice as big fees in the future, that's how things work!
So, are you angry with high fees? Yes, we all are, but, wasn't this the design?

Before anyone comes up with some myths about this, let's clear some things

1) More efficient gear isn't making the network more secure alone, what's making the network secure is the amount of $ to invest to generate that hashrate, so if you think more efficient gear will mean the network will be just as secure but cheaper, it's delusional.
Right now the network is guarded by 400Exahash, which alone doesn't mean a thing, you must translate those into 4 million $2000 a piece machines to understand the security right now, as it takes 8 billion to launch a 51% attack. This also doesn't mean that because the hashrate in 2013 was one million lower you could attack it at that time with just 8000$ 

2) Cheaper energy or solar or renewable or anything else, again won't solve a thing, even if we run our gear on 0.1 cents per kWh if the reward per day is just $1000 you will only be able to afford 1Gkwh, so anyone willing to spend more than $1000 on energy will have the upper hand!

So, as a conclusion or encouragement or whatever, don't be angry at the fees, they help secure the network, and this is how it was designed to be in the first place, otherwise, we would end up like Bitcoin Gold or Ethereum classic, shitcoins getting 51% attacked 3 times in a row.

And of course, for now, we could actually start using LN rather than complaining, but that would be a solution that involves doing something!

Frankly, I didn't investigate the latest fee moonshot but I guess the reason is still the same: ordinals, brc20 and other shitty tokens. If we extract the number of spam transactions from the total amount, we'll most probably realize the things are not that bad. Yes, we will face the high fees from just the natural, legit transactions alone but much much later. Who know what will happen then? LN adoption, hashrate drop, quantum tech, renewable energy use... who knows? Right now #1 issue is to stop the goddamn monkey tokens, that will solve our problems for now.

[philipma1957]

Once the ordinals trend ends we will get back to "normal" fees

for a bit then we will uptick again. There are vested interests that want more than just btc in the market.

So every once in a while fees will get forced up.

[panganib999]

People should already get used to this, you can’t have your cake and eat it too you know. It’s always common knowledge for bitcoin to also become fee-intensive when its price action becomes desirable, so why always complain about it? Besides, there are layer 2 solutions in place for this like the lightning network, and I don’t see people using that feature for whatever fucking reason yet they are so quick to complain about bitcoin’s high fees when solutions are laid in front of their eyes.

We can’t do anything anymore about the high fees, it’s a flaw in the system that I doubt will get fixed, what we could do instead is make use of what features are available, and perhaps see this high-fee situation as a clear-cut sign that the network is getting busy again. Not something that is inherently negative.

[franky1]

its basic economics. if the cheapest way to acquire bitcoin on the planet (efficient mining) was $15k in 2022. no one on the same planet wants to sell below $15k. so market stays above $15k.
~
EG it used to cost hawaii-japan $75k in 2021 104k in 2022 and now its 150k+ in 2023
if you learn about the value vs premium of world economics of bitcoin you then learn the window of which the market spot price speculates within

yep hawaii-japan being most expensive to mine so when in 2021 their mining cost were $75k they were the ones happy to market buy upto the $70k ATH of 2021

Franky, just f*** stop!
Nobody cares about the electricity prices when it comes to the price of Bitcoin.
If it were like that and people in Japan would pay 70 000 then people in Venezuela would sell it for $10.

if the market was $50k may 2021 everyone can decide if they want to buy or sell
if you think venezuela can make btc for $10 and sell for $10, when the market was $50k you are deluding yourself.. learn how markets work

if you think venezuela can make btc for $10 and sell for $49,990 profit you are deluding yourself.. do some real math
even venezuela had higher costs than $10

do some proper math

i do love you taking snippets but then not understanding the context.

i dare you to look at
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1167419/000107997321000537/ex99x1.htm

Whinstone’s comprehensive energy management strategy delivers best-in-class net energy costs of approximately 2.5 cents per kWh utilizing cutting-edge technology and comprehensive analytics to deliver industry-leading low cost, reliable and responsive power.

but read the rest of the document.
such as doing the math that your stupid notion that yanky town america were making cheap bitcoin according to you in 2021
far below $15k according to you

although they talk about summer 2021 having 23946 asics they actually only had 22946 in the "year to date" may 2020-2021
now do the math.. on the electric. where "year to date" earning 924btc compares in just electric

ill give you a hint
76MW for 23946 is 72.836MW/h for 22946(may 2020-2021)
72.836MW/h 1 year (x24 x365) = 637,957,444kwh a year * $0.025 = $15,948,936(may 2020-2021)

$15,948,936 / 924btc(may 2020-2021) = $17,260 just electric per btc(may 2020-2021) (they shoulda used better efficient asics)

so stop spouting your obviously affiliated RIOT you promote as doing super cheap bitcoin mining.. even your link of their numbers reveals not so cheap

[stompix]

do some proper math
i do love you taking snippets but then not understanding the context.
~
although they talk about summer 2021 having 23946 asics they actually only had 22946 in the "year to date" may 2020-2021
now do the math.. on the electric. where "year to date" earning 924btc compares in just electric
~
72.836MW/h 1 year (x24 x365) = 637,957,444kwh a year * $0.025 = $15,948,936(may 2020-2021)

Franky, go back to kindergarten and learn what year-to-date means for something in May!
https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/accounting/year-to-date-ytd/#:~:text=Year%20to%20Date%20(YTD)%20refers,up%20until%20a%20specified%20date.

Year to Date (YTD) refers to the period from the beginning of the current year to a specified date before the year’s end. In other words, year to date is based on the number of days from the beginning of the calendar year (or fiscal year) up until a specified date. I

But as always basic kindergarten definitions are beyond your ability!

$15,948,936 / 924btc(may 2020-2021) = $17,260 just electric per btc(may 2020-2021) (they shoulda used better efficient asics)

In May 2021, Riot produced 227 BTC

So it's ($15,948,936/227)/12 which is $5,854.
So you're just off by 3 times, the usual crappy math you're so addicted to.

[franky1]

funny how you shout my $15m electric costs per year are wrong. but then you then realise they are correct for the year. and then use that number with your "monthly amount"

now calculate the hardware and labour cost .. its not all free you know..

and none of the numbers are anywhere near your "$10" you think some people have costs of

[joker_josue]

As a miner high fees feel good.
As a seller of items using btc for my payment high fees suck.

So I am in a personal conflict of interest on 2 catagories.

I also trade a tiny bit the effect on trading is harder to understand
lastly I mine and hodl

so just me alone and I  am In a complex situation.

other absolute supermoon of btc price most of the time I have no idea what to root for ie multi hedged for safety’s sake.

Combining things so that everyone is satisfied is clearly impossible at this point.

I believe more that the solution was to create more competition in mining. Especially in mining equipment manufacturers.
Basically the market is dominated by two or three manufacturing companies. And they are almost all in Asia.
More manufacturers were needed, so that the market is not so concentrated on one or two brands. Which gives them a lot of influence across the entire mining ecosystem.

[philipma1957]

yeah back to topic. big players can do a lot to make fees high.

Me with 350kwatts of power am just a small player that has to pick spots and shift with ease to survive.

eventually I will be squeezed out unless I use a switching technique which means I need 500 to 600 kwatts of paid off gear that allow me to switch from one algo to another.

Big guys can do this and Smaller guys can do it to.

So there will be a vested interest from big plays to boost fees and profits for short times and switch excess gear via software controlled multi guides.

Thus the ability to boost btc fees to the moon only needs to be done for 2-3 days. move your excess btc miners to btc and reap profits. lowers the diff on ltc/doge when the low diff hits on scrypt load up on scrypt

when the diff goes high on scrypt switch to btc.

the switch  to btc does not mean you always jack btc fees just once in a while.

you bread and butter is the extra million you mkae on ltc and doge every other doge diff adjustment.

this will not end it will simple repeat 🔁 whenever big players want it to.

[Learn Bitcoin]

Sorry for asking these beginner questions. I guess this was asked before, or maybe not. Isn't increasing the block size possible to contain more transactions simultaneously? How difficult is it to increase the block size? When I see mempool, the maximum blocks contain around 4500 transactions. Wouldn't it be great if a single block could handle more than ten thousand transactions? Also, sometimes, I see the gap between block times. Sometimes, we see three blocks in ten minutes, and sometimes three blocks in an hour. Why is that? Is it fixable?

[joker_josue]

this will not end it will simple repeat 🔁 whenever big players want it to.

But if this path is followed, we will reach a point where we will have 3 or 4 players controlling the entire mining market and transaction fees.
Don't you think that's bad for Bitcoin's fundamentals, and for Bitcoin itself?

I think so, and I can't see LN as a possible alternative for day-to-day transactions. Now it works, but if it scales it will no longer be efficient, and you will suffer the same type of problems with fees.

The alternative I see is to force a percentage of the block to allocate older transactions. For example, 10% of the block was allocated to transactions with more than 24 hours on the waiting list. In other words, you would reduce the waiting time to a minimum viable time, while giving you the freedom to choose the fee to guarantee faster transactions.

[philipma1957]

this will not end it will simple repeat 🔁 whenever big players want it to.

But if this path is followed, we will reach a point where we will have 3 or 4 players controlling the entire mining market and transaction fees.
Don't you think that's bad for Bitcoin's fundamentals, and for Bitcoin itself?

I think so, and I can't see LN as a possible alternative for day-to-day transactions. Now it works, but if it scales it will no longer be efficient, and you will suffer the same type of problems with fees.

The alternative I see is to force a percentage of the block to allocate older transactions. For example, 10% of the block was allocated to transactions with more than 24 hours on the waiting list. In other words, you would reduce the waiting time to a minimum viable time, while giving you the freedom to choose the fee to guarantee faster transactions.

doubt that works.  Look at it this way Scrypt has a vested interest in fucking up btc fee payments.

Scrypt makes about 45-80 million a day in mining payouts.

Doge rewards do not shrink over time they stay at 10,000 a block.


So if my idea that Bitmain controls 55% of the L7's in the world and switch them back and forth as I have postulated Bitmain smoke every other scrypt adjustment say 55 % of 45 million  an extra 25 million every 3 days.

They can keep their games up forever.

[johnsaributua]

Yes that's right, I was annoyed a few days ago with the surge from 60 sats/byte to above 200 sats/byte, I transacted with a small nominal and felt enough. turnover with price movements but this is a sign that the bitcoin ecosystem is alive with an increase and many are using, let's toast. !

There is reciprocity between validators and transactions, it's logical, rarely do you want to do work if you don't cover the basic costs with increasing work? and runs for the long term, meaning there is no motivation to become a miner if income is low, this is important and increasing fees is part of security for the future.

[jubalix]

I take no side in the big block small block argument, but it has to be the case that block size should increased at some point as this will solve a lot of the fees issue, its just a question of how much the block size should increase.

[joker_josue]

The alternative I see is to force a percentage of the block to allocate older transactions. For example, 10% of the block was allocated to transactions with more than 24 hours on the waiting list. In other words, you would reduce the waiting time to a minimum viable time, while giving you the freedom to choose the fee to guarantee faster transactions.

doubt that works.  Look at it this way Scrypt has a vested interest in fucking up btc fee payments.

Right, it won't stop this stupid joke of influencing Bitcoin fees. But it will ensure that all transactions, regardless of the fee amount, are handled.
Because, no matter the fee used, if the transaction is more than 24 hours old, it is included in the list to enter the next block, in this dedicated 10% space.

Well, this is just an idea, to create a mechanism for all types of transactions to have the opportunity to go through, and not wait endlessly for fees to go down.

If this continues like this, in a few years, it will no longer be viable to make transactions because of the fees. And this takes Bitcoin away from its objective, being a means of payment.

[Learn Bitcoin]

Right, it won't stop this stupid joke of influencing Bitcoin fees. But it will ensure that all transactions, regardless of the fee amount, are handled.
Because, no matter the fee used, if the transaction is more than 24 hours old, it is included in the list to enter the next block, in this dedicated 10% space.

Well, this is just an idea, to create a mechanism for all types of transactions to have the opportunity to go through, and not wait endlessly for fees to go down.

But then there could be another problem. People will use low fees knowing their transaction will get confirmed within 24 hours and the number of transactions with low fees will increase dramatically. After that, you will see a lot of transactions with low fees, and 10% dedicated space of each block won't be able to clear all the low fees transactions.

As a result, still there will remain some transactions that are older than 24 hours. I am bad at explanation but I guess you got what I am trying to explain here.

[franky1]

Sorry for asking these beginner questions. I guess this was asked before, or maybe not. Isn't increasing the block size possible to contain more transactions simultaneously? How difficult is it to increase the block size? When I see mempool, the maximum blocks contain around 4500 transactions. Wouldn't it be great if a single block could handle more than ten thousand transactions? Also, sometimes, I see the gap between block times. Sometimes, we see three blocks in ten minutes, and sometimes three blocks in an hour. Why is that? Is it fixable?

yes
years ago devs actually cared about lean transactions. where every byte of a transaction had a purpose of proving the movement of the bitcoin.
these days transactions for absolutely no meaningful reason can be upto 4mb FOR ONE TRANSACTION

there used to be other rules where 1 transaction could not take up the total space of a block. ... things have changed. rules have been relaxed

think about it, why should any decentralised person need to make a transaction paying using 20,000 utxo's
the relaxed rules allowing such instances have caused 'transaction bloat' where the limits(or lack of) have no rational explanation apart  from allowing people to overuse the blockspace. and now its worse by having stuff in transactions thats not even required to be validated by any ruleset

we need to get back to the idea of lean transactioning so that every byte counts. and punish those who do perfume bloated tx's specifically so that only the spammer pay the premium. rather than forcing everyone to may more due to the spammer

[Synchronice]

Every single time a newbie asked what would happen when there would be no mining reward he got the same response over 10 pages, miners will live on from fees, and the security of the blockchain will be generated from fees! And here we are, although the fees are not quite high enough yet!

|snip|

To make it as short as possible, for the network to have the same security as now without a block reward we would need each block to have twice as big fees in the future, that's how things work!
So, are you angry with high fees? Yes, we all are, but, wasn't this the design?

It's not 2140 today, is it? So, we aren't expecting high fees right now and things don't work as intended for sure. Fees are increased because bitcoin blockchain is spammed via ordinals and these spammers are willing to pay as much as possible to get it confirmed. This is not normal, we have to get rid of them and continue healthy transactions.

So, as a conclusion or encouragement or whatever, don't be angry at the fees, they help secure the network, and this is how it was designed to be in the first place, otherwise, we would end up like Bitcoin Gold or Ethereum classic, shitcoins getting 51% attacked 3 times in a row.

And of course, for now, we could actually start using LN rather than complaining, but that would be a solution that involves doing something!

Again, it's not 2140 today and high fees are not normal because they are the result of spam.
By the way, I think, one day we will end up with fork on Bitcoin that will be supported by everyone, i.e. current Bitcoin will have some modified or additional features. At the moment, Lighting Network looks promisable but I believe it will be alright to upper the block size because in 2023 disk space is not a problem.

[joker_josue]

Right, it won't stop this stupid joke of influencing Bitcoin fees. But it will ensure that all transactions, regardless of the fee amount, are handled.
Because, no matter the fee used, if the transaction is more than 24 hours old, it is included in the list to enter the next block, in this dedicated 10% space.

Well, this is just an idea, to create a mechanism for all types of transactions to have the opportunity to go through, and not wait endlessly for fees to go down.

But then there could be another problem. People will use low fees knowing their transaction will get confirmed within 24 hours and the number of transactions with low fees will increase dramatically. After that, you will see a lot of transactions with low fees, and 10% dedicated space of each block won't be able to clear all the low fees transactions.

As a result, still there will remain some transactions that are older than 24 hours. I am bad at explanation but I guess you got what I am trying to explain here.

However, this allocation would only occur if the transaction was not processed in less than 24 hours.
If all transactions had low fees, the network would function normally and process them normally as it happens now.

Basically, it's not even a question of the rate being high or low, the question is for blocks to reserve space to pass transactions that have already been waiting for a long time to be processed. This would only ensure that transactions were not stopped for several days or weeks waiting for approval.

The point is: the user knows that regardless of the rate used and network congestion, their transaction will end up being processed within 24-48 hours. And that is an added value for everyone. Because the user often chooses a rate that, at the time they approve the transaction, is appropriate for the next blocks. However, suddenly an increase in fees may appear, and your transaction ends up being delayed for an indefinite period of time. The existence of a mechanism that guarantees that transactions are always processed after X amount of time, I believe to be an added value for the network.

[Lucius]

I just paid nearly $70 in fees to move $300 between wallets. I have concluded within myself that I am going to avoid micro transactions as much as possible.
~snip~

Was it really necessary and inevitable that you make that transaction at a time when the fees are much higher than usual? In addition, if it is about transactions that you do between your wallets, you could put a much smaller fee and hope that the situation will improve in the coming days, and if you have the RBF option, you can always "bump fee" if you don't want to wait any longer.

In addition, the ViaBTC accelerator could also help you (if the transaction meets the conditions). Anyway, $70 to make a $300 transaction definitely doesn't make sense.

[stompix]

Sorry for asking these beginner questions. I guess this was asked before, or maybe not. Isn't increasing the block size possible to contain more transactions simultaneously? How difficult is it to increase the block size?

Technically, not that much.
Making people do it, prepare to get a pitchfork the moment you propose it!

Also, sometimes, I see the gap between block times. Sometimes, we see three blocks in ten minutes, and sometimes three blocks in an hour. Why is that? Is it fixable?

You can't fix something that is not broken, blocks are found in different intervals because of normal variation, you won't be able to fix it to 10 minutes because that would mean no matter what hashrate is added you will have the same difficulty,  which to explain it as simple as it I can, it won't matter if you mine with a cpu or a trillion asics you will find the solution in the same time, which is...impossible!

It's not 2140 today, is it? So, we aren't expecting high fees right now and things don't work as intended for sure.

No it's not and I'm not sure what you're asking!
I specifically said in the OP, this what you experience right now will be the future once there is no block reward, I didn't say anything about this situation continuing, this being the norm, this ...anything! As I mentioned again in the topic, this is a topic so that people understand when they preach about "miners will keep working for fees" what this really implies!

The alternative I see is to force a percentage of the block to allocate older transactions. For example, 10% of the block was allocated to transactions with more than 24 hours on the waiting list. In other words, you would reduce the waiting time to a minimum viable time, while giving you the freedom to choose the fee to guarantee faster transactions.

It won't solve a thing even if it were possible.

At first, you will have the same capacity and the same demand, right now for somebody who would not be able to pay the minimum fee it will take him about 15 days at 10% capacity for tx already in the pool to get a confirmation. But fast forward it will also favor a ton of spam, some will just unload huge tx at 1 sat/b and you will have no way around it other than to confirm it, leading to a capacity decrease, making an attack even easier.

[Porfirii]

People should already get used to this, you can’t have your cake and eat it too you know. It’s always common knowledge for bitcoin to also become fee-intensive when its price action becomes desirable, so why always complain about it? Besides, there are layer 2 solutions in place for this like the lightning network, and I don’t see people using that feature for whatever fucking reason yet they are so quick to complain about bitcoin’s high fees when solutions are laid in front of their eyes.

We can’t do anything anymore about the high fees, it’s a flaw in the system that I doubt will get fixed, what we could do instead is make use of what features are available, and perhaps see this high-fee situation as a clear-cut sign that the network is getting busy again. Not something that is inherently negative.

Every time this topic about high fees arises in the Spanish board, it surprises me that my colleagues seem to forget that LN even exists. It is really simple to use, enables instant transactions, and it is almost free. Yes, there are risks linked to that solution, but for everyday expenses it is a really useful tool that most people in my environment didn't even try, those who are knowledgeable in the matter included. Idk what is the problem with this solution's awareness, but there is a real problem with it.

For bigger transactions, it is true that I wouldn't send sats with a value of thousands of dollars through LN. But, if I had to send such big amounts, paying high fees would be the least of my problems.

[joker_josue]

It won't solve a thing even if it were possible.

At first, you will have the same capacity and the same demand, right now for somebody who would not be able to pay the minimum fee it will take him about 15 days at 10% capacity for tx already in the pool to get a confirmation. But fast forward it will also favor a ton of spam, some will just unload huge tx at 1 sat/b and you will have no way around it other than to confirm it, leading to a capacity decrease, making an attack even easier.

I clearly understand the point. We must try to avoid this type of situation.
But we must also look for a way to combat attacks on the contrary, which generates absurd increases in rates. Because for large miners, it is not difficult to try to inflate fees, as they know that they will always end up winning, even if they spend a large amount to generate transactions with high fees.

Anyway, creating a balance is not easy at all. But it's good to stop this, so as not to get into an unbearable situation.



EDIT:

Every time this topic about high fees arises in the Spanish board, it surprises me that my colleagues seem to forget that LN even exists. It is really simple to use, enables instant transactions, and it is almost free. Yes, there are risks linked to that solution, but for everyday expenses it is a really useful tool that most people in my environment didn't even try, those who are knowledgeable in the matter included. Idk what is the problem with this solution's awareness, but there is a real problem with it.

For bigger transactions, it is true that I wouldn't send sats with a value of thousands of dollars through LN. But, if I had to send such big amounts, paying high fees would be the least of my problems.

Despite being an interesting technology, I don't think LN is yet at a point where it can be used massively.
On the other hand, the problem is not resolved.

Let's assume that LN is widespread and easy to use.
Friday arrives and I want to go out to dinner. I decide to move BTC from my cold wallet to my LN wallet in order to pay for dinner.
When I'm going to load my LN with 200$ to have money for the weekend, for that dinner. I face a $50 fee to receive the money in my LN in less than 1 hour.
I think I would rather have dinner at home than spend the $50 on fees, which would be more expensive than the price of dinner.

[Antotena]

- if in the future we will pay 1 cent per tx we would have one cent worth of bodyguard

We should be familiar this, the world most often work like this, you get the value of what you paid for. But my thoughts is it would be disastrous to have a future of Bitcoin where miners calls the shots in such a way, having the transaction security we have now at a very affordable price is an underrated flex I hope it doesn't get this bad like you said it would be a long time, regardless we hope for a sustainable Bitcoin future.

Then obviously, people like you and I will be left on the bench and will not be able to use bitcoin because what is the use of bitcoin to retailers and small investors that will squeeze their pockets to buy bitcoin. I doubt if bitcoin will strive as people will believe.
Anytime there is a hike in fees, the only people that benefits from this is usually the miners and that's why they refuse to speak up against ordinals, they are spamming the network but in the end, they will say what they want to say because they mostly benefits from this. If real bull run should come, it will be 3x more than this and I guess I will have to be watching my wallet.

Next halving is something I'm even looking at, if the reward of miners become halve the original value, that means there revenue will be half and if bitcoin price isn't stable as it does crash after reaching a new all time, the miners will definitely propose a change in the fee system. I'm positive of the future for Bitcoin to grow in value but the way the miners are enjoying this fees, imagine how they will feel when the reward change to less than a bitcoin at this current price. You  never can tell for the future but then anything is possible.

[Z-tight]

It's undisputable. The more the prices of the coins get the more the fees increases.

This is not true, the transaction fee rate is not tied to BTC price, just the same way the tx fee you pay for your tx has nothing in common with the amount you are sending. Transaction fee is determined by the state of the network, if it is congested or not and your input and output, the reason why the fee rate is high now is because of Ordinals. But this topic is discussing the period after all BTC's have been mined and miners only earn from tx fees, it is predicted that fees will be high then, in order to keep the network secure, so maybe high fees are inevitable in the future.

[CreepyUncleJoe]

LN could be a game-changer if more merchants adopt it. The fees for opening channels can be a hurdle, though.

[joker_josue]

But this topic is discussing the period after all BTC's have been mined and miners only earn from tx fees, it is predicted that fees will be high then, in order to keep the network secure, so maybe high fees are inevitable in the future.

Nowhere in the Bitcoin whitepaper does it say that high fees are needed to keep the network secure. This to me is a false question.

The network continues to operate as long as mining remains decentralized and functioning. You will say that with the reduction in block rewards, if the fees are low it demotivates the big miners. This may be partly true, but in reality if the use is widespread, this is no longer an issue.

What is better for Bitcoin, a block has 10 transactions with $50 fee. Or have 2000 transactions with a $0.5 fee?
I believe we all agree that the second option is best for everyone.

[Blitzboy]

- if in the future we will pay 1 cent per tx we would have one cent worth of bodyguard

We should be familiar this, the world most often work like this, you get the value of what you paid for. But my thoughts is it would be disastrous to have a future of Bitcoin where miners calls the shots in such a way, having the transaction security we have now at a very affordable price is an underrated flex I hope it doesn't get this bad like you said it would be a long time, regardless we hope for a sustainable Bitcoin future.

Then obviously, people like you and I will be left on the bench and will not be able to use bitcoin because what is the use of bitcoin to retailers and small investors that will squeeze their pockets to buy bitcoin. I doubt if bitcoin will strive as people will believe.
Anytime there is a hike in fees, the only people that benefits from this is usually the miners and that's why they refuse to speak up against ordinals, they are spamming the network but in the end, they will say what they want to say because they mostly benefits from this. If real bull run should come, it will be 3x more than this and I guess I will have to be watching my wallet.

Next halving is something I'm even looking at, if the reward of miners become halve the original value, that means there revenue will be half and if bitcoin price isn't stable as it does crash after reaching a new all time, the miners will definitely propose a change in the fee system. I'm positive of the future for Bitcoin to grow in value but the way the miners are enjoying this fees, imagine how they will feel when the reward change to less than a bitcoin at this current price. You  never can tell for the future but then anything is possible.

Cryptocommunity rituals increasingly include it. The relationship between miners, fees, and Bitcoin price is complicated, right? Miners benefit from increasing fees, but the next halving will change everything. Bitcoin is designed to make us question and reconsider continually. Its reasonable to worry about small investors being sidelined. Bitcoin, once a democratizing force, appears to be dominated by major entities. Remember, the crypto market is volatile and unpredictable. Today's underdog can be tomorrow's kingpin on this wild rollercoaster.

The post-halving future is mixed, right? Miners may demand more fees to offset lower payouts. This might backfire if Bitcoin adoption and trust drop, forcing the community to seek alternatives. The community's aim for affordable, decentralized currency and miners' profitability are in conflict. Whats ahead is unknown, but crypto's intrigue comes from its uncertainty and possibilities.

[Z-tight]

Nowhere in the Bitcoin whitepaper does it say that high fees are needed to keep the network secure. This to me is a false question.

As miners confirm BTC tx's, they keep the network secure and running, and miners are incentivized with block reward + tx fees, when there is no more block reward to be earned, miners will earn only from tx fees and if they are not making enough profit from the fees they earn, so many miners will stop mining. Fewer miners also mean a lower hashrate, and if it is significant, then it is a security problem, this is where some of that logic comes from.

The network continues to operate as long as mining remains decentralized and functioning. You will say that with the reduction in block rewards, if the fees are low it demotivates the big miners. This may be partly true, but in reality if the use is widespread, this is no longer an issue.

The point here is not on the decentralization of mining, for mining to function effectively, miners have to earn rewards that is higher than the cost of BTC production. BTC being widely used then isn't the question, but about miners, their reward and the network's hashrate, if miners are demotivated, this would affect the hashrate and become a security problem.

What is better for Bitcoin, a block has 10 transactions with $50 fee. Or have 2000 transactions with a $0.5 fee?
I believe we all agree that the second option is best for everyone.

Will the second option also be best for miners? Will it be enough to keep them in operation after all their investment in gears and maintenance to keep the network secure?

[joker_josue]

What is better for Bitcoin, a block has 10 transactions with $50 fee. Or have 2000 transactions with a $0.5 fee?
I believe we all agree that the second option is best for everyone.

Will the second option also be best for miners? Will it be enough to keep them in operation after all their investment in gears and maintenance to keep the network secure?

Just do the math:
10x50$ = 500$/block
2000x0.50$ = 1000$/block

Increasing fees only reduces the massive use of Bitcoin, because high fees only pay off for large transactions and whales. And we know that these types of transactions are the smallest in bitcoin.

If we want Bitcoin to be used by everyone, the fees must remain affordable for most people. Furthermore, you have to count on the expectation that the value of BTC will continue to increase, and this in turn increases mining profits.

In turn, the market must start pressuring manufacturers to make miners even more efficient, and not continue with this current scheme in which they only create more powerful machines, consuming practically the same amount of energy.

I remember that 10 years ago, most miners used PCs to mine blocks, which was not profitable - and no one thought it would be worth what it is worth today, and that wasn't why the network was less secure.

[tjtonmoy]

Only LN? No!
You still need an on-chain transaction for starting to use LN, so the network capacity must still be large enouhg to allow millions of channels to be opened and closed. But since nowadays usage is limited, it would cover it pretty much, the long term it will still need a capacity increase.
We are billions! on this planet. There is no mass adoption without billions using it!

So lightning Network could be an alternative but it's having limited power makes it not the perfect solution right? It could be a temporary solution for time like this one what we are facing right now when the blockchain is crowded. But it doesn't add up to the future situation when there will be no mining reward instead minus will have to live on fees collected from each transaction.

If lightning Network can provide a temporary solution for higher fees and faster transaction, we can hope for a better alternative in the future for sure. But this also raises more question. It's about energy to reward. If lightning network consumes less energy than the regular blockchain then the fees can be less. This is what I think. But it is unlikely to happen given the fact that it's a pay to win situation. The more you pay, the better security you get. I guess we will have to pay the double fee in the future, but that future is way too far for us to live. Some of us won't be alive to see that future.

[Faisal2202]

Doesn't work like that because paying for a product is not the product.
If you had the choice of paying 10$ of bread but it would cost you 0 with a vis card, 10 cents with Doge and 10$ with BTC, what ar you going to do?
Furthermore, this is what happens when the block reward is gone, I highlighted that in the first post.

I know you have stated it already, and of course, if I have to buy bread at 0$ via Visa card then I might not hesitate but at what cost, privacy, decentralization, and all the features that BTC provides us? But if I have to use Doge or any other coin then I might keep my privacy maintained or some other features out of all the features that BTC provides us.

Well, it is bad and there should be some solution to it other than LN.

[dezoel]

Bitcoin's high transaction fees frustrate me after a few days. I haven't seen any permanent solution to Bitcoin's extra transaction fees so far. If I have to pay 10 to 15 dollar transaction fee to trade the amount of BTC that I need to trade, it is a big loss for me because I am not that big of an investor. I have stopped doing Bitcoin transactions now because of the extra transaction fees. A few days ago Bitcoin transaction fees were somewhat normal but now Bitcoin transaction fees have become abnormal again. Even if I need to now, I have to wait to trade bitcoins because it is not possible for me to trade bitcoins with 10 to 15 dollars.

What about the Lightning Network? It is still there, so isn't it considered as a permanent solution? There are also others like SegWit and the said Ordinals. Your decision of not trading for a while is, one of the solutions that you can do to not incur a loss. The surge in fees can still subside later on. It wouldn't take that long. Maybe it is only shocked for the recent increase that we have.

As an investor in BTC, this is one of the hindrance that we can face if we are doing a DCA. So those who say that doing a DCA is the best method for investing is wrong. Also as a small BTC user, that 10 to 15 dollars in the fee is already a big thing for us but for those who are dealing with greater amounts. They can still be able to continue. Again, this is what separates us from them. This is what they say that the rich are only getting richer while the poor are only getting poorer.

[Synchronice]

It's not 2140 today, is it? So, we aren't expecting high fees right now and things don't work as intended for sure.

No it's not and I'm not sure what you're asking!
I specifically said in the OP, this what you experience right now will be the future once there is no block reward, I didn't say anything about this situation continuing, this being the norm, this ...anything! As I mentioned again in the topic, this is a topic so that people understand when they preach about "miners will keep working for fees" what this really implies!

Future is future, what we experience right now, is not normal. Even if the future looks like this, I want to underline it again, future, we shouldn't have the same situation today that awaits us in the future. But since we talk about the future, after analyzing things in my mind, I think that we won't have high fees in the future. If we really talk about the future of Bitcoin, then I imagine it as the cryptocurrency with 100 times, 1000 times more transactions than it has today. If we increase the block size, which I believe will happen and with 1000 times more users + with high BTC price, miners will collect a fair amount of fees. So, high number of blocksize and transactions will keep fees very low while all of these will pay well for miners.

[Learn Bitcoin]

Sorry for asking these beginner questions. I guess this was asked before, or maybe not. Isn't increasing the block size possible to contain more transactions simultaneously? How difficult is it to increase the block size?

Technically, not that much.
Making people do it, prepare to get a pitchfork the moment you propose it!

Then what blocking devs from making this change? If I am not wrong, someone has to propose it, and most of the devs have to agree on it. Isn't that how it works? Since Bitcoin is maintained by a lot of devs, the majority of them have to agree to make any changes. Is it how it works?

You can't fix something that is not broken, blocks are found in different intervals because of normal variation, you won't be able to fix it to 10 minutes because that would mean no matter what hashrate is added you will have the same difficulty,  which to explain it as simple as it I can, it won't matter if you mine with a cpu or a trillion asics you will find the solution in the same time, which is...impossible!

Ah, that makes sense. Actually, I do not understand those things very much and never thought to dig out. So bitcoin network needs more miners to to handle more transactions. But as far as I know, Bitcoin miners do not make much money in regular time. They make money during the congestion and by holding the reward.

[franky1]

Sorry for asking these beginner questions. I guess this was asked before, or maybe not. Isn't increasing the block size possible to contain more transactions simultaneously? How difficult is it to increase the block size?

Technically, not that much.
Making people do it, prepare to get a pitchfork the moment you propose it!

Then what blocking devs from making this change? If I am not wrong, someone has to propose it, and most of the devs have to agree on it. Isn't that how it works? Since Bitcoin is maintained by a lot of devs, the majority of them have to agree to make any changes. Is it how it works?

unless you are a known trusted entity that core devs have already formed a relationship with.. where they see you believe in their roadmap..  expect pitchforks and witch trials if you dare propose a protocol level change that goes against their 5 year roadmap plan

[digaran]

Ah, that makes sense. Actually, I do not understand those things very much and never thought to dig out. So bitcoin network needs more miners to to handle more transactions. But as far as I know, Bitcoin miners do not make much money in regular time. They make money during the congestion and by holding the reward.

More miners mean more competition and has nothing to do with how many transactions they can include in blocks, in order to have more TXs per block, everyone has to use segwit, taproot to reduce the size of each TX, and there has to be an increase of at least 1MB for block size every 2 or 4 years to increase the max limit.

There should also be some  penalty for those sending excessive dust transactions, sending non-tx data such as ordinals, NFT tokens, other garbage and junk etc, if you increase the fee for scammers, they will scam less and also will have to pay several times more than monetary-tx, regular users.

These things should be developed and implemented by the dev team the miners and nodes will upgrade to make the new changes effective, but if they refused to upgrade, people will see them as the real scammers behind these manipulations and start leaving Bitcoin.  Though this is happening even now, when they don't take any action to stop this fee manipulation, people will start to seek better and cheaper alternatives, and believe me when I say this, crypto users never signed a contract to promise to stay with Bitcoin no matter what, NO, once they realize miners are taking advantage of them, they will gradually migrate to other networks, therefore in a long run, these greedy miners will suffer more loss than what they are earning now.

Do you know how lust can control our behaviour? Either it be sexual, emotional etc. It's the blinding desire to want something so bad that it renders you unable to think about the consequences. For now people are drowning in "money lust" aka greed.

How to snap out of it? By becoming a user yourself and experience the situation as a normal user and then you can understand.

[joker_josue]

You can't fix something that is not broken, blocks are found in different intervals because of normal variation, you won't be able to fix it to 10 minutes because that would mean no matter what hashrate is added you will have the same difficulty,  which to explain it as simple as it I can, it won't matter if you mine with a cpu or a trillion asics you will find the solution in the same time, which is...impossible!

Ah, that makes sense. Actually, I do not understand those things very much and never thought to dig out. So bitcoin network needs more miners to to handle more transactions. But as far as I know, Bitcoin miners do not make much money in regular time. They make money during the congestion and by holding the reward.

All blocks are mined approximately 10 minutes ago, with only 1 miner or millions. Each block supports x transactions, it doesn't matter if there are many or few miners, the maximum is always the same. A single miner is capable of handling millions of transactions. One block at a time as the network dictates. In other words, there is no need for millions of miners for the network to support millions of transactions.

This is why it increases transaction fees. When the network has many transactions to process, exceeding the maximum block size, they are placed in a waiting queue. In turn, the network/miners prioritize transactions with the highest fees, leaving others behind until there is space in a block. This means that a transaction may have to wait 10 days or weeks if its rate is lower than the remaining transactions that are pending.

That's why I think we need to adjust the way transactions with several waiting hours are evaluated.

[buwaytress]

Got to agree with OP in a certain way, though I think personally it's less the dollar cost of the fee (although this will for a long time be the focus) but the percentage of the tx amount. So yes, miners will need the fees incentive but if the sat cost becomes too high, it makes it less interesting for me.

To be as objective as possible, me paying 1 mbtc in fees only becomes worthwhile for a 0.1 BTC send. Right now, I'm actually okay with the the 10k sat fee to pay for a 3 input spend of 10 mbtc. But I can imagine it's annoying to spend 1 mbtc for a couple of pizzas now without LN.

Still think the benefit of sending something over such a secure network is well worth the cost. Was hardly ever my issue anyway, LN or my debit card should cover my pizza spends...

[franky1]

Also, sometimes, I see the gap between block times. Sometimes, we see three blocks in ten minutes, and sometimes three blocks in an hour. Why is that? Is it fixable?

You can't fix something that is not broken, blocks are found in different intervals because of normal variation, you won't be able to fix it to 10 minutes because that would mean no matter what hashrate is added you will have the same difficulty,  which to explain it as simple as it I can, it won't matter if you mine with a cpu or a trillion asics you will find the solution in the same time, which is...impossible!

stompix has it the wrong way around..

difficulty adjusts each 2016 blocks(fortnight) to adjust to try to keep blocks on track..
if there are more than 2016 blocks per fortnight. the network is too fast(too much hashrate) so makes difficulty go up so next session produces less blocks a fortnight to average out
if there are less than 2016 blocks per fortnight. the network is too slow(not enough hashrate) so makes difficulty go down so next session produces more blocks a fortnight to average out

 if the network was CPU mining. the difficulty would be low. if the network was trillion asics the difficulty would be high... the difficulty wont be the same and produce the same time if cpu or or trillion asics

ill explain
 if difficulty was fixed but hashrate vary (from cpu to asic) . the solve time would vary DRAMATICALLY whether it was CPU or trillion asics.. because CPU would solve in months and a trillion asics will solve in seconds with a fixed difficulty

the only way to even achieve a fixed TIME.. there would need to be fixed difficulty and fixed amount of miners (to control things somewhat) that can solve in only say 8mins or less. but then only broadcasts at the 10th minute where rejected if seen too soon

however the ramifications of putting in controls and fixed default amounts are, if the last block solved at 7m:20s it cant broadcast to the network for another 2m:40s but can secretly mine ontop of itself at that 7th min 21st sec and produce another block before any competitors get a chance. which leads to centralisation

trying to fix block times is where the decentralised competition ends

All blocks are mined approximately 10 minutes ago, with only 1 miner or millions. Each block supports x transactions, it doesn't matter if there are many or few miners, the maximum is always the same. A single miner is capable of handling millions of transactions. One block at a time as the network dictates. In other words, there is no need for millions of miners for the network to support millions of transactions.

yep no need to increase miners to sort transactions. as thats not how things works..
the actual solutions is in the data of the block itself, such as
the leanness of transactions (new validation rules of counting bytes and ensuring each byte has a purpose for the transaction)
the block space limit
penalising bloaty transactions that waste bytes (bloaters get penalised not everyone)
penalised transactions that spend every block (too often) (spammers get penalised not everyone)

thus allowing more people to make daily transactions without as many delays or excess costs

[PrivacyG]

I agree with the @OP stand but one thing is lacking here, and that is the development of Bitcoin.  I believe Bitcoin will continuously evolve and be upgraded to be suited to the needs of users and miners.  If there is no changes in the structure of the Bitcoin system scalability, with larger adoption up ahead, we might see a larger transaction fee than this.  So I am not surprised if one day only a few individuals can afford an on-chain transaction and many probably will be using lightning-network-like implementation.

It is hard to change a monster like Bitcoin.  Shit Coins come and go.  They are here one moment and disappear the next.  Bitcoin stood standing in all Cryptocurrency winters and every time there was a big bomb in the Market.

It will not be necessarily about how many afford On Chain Transactions.  I believe it will rather be that majority will choose to mostly and only accept the second Layer instead.  Why make On Chain Transactions less affordable if you can make second Layer more convenient, easier to understand, almost instant, close to free.  You will want to buy things and they will only accept, say Lightning.  That is how things will change.

[jrrsparkles]

Got to agree with OP in a certain way, though I think personally it's less the dollar cost of the fee (although this will for a long time be the focus) but the percentage of the tx amount. So yes, miners will need the fees incentive but if the sat cost becomes too high, it makes it less interesting for me.

Exactly, the fee increases in terms of dollar price it isn't gonna be an issue but when the fee needed is about 10 or 20% of the TX size of day-to-day transactions then the system could fall apart, to be honest.

LN can be the only solution to avoid this from happening but it is a slow gradual process and it will take a while to be adopted until then we may have to halt the TX which isn't worth transacting due to sudden congestions and I stand by that way as well.

Anyway, I don't expect this congestion to last more than a couple of weeks from now.

[digaran]

So the 2 previous posters believe in LN, Ok, but ask this from yourselves: why would people join a centralized network and trust  third parties when there are decentralized and fairly stable with low fees and fast confirm alternative(s)? Alright, do you know why dictators never admit that they are dictators?
Because they believe they are on the right path, they'd only realize their mistakes when it's already too late, with what I have observed it seems like we are collectively pushing Bitcoin to that phase of realization of mistakes. Saying that "this is decentralization" and everyone is free to do whatever they want and we shouldn't try to stop them because it's bad, it's censoring etc, is the definition of anarchy.

If a system can't prevent abuse, exploitation, that system will fail.
If a system can't differentiate harm and benefit, that system is useless.
If a system can't identify friends from foes, that system is not immune and will lead to cancer if not treated well AND IN TIME.

[mvdheuvel1983]

Ordinals and Inscriptions are making use of bitcoin as fee and depending on bitcoin blockchain for making transaction which leads to more mempool congestion, but miner are truly making more money from bitcoin transactions due to it. But bitcoin has been successful since 2009 to 2023 before there was anything like Ordinals and the network was growing and increasing in hashrates. Although, Ordinals are benefiting the miners but bitcoin can survive without it if the price continues to increase. I mean if bitcoin remain an appreciative asset.

The high transaction fee we saw in May of this year was caused by the presence of non-fungible tokens that is stored on the block chaint hat rolled in and now this one which we are experiencing, I think is also related to the ordinals and that is it has lead to congestions in the Mempools in more than half a year. I don't know how long this would persist and if it continues for long, they will need to seek out a solution to it. I know people have said Lightning network would solve this, but I don't think it is that easy. The transaction cost is making spend fiat on some services instead of Bitcoin and I don't like it.

[alani123]

Well, any educated user would know that it didn't need to be this way...
See this following satoshi post quoted:

The current system where every user is a network node is not the intended configuration for large scale.  That would be like every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server.  The design supports letting users just be users.  The more burden it is to run a node, the fewer nodes there will be.  Those few nodes will be big server farms.  The rest will be client nodes that only do transactions and don't generate.

Besides, 10 minutes is too long to verify that payment is good.  It needs to be as fast as swiping a credit card is today.

See the snack machine thread, I outline how a payment processor could verify payments well enough, actually really well (much lower fraud rate than credit cards), in something like 10 seconds or less.  If you don't believe me or don't get it, I don't have time to try to convince you, sorry.
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=423.msg3819#msg3819

The romanticized idea of decentralization we have now is not what the original vision of bitcoin was. Satoshi himself was ready to sacrifice some decentralization so long as transactions remained immutable. If bitcoin's ability to transact cash is reduced to being worse than banks, then what's the point of calling it a A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System anymore?

This brings us to what's causing the current ongoing issue of high fees. It's not high demand and it's not miners wanting to charge extra for "keeping the chain secure".
It's actually ordinal transactions that put NFT and token data on bitcoin's chain and take away space from actual transactions.
Moreover, by abusing Taproot OP codes and SegWit witness data space, they even get discounts that a regular transaction wouldn't.
See for instance this transaction:
https://mempool.space/tx/77e996de08c48ed282a7b8bc88ca199712a15fa68babb10a0b3ee760674cf21b

The fee would have normally been above 300 USD, but by abusing these newish updates on bitcoin they get away with only paying for a fraction of the space they're actually taking in the blockchain.

Satoshi was also for imposing limits on abuses for what could get in bitcoin's chain as a valid transactions. So if ordinals are the single point of concern on what's causing this problem, then they should be addressed. That's 100% in line with bitcoin's vision.

[joker_josue]

Got to agree with OP in a certain way, though I think personally it's less the dollar cost of the fee (although this will for a long time be the focus) but the percentage of the tx amount. So yes, miners will need the fees incentive but if the sat cost becomes too high, it makes it less interesting for me.

To be as objective as possible, me paying 1 mbtc in fees only becomes worthwhile for a 0.1 BTC send. Right now, I'm actually okay with the the 10k sat fee to pay for a 3 input spend of 10 mbtc. But I can imagine it's annoying to spend 1 mbtc for a couple of pizzas now without LN.

Still think the benefit of sending something over such a secure network is well worth the cost. Was hardly ever my issue anyway, LN or my debit card should cover my pizza spends...

The question, how do you load your LN wallet? And how much money sent to your LN wallet at a time?
Do you think it makes sense, sending $200 and paying $50 in fees?

LN does not solve the problem of super high fees on mainnet. It can facilitate commerce, by having lower fees and faster transactions. But the movement of money between layer 1 and layer 2 continues to have high fees. And in this sense, it continues to be of little interest for the true use of the network.

[stompix]

This brings us to what's causing the current ongoing issue of high fees. It's not high demand and it's not miners wanting to charge extra for "keeping the chain secure".

As I explained in the first post and multiple times in the topic, this is a comparison and refers to the period where there will be no more reward, making the miners live on from fees! Again and probably for the last time, it doesn't imply fees will be double, it simply says that in order to have the same level of security you will have to pay up! Simple, as that, you either pay or you agree to have a less secure network, there is nothing else about it, simple economics!

Even now, nobody is forcing you to pay a dime, If you want to get a fast transaction you pay more, in the future you want a secure network you will have to pay, you pay less, and you go down bitcoin gold style.

Got to agree with OP in a certain way, though I think personally it's less the dollar cost of the fee (although this will for a long time be the focus) but the percentage of the tx amount. So yes, miners will need the fees incentive but if the sat cost becomes too high, it makes it less interesting for me.

Exactly, the fee increases in terms of dollar price it isn't gonna be an issue but when the fee needed is about 10 or 20% of the TX size of day-to-day transactions then the system could fall apart, to be honest.

But you guys talk about the same thing, you say that the only annoying thing is the relation between the sats paid in fees and the size of the tx, but being angry about paying
- 1 mbtc for 2 mbtc
is no different than saying
- $40 for a $80  transfer

Besides I really doubt too many would know to say in a split second if paying 17295 satoshi for a transaction for example is expensive or not without doing the math in $.

[summonerrk]

At this point it is becoming confusing. I read somewhere that the high fees is as a result of Ordinal or NFTs on the Bitcoin network. According to the said comment, the Ordinals is a new trend that is massively being traded, hence the congestion of the Bitcoin network.

I do know that this is not the first time I'm witnessing the situation we are facing now. So it becomes confusing knowing what to believe to be the cause of the high fees and if there is any other way around it with respect to the future because fees like this is a kind of discouraging!

Having logged into my wallet the day before yesterday, I wanted to throw $ 20 to the exchange for my trading manipulations, but I saw that for this I would need to pay a commission of more than $ 3! I do not know for what reason it happened again, but I remembered the recent situation with Ordinals who polluted the network so that some signature campaigns suspended activity on the forum. Again, this is an indicator of how outdated the bitcoin network is, and it's a shame. And someone can call it a safe haven currency, comparing it with gold. I hope the period of increasing commissions will not last long.

[buwaytress]

Still think the benefit of sending something over such a secure network is well worth the cost. Was hardly ever my issue anyway, LN or my debit card should cover my pizza spends...

The question, how do you load your LN wallet? And how much money sent to your LN wallet at a time?
Do you think it makes sense, sending $200 and paying $50 in fees?

LN does not solve the problem of super high fees on mainnet. It can facilitate commerce, by having lower fees and faster transactions. But the movement of money between layer 1 and layer 2 continues to have high fees. And in this sense, it continues to be of little interest for the true use of the network.

I don't =) Like I said, LN or debit card, and debit card is now how I pay for food buys. It was expensive even in normal times on chain (because the processor*cough*Bitpay*cough forces you to overkill on network fees). I've simply stopped using Bitcoin for those buys. Hasn't changed other deposit/sending habits, so I don't see that "true" use being harmed.

There's also the time, convenience, KYC, cost factored. The certainty of sending. These true nature things don't change. Just in September, a client asked for a bank transfer instead of crypto. One off. The transaction went through on my end, not on hers. Two weeks of confusion, calls, wondering where the hell the money went, finally to conclude a clerk in her branch rejected the amount because of wrong spelling of currency. This is 2023, but I wasn't shocked. I have 15 years of remote and distance work across multiple countries to know how difficult it can be to transmit money!

Bitcoin's true nature in a nutshell: if we follow the rules, I send something to you, I say exactly how much you get, I say exactly the fees I pay, you know exactly how much you get, you know for certain you'll get it, you know no one else will, you know it will never be revoked. People don't understand how precious this certainty and finality of settlement is... until you live and work all over the world (and have a not-so-desirable passport).

I'd happily pay these onchain settlement fees if I needed to maintain a node though, if most businesses knew the cost comparison with regular processor and all traffic uses Bitcoin, they'd move too.

But you guys talk about the same thing, you say that the only annoying thing is the relation between the sats paid in fees and the size of the tx, but being angry about paying
- 1 mbtc for 2 mbtc
is no different than saying
- $40 for a $80  transfer

It makes a difference to talk about percentage, not raw cost.

So yes, I'm not angry paying 1 mbtc for 100 mbtc, or $37 for $3700 (let's put it like that). Because to send the same $3700 with PayPal costs me 4% fees + bad rate. A bank costs me a flat fee but very poor rate. A remittance costs me 1.5% at great rate.

So to make my point clear, it's not the dollar value, but the percentage cost.

Besides I really doubt too many would know to say in a split second if paying 17295 satoshi for a transaction for example is expensive or not without doing the math in $.

Actually, when people complain about the cost, they usually convert the fee amount to dollar, precisely why they then conclude expensive or not. But it's not meaningful without comparing percentage cost.

I agree it's expensive now to do small purchases/sends. I now keep mt spends to debit card. But my regular remittances/big purchases/deposits still far cheaper with BTC.

[joker_josue]

As I explained in the first post and multiple times in the topic, this is a comparison and refers to the period where there will be no more reward, making the miners live on from fees! Again and probably for the last time, it doesn't imply fees will be double, it simply says that in order to have the same level of security you will have to pay up! Simple, as that, you either pay or you agree to have a less secure network, there is nothing else about it, simple economics!

Even now, nobody is forcing you to pay a dime, If you want to get a fast transaction you pay more, in the future you want a secure network you will have to pay, you pay less, and you go down bitcoin gold style.

Why will paying lower fees result in a less secure network? It is not the fees that make the network more or less secure. The difference between being more or less safe is the number of different miners - the more there are, the safer.

It can be said that it is the high rates that will attract large and small miners. But I honestly don't agree. This is only valid in a short-term view.

I already gave an example of accounts:
a) 10x50$ = 500$/block
b) 2000x0.50$ = 1000$/block

Which is more advantageous for the network? I believe the second option is the best. It pleases both miners and users.

What we have to motivate is a greater circulation of BTC, not a greater increase in fees.

The more transactions there are, they do not need to have a high fee to be highly profitable. They will say that the increase in fees occurs because there are many transactions. In part, it may even be true. So I suggest dedicating a percentage of the block, so that older transactions are guaranteed to pass in a minimally reasonable time.

[stompix]

Why will paying lower fees result in a less secure network? It is not the fees that make the network more or less secure. The difference between being more or less safe is the number of different miners - the more there are, the safer.

The hashrate didn't grow from 1 petahash to 400 exahash becuase there was a $1000 pot to be earned a day.
Again, end scenario is that fees will be the only reward miners will get, you think you will have miners with the same hashing power on 600k a day tx playing each 20 cents?

I already gave an example of accounts:
a) 10x50$ = 500$/block
b) 2000x0.50$ = 1000$/block
Which is more advantageous for the network? I believe the second option is the best. It pleases both miners and users.

Yeah, the only problem is that you've stopped short of the actual capacity, so let's get the picture of the real situation:
- block reward, 6.25x144, 900 BTC, ~ $ 31 million
- current fees in the last 24 hours, 106 BTC ~ 3,5 mill
- transactions in the last 24 hours, 516,878

So for the fees to cover the block reward you have two choice
- people pay 10 as much
- you have 5 million tx in a day...
But as you can see in a multitude of other topics, 10 MB blocks would break the law of the universe!
Not to mention it will also break and turn into dust the ego of some!

[examplens]

The hashrate didn't grow from 1 petahash to 400 exahash becuase there was a $1000 pot to be earned a day.
Again, end scenario is that fees will be the only reward miners will get, you think you will have miners with the same hashing power on 600k a day tx playing each 20 cents?

Why must the number of miners constantly increase? Isn't it logical that at some point after reaching its highest level, it starts to decline?
There is a huge difference in efficiency between today's mining hardware and that of 10 years ago. Shouldn't we expect additional improvements in 5 or 10 years, for example?

The same, if the miners' wishes were to come true and the trend of high fees were maintained in the long term, with the eventual expected growth in the value of Bitcoin, wouldn't that result in a mass shift from BTC to other cheaper currencies? Won't that cause fewer transactions, thus less potential earnings for miners?

It is clear to me that miners like the current high fee situation because it is good for their profits, but it is certainly not good for the entire ecosystem.

[alani123]

This brings us to what's causing the current ongoing issue of high fees. It's not high demand and it's not miners wanting to charge extra for "keeping the chain secure".

As I explained in the first post and multiple times in the topic, this is a comparison and refers to the period where there will be no more reward,

Well then you picked a very weird time to make this post. We're facing very high fees as bitcoin users in this moment, which as you're rightly pointing out is pricing out many bitcoin users and provides counter-incentive to use bitcoin for most types of normal transactions.

So saying that bitcoin is absolutely bound to have high fees due to it not having tail emissions, while true, isn't something that would have to be discussed now. Maybe after 2 or 3 more halvings? But that's years away from now. Even based on this logic, we don't NEED to have big fees neither now nor at any point in bitcoin's usage. If the capacity for transactions was simply increased, more people could be paying fees, albeit smaller, but this increased capacity would eventually balance out to higher fees in total.

So really the solution of providing incentive to keep the network secure even after emissions in the form of block rewards end, the simplest solution to provide miner rewards could just be making it easier for more transactions to happen.

[stompix]

The hashrate didn't grow from 1 petahash to 400 exahash becuase there was a $1000 pot to be earned a day.
Again, end scenario is that fees will be the only reward miners will get, you think you will have miners with the same hashing power on 600k a day tx playing each 20 cents?

Why must the number of miners constantly increase? Isn't it logical that at some point after reaching its highest level, it starts to decline?

It doesn't, the numbers are for keeping the hashrate stable.

There is a huge difference in efficiency between today's mining hardware and that of 10 years ago. Shouldn't we expect additional improvements in 5 or 10 years, for example?

Efficiency doesn't scale security proportionally.
The security of the chain does not only count hashes, it counts how much $ it costs to buy and run something to overcome the network and in this efficiency has little to say.
If the network is protected by 10000Th/s and
- it costs $2000 to buy a 100Th/s machine the attacker needs to cough up $200 000
- it costs $2000 to buy a 2000Th/s machine the attacker needs to $10 000  

Well then you picked a very weird time to make this post. We're facing very high fees as bitcoin users in this moment, which as you're rightly pointing out is pricing out many bitcoin users and provides counter-incentive to use bitcoin for most types of normal transactions.

No, I picked the perfect time for it!
Because everyone was always saying when there are no more bitcoins to be mined miners will live on from fees!

When I told people what that meant during times when the fees were 1st/b they didn't show interest, when I told them the same thing now, look at the revelation, think of it as telling a kid about brushing his teeth, one time when he is just fine and doesn't give a damn and the other time when he is on the dentist chair for an extraction.  

If the capacity for transactions was simply increased, more people could be paying fees, albeit smaller, but this increased capacity would eventually balance out to higher fees in total.

Be my guest to open a topic about increasing the capacity, I'm grabbing my popcorn!
Common, do it, I can't wait for it!

As for me, I was just this week shown how it's physically impossible to have blocks larger than 4MB because only nodes that own a Titan computer and their own private global fiber optic cables would be able to cope with larger blocks!

[joker_josue]

The hashrate didn't grow from 1 petahash to 400 exahash becuase there was a $1000 pot to be earned a day.
Again, end scenario is that fees will be the only reward miners will get, you think you will have miners with the same hashing power on 600k a day tx playing each 20 cents?

Why must the number of miners constantly increase? Isn't it logical that at some point after reaching its highest level, it starts to decline?

It doesn't, the numbers are for keeping the hashrate stable.

But why do you have to maintain or increase hash power?
Hash power has increased, not to generate security, but because there is great competition among miners to obtain the block reward. With the gradual reduction in the reward value per block, this competition starts to make less sense. Because the cost increases for the block reward. I don't think it's logical to overload the network with fees to sustain this mining war.

The point is that 1T/H processes the same number of transactions and blocks as 600E/H. So this idea that this has to be always increasing doesn't make sense. In the next halving or two halvings from now, this mentality has to start changing, otherwise we will start to have absurd fees that will discourage new users from entering the network. Most people aren't going to have dozens of BTC to compensate for paying extremely high fees.

Why does this war for hash power have to be fueled? Why can't mining be made even more decentralized again, as long as more users have a processing machine? When mining is reduced to two or three pools (which is the path this is taking), won't this be more dangerous for the security of Bitcoin?

[franky1]

As for me, I was just this week shown how it's physically impossible to have blocks larger than 4MB because only nodes that own a Titan computer and their own private global fiber optic cables would be able to cope with larger blocks!

quoting for posterity..

great comedy, such idiocy

4mb every 10min...
0.4mb every minute..
6kb/sec... i think stompix is stuck on 1980's dialup

wake up stompix its 2023 calling, you are 43 years older then when you went to sleep
your 1980's cloth insulted telephone line might have been sheathed in fabric, but that didnt make it "fibre"



as a counter argument
seems some idiots think it fine for bitcoiners that want to use bitcoin should pay $2-$16 a day(average daily tx fee range)
well an average PC that can handle 4+ years of use is well under $400

yet fees:
$2 a day for 4 years in fee's $2920
$16 a day for 4 years in fee's $23,360

the idiots that think the problem is a PC at under $400, but dont see that $2,920-$23,360 fee cost is a big deal to them.. that person is completely ignorant of the problem being discussed in this topic

the problem is not the PC. it IS the fee's for daily bitcoin use that is the problem by a 6x-58x magnitude atleast

[joker_josue]

Whoever told you 4MB required a Titan Computer and fiber optic cables were required , is spreading misinformation.  

That was a good question to ask Satoshi. Why does it define 4MB per block and no more?
10 years ago, computers and the internet were already fast enough to support larger blocks.

[stompix]

The point is that 1T/H processes the same number of transactions and blocks as 600E/H. So this idea that this has to be always increasing doesn't make sense. In the next halving or two halvings from now, this mentality has to start changing, otherwise we will start to have absurd fees that will discourage new users from entering the network. Most people aren't going to have dozens of BTC to compensate for paying extremely high fees.

It does, but a network protected by 1 TH/s can be attacked by a guy spending $100 bucks on a S9 and just unplugging his AC for an hour and he has enough to reorganize 20 blocks, the other takes about ...2 million $10k machines to do, and about 10 nuclear reactors (depending on size)

One is Bitcoin, the other is Bitcoin gold, which got successfully attacked via a 51% three times.
Which one do you prefer?

Whoever told you 4MB required a Titan Computer and fiber optic cables were required , is spreading misinformation.  

~
quoting for posterity..

Of course, I'm a bit exaggerating this but, here it is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHIuuKCm53o
So, we shouldn't increase the blocksize unless we manage to get quantum computers in our smartphones basically..

[franky1]

~
quoting for posterity..

Of course, I'm a bit exaggerating this but, here it is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHIuuKCm53o
So, we shouldn't increase the blocksize unless we manage to get quantum computers in our smartphones basically..

if only you knew more then the 0.0001% you know about quantum computers you would laugh at yourself for making your final sentence
if only you knew more then the 1% you know about bitcoin you would laugh at yourself for making your final sentence
stop living in the 1980's

didnt you even listen to the first 60 seconds of the video you linked

blocks USED TO be slow because transactions WERE sent twice.. once at zero confirm relay independantly and again combined in a block at confirm with the header..(emphasis past tense)

well things have moved on since 2017..

did you know nodes no longer create blocks. so their outgoing data is far less than 2009-2010. when you look at bandwidth "issue"(non) there is more things about active connections that affect bandwidth, more so than the actual data blocksize limit they call the problem

and right now there are nodes having no problems with upto 120 inbound connections .. so please.. put that in your calculations and run some scenarios
...

funny part is in june 2017 the very same devs of blockstream were screaming blue murder about saying no to 2mb, saying no to 4mb. not due to any real risk. but due to it not being THEIR plan.. and by august they say 4mb is safe, because it was 4mb in their way..


realise they pretend there are risks of how it would require servers for blockchains if blocks get bigger ..more recently same guy spouting needing a subscription service they want to offer for block storage/supply if blocks get too big, because it double promotes their business plan. it fools people and makes people want their commercial subnetworks, and commercial software.. they want people to get annoyed and abandon bitcoin or be fooled into using their subscription software-as-a-service things they are hoping to develop, commercialise and then charge fee's on separate from mining fee's

their sponsors threw hundreds of millions at them and their sponsors want ROI via middle-men service fees.

but if you actually look at the real world, outside of their pitches and pitchforks.. you will see that 4mb/10minute is less than dialup speeds in reality

heck 4mb on clearnet is such a non-problem. that they dont even see it as a problem on darknet(tor) which is 10x slower+

as for the 8yo salespitches about hard drive bloat..
well if they cared about lean blockchains they would:
fix their exploit of meme junk.
fix the cludgy code that segregates input-output 1mb witness 3mb walls. to be a unified 4mb space to allow true bitcoin input-output utility in the full 4mb space to allow more transaction count.

but when you realise why thy allow more bloat but dont want to expand transaction count.. you soon learn its not about bitcoin efficiency. its not about expanding bitcoin utility for more of the community to use. its not about making bitcoin economically viable.. its simply to give bitcoiners an expensive headache experience USING bitcoin, so that people are forced(for "convenience") to use middle man services/subnetworks they own/develop as 'solutions'

to realise why blockstream frontmen get on stage to say what they say, you wont find the answer in any technical risk detail of internet speeds or hard drive costs.. you will however find their reasoning for their words when you see who sponsors them to get on stage
...
need me to go on and explain the next 2minutes of the video to you??.. i can go on all day

[joker_josue]

It does, but a network protected by 1 TH/s can be attacked by a guy spending $100 bucks on a S9 and just unplugging his AC for an hour and he has enough to reorganize 20 blocks, the other takes about ...2 million $10k machines to do, and about 10 nuclear reactors (depending on size)

One is Bitcoin, the other is Bitcoin gold, which got successfully attacked via a 51% three times.
Which one do you prefer?

Of course, the value I indicated was merely indicative, to mention that everything happens the same way with a lot or a little hash.

Regarding the famous possible 51% attack, unfortunately I see it more likely to happen as mining becomes centralized in half a dozen large miners and pools, than the other way around.

Since we are talking about the future, in 20 years, there will probably only be 2 or 3 pools left, which will together concentrate +50% of the hash power. What prevented them from getting together and organizing an "attack" on the network? Anything... The world is full of examples of lobbies, when 2 or 3 large companies in a market come together to align strategies.

[franky1]

Since we are talking about the future, in 20 years, there will probably only be 2 or 3 pools left, which will together concentrate +50% of the hash power. What prevented them from getting together and organizing an "attack" on the network? Anything... The world is full of examples of lobbies, when 2 or 3 large companies in a market come together to align strategies.

look to the past.. 2017 NYA lobby to get pools to flag something at a unnatural 100% level...

[stompix]

Bumping this as we're seeing some records

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-fee_to_reward.html#3m



The % of fees in reward went above 35%.

Remember than in the scenario where fees would need to compensate for the block reward disappearing they would have need to be already at 50%. So despite sky high fees, we're still not generating enough in reward to compensate for the block reward, meaning that right now, you would need to pay TWICE AS MUCH for the same security of the chain.

Reward (last 24h)   943.75+418.28 BTC
BTC943 being the block reward and BTC418 the fees for the last 24 hours.

So everyone who was cheerfully and easygoing as they claimed miners will earn from the fees and they will still keep the chain secure, you might have to re-write your script!

[examplens]

So everyone who was cheerfully and easygoing as they claimed miners will earn from the fees and they will still keep the chain secure, you might have to re-write your script!

In the Bitcoin ecosystem, the most important thing is that miners earn as much as they think they need. Other participants, users, and businesses are neither necessary nor important. Let them find their way and move on to other networks. I suggest that some kind of foundation be formed that will collect donations and distribute them to Bitcoin miners because they are at the greatest loss here.

[tread93]

Honestly I think its a double edged sword because yes it is making fees much higher and it is super annoying but on the other side of the coin it is also keeping people from spending/selling their coins because they don't want to lose that much in fees and keeping HODLERs at bay until a day where Ordinals are either overpassed from the blockchain completely or waiting until they found a way to make the transaction fees lower.

[Dump3er]

Honestly I think its a double edged sword because yes it is making fees much higher and it is super annoying but on the other side of the coin it is also keeping people from spending/selling their coins because they don't want to lose that much in fees and keeping HODLERs at bay until a day where Ordinals are either overpassed from the blockchain completely or waiting until they found a way to make the transaction fees lower.

This is definitely not the point that high fees are supposed to achieve. High fees are supposed to be an incentive for people to invest in hardware to mine/secure the network. As it was said, the $ needed to produce a block is an important indicator of the network's security. High fees means higher incentive means higher investments in hardware means stronger competition for the next block means stronger security.

It is of course not aiming at keeping people from using their BTC, that is a necessary consequences of other circumstances combined.

[joker_josue]

Remember than in the scenario where fees would need to compensate for the block reward disappearing they would have need to be already at 50%. So despite sky high fees, we're still not generating enough in reward to compensate for the block reward, meaning that right now, you would need to pay TWICE AS MUCH for the same security of the chain.

I continue to say that this type of reasoning makes no sense.

Bitcoin is worth 1000x more than it was 10 years ago, and what you earn in BTC from mining is less than half. Mining continues to be profitable, because the value of Bitcoin is also rising. The mining cost did not increase by 50% due to the 50% reward reduction. Therefore, you may earn less BTC, but you will earn more, because the value of Bitcoin is much higher.

This is definitely not the point that high fees are supposed to achieve. High fees are supposed to be an incentive for people to invest in hardware to mine/secure the network. As it was said, the $ needed to produce a block is an important indicator of the network's security. High fees means higher incentive means higher investments in hardware means stronger competition for the next block means stronger security.

It is of course not aiming at keeping people from using their BTC, that is a necessary consequences of other circumstances combined.

Are you willing to spend $10k on a mining machine, so you can manage your $1k wallet?

I agree that mining should be more diversified and not so concentrated, but with the monopoly of ASIC companies and the pools themselves, it is difficult for new miners to emerge.

[stompix]

I continue to say that this type of reasoning makes no sense.

Yes it does pretty much you just need to look at a broader pictures.

Bitcoin is worth 1000x more than it was 10 years ago, and what you earn in BTC from mining is less than half. Mining continues to be profitable, because the value of Bitcoin is also rising. The mining cost did not increase by 50% due to the 50% reward reduction. Therefore, you may earn less BTC, but you will earn more, because the value of Bitcoin is much higher.

First you ignored this thing,

Remember than in the scenario where fees would need to compensate for the block reward disappearing

So the value of BTC would be irrelevant, it's the tx value that matters, and no people scared of 100sat/vb are not scared of the satoshis they have to pay they are scared that means 10$, you could have to pay only 10sat/b for a tx, if that makes $50 good luck with it. You need to keep fees high in $ value too!

Now to explain the till then scenario, in which you claim the increase in price will keep the network just as secure.
We will ignore of course the x1000 claim, as you know pretty well that this will not happen again and let's instead make with the doubling every period which would mean in 10 years we see 3 of them, so 80,160,320 and the CM at 12 trillion. 
Ok, the increase in block reward has managed to keep the same miners mining even with the halving's but, and this is the important thing
- you till have the same 10 billion in equipment guarding not $800 billions but $12 trillions!
You see the difference?

Nobody is going to spend that to attack a network that is barely the yearly US defense budget (and this including satoshi coins in valuation), but make it the GDP of China and US combined and suddenly 1 billion in equipment to ruin world finances seems attractive for some!
 

[joker_josue]

You see the difference?

Nobody is going to spend that to attack a network that is barely the yearly US defense budget (and this including satoshi coins in valuation), but make it the GDP of China and US combined and suddenly 1 billion in equipment to ruin world finances seems attractive for some!
 

I see the difference, but I also see that on this basis of reasoning, in 50 years, to move 1BTC I will have to spend 1BTC in fees. That doesn't make any sense.

We do not have anyone external capable of attacking the network, but we have groups of highly powerful people internally who determine how the network works. That seems much more dangerous to me.

There must be a balance in the network, otherwise the network ceases to be interesting, as the person pays more in fees than in anything else.

[Rampagoe004]

In the Bitcoin ecosystem, the most important thing is that miners earn as much as they think they need. Other participants, users, and businesses are neither necessary nor important. Let them find their way and move on to other networks. I suggest that some kind of foundation be formed that will collect donations and distribute them to Bitcoin miners because they are at the greatest loss here.

I can't refute this fact. What makes us still comfortable using the Bitcoin network and has high security unlike Bitcoin Gold or Ethereum Classic is because of the enormous service of miners. Of course, as has been said that they also need money to give them extra money if their results are not fortunate in mining. It's just that I can't imagine what happens in the future if the cost becomes higher. Will people think of using new networks like LN?

[joker_josue]

In the Bitcoin ecosystem, the most important thing is that miners earn as much as they think they need. Other participants, users, and businesses are neither necessary nor important. Let them find their way and move on to other networks. I suggest that some kind of foundation be formed that will collect donations and distribute them to Bitcoin miners because they are at the greatest loss here.

I can't refute this fact. What makes us still comfortable using the Bitcoin network and has high security unlike Bitcoin Gold or Ethereum Classic is because of the enormous service of miners. Of course, as has been said that they also need money to give them extra money if their results are not fortunate in mining. It's just that I can't imagine what happens in the future if the cost becomes higher. Will people think of using new networks like LN?

The point I see here is that they are asking the whole question about the profitability of miners, in network fees - in other words, users.
Why is it that no one ever raises, or few raise the issue on the side of mining hardware companies?

If we look closely, mining equipment has not become that much more efficient than it was 10 years ago. Yes, they are more powerful, have more hashing power, and theoretically consume less. But, when we really look at the new equipment, we see almost no difference in efficiency compared to previous models. Basically what has to happen is not that the new equipment has more hashing power, but that the same hashing power is more efficient.

You can tell me that this is easy to say and the reality is not quite like that. Yes I agree. But, what I'm asking for is greater investigation of mining hardware companies. In the sense of being able to reduce energy expenditure, with the same hash. Don't be limited to just adding more chips to what already exists.

[Kelward]

At this point it is becoming confusing. I read somewhere that the high fees is as a result of Ordinal or NFTs on the Bitcoin network. According to the said comment, the Ordinals is a new trend that is massively being traded, hence the congestion of the Bitcoin network.

Exactly!

So it becomes confusing knowing what to believe to be the cause of the high fees and if there is any other way around it with respect to the future because fees like this is a kind of discouraging!

Miners will need to get paid for securing the network, this is a must, you can't pay all those miners 2 cents fee unless you want only the same level of security as Ethereum classic, so the whole thing is pretty simple, nobody will force you to do a thing but
- if in the future we will pay 1 cent per tx we would have one cent worth of bodyguard
- if in the future we want to have the same level of security as now, we have to pay twice the fees we're paying in the last few blocks!

This will be so much for Bitcoin being the top currency of the future where it's adoption will make everyone to look to cryptocurrency as the desirable means of transaction payments. Going by your analysis that means that we should not expect any redemption about Bitcoin high transaction fees coming down in the future, especially when the mempool is congested, in that case it'll still remain in the category of "an alternative means of payments", when it comes to using it to make payments for goods and services, because who'll bear the high transaction fees, seller or buyer? Fiat currencies will still be preferable, because it's cheaper and faster. Bitcoin will still maintain what is still keeping it going till today, a valuable digital asset to hold as an investment and for trading purposes, not as it's original purpose of p2p transaction payment currency, the high fees will be a clog in wheels of it's adoption.

[stompix]

I see the difference, but I also see that on this basis of reasoning, in 50 years, to move 1BTC I will have to spend 1BTC in fees. That doesn't make any sense.

You will pay as much as you like and as much as it's needed!
The assumption in all this scenario is that we need to pay x$ (in $ since electricity and machines are purchased with $) in fees to keep the same level of protection we have now.

Nobody will force anyone to pay more just because the coin is more expensive, you don't pay your accountant 40 times more because your Tesla shares have gone from $10 to $400 and you don't pay a jeweler 1 million to clean your wedding ring just because gold is more expensive.
People will pay as much as they like, just like donating to an NGO, what happens when the NGO is out of funds?  

We do not have anyone external capable of attacking the network,

Depends what you mean by external...
Actually for someone with enough funds and a clear scope, it's doable, especially a US based entity.

Price per th/s is $20 but that's small customer prices, make it $15 for large orders and it's $15 million for exahash, so 7.5 billion to get the gear!
But, you could at any time just purchase a whole company so suddenly instead of needing to buy 500 exahash you just need to buy 50exahash with that company and an extra of just 400 now. Not to mention that during all this time you still make money, plus, you could cripple the network even with 10%, you go all utopian and claim you only include low fees tx that users submit to you pool directly and you fake them all, dropping the network capacity by 10% while still earning blocks rewards. It's all a matter of money, and there are entities out there for which 5-10 billion is still not that out of reach.

Just the US classified budged is 10x times more, besides, if they felt like BTC would be a threat they would seize all of Foundry and Mara , kill all nodes on cloud services like Hetzner and Google and others and by the time we wake up we wouldn't even know what hit us!

But fortunately, nobody is planning such a thing and I don't see them doing it anyhow!
A coin who is barely managing to fight some jpg monkeys is a bit hard to picture as a threat to national security!

because who'll bear the high transaction fees, seller or buyer?

The seller always takes a hit from high fees:
- the customer is forced to actually pay more to get the merchandise, since he obviously cares that he has to pay $20 in fees and $40 for the products, so he ends up with less customers
- the seller himself pays fees because he receives the coins from the buyers in multiple outputs though the day, so despite him getting 20x $40 payments in full he will need to pay god knows what maybe even $100 to actually use that $800 when he plans on spending the coins.

[joker_josue]

You will pay as much as you like and as much as it's needed!
The assumption in all this scenario is that we need to pay x$ (in $ since electricity and machines are purchased with $) in fees to keep the same level of protection we have now.

Nobody will force anyone to pay more just because the coin is more expensive, you don't pay your accountant 40 times more because your Tesla shares have gone from $10 to $400 and you don't pay a jeweler 1 million to clean your wedding ring just because gold is more expensive.
People will pay as much as they like, just like donating to an NGO, what happens when the NGO is out of funds?  

Exactly, just because Tesla shares are higher doesn't mean I'm going to pay more to charge my Tesla.
Why does this have to happen in Bitcoin?

You will say, that the reward is lower in BTC. But, it is also true that BTC is worth much more now than it was before.
If you pay for energy in $ and BTC is worth more $ now, that means you also spend less BTC to support mining costs.

Attention, I'm not against miners, and I think they have to earn money for the work they do. I just criticize this idea of justifying the increase in fees, just because of the reduction in the block reward. Otherwise, the network will be held hostage by the tycoons, as they will have total control over the network by clogging the network with million-dollar fee transactions.

What I defend is that the network has to create a mechanism to make room for all types of transactions, regardless of the rate used. _{(I will try later to explain my idea.)}

Depends what you mean by external...
Actually for someone with enough funds and a clear scope, it's doable, especially a US based entity.

Price per th/s is $20 but that's small customer prices, make it $15 for large orders and it's $15 million for exahash, so 7.5 billion to get the gear!
But, you could at any time just purchase a whole company so suddenly instead of needing to buy 500 exahash you just need to buy 50exahash with that company and an extra of just 400 now. Not to mention that during all this time you still make money, plus, you could cripple the network even with 10%, you go all utopian and claim you only include low fees tx that users submit to you pool directly and you fake them all, dropping the network capacity by 10% while still earning blocks rewards. It's all a matter of money, and there are entities out there for which 5-10 billion is still not that out of reach.

Just the US classified budged is 10x times more, besides, if they felt like BTC would be a threat they would seize all of Foundry and Mara , kill all nodes on cloud services like Hetzner and Google and others and by the time we wake up we wouldn't even know what hit us!

But what stops a large investor today from buying Bitmine, Antpool, Via BTC or F2Pool?
Even worse, what prevents someone today from "maskedly" buying all these companies?

I doubt anyone will do this, but there is no stopping it from happening. Thinking about this possibility - unlikely, in my opinion - don't these companies have too much power? Separately, maybe not, but if it starts acting like a barracks maybe it will be different. I repeat, I doubt this will happen, but spreading this idea that very high fees are necessary to sustain the network could open up a gap for something like this to happen.

[stompix]

I just criticize this idea of justifying the increase in fees, just because of the reduction in the block reward.

Hihi, just to make sure!
I'm not saying fees are justifiable at this moment, nor am I saying one must pay high fees!
What's I'm trying to highlight here is that things cost money, and unless you pay, you don't get squat!

Some might get used to this hidden subsidy in issued coins that helps the security and will help it for a few more halving ignoring that nothing is free, once this subsidy goes away...time to pay! So just as some ignore basic and say torrents are free they forget someone is paying for the website, some are paying for seedboxes , some are payign for the actual game and movie to crack it, and so on, Bitcoin being far larger on a complete different scale, you need $.

And if 1000 guys paying 10$ is not enough, the only option is....100 000 guys paying 2$. 
But, cough , cough, roger ver...big blockers...bsv...

What I defend is that the network has to create a mechanism to make room for all types of transactions, regardless of the rate used.

Be ready to first defend yourself from incoming pitchforks, these are dangerous ideas, see above! 

But what stops a large investor today from buying Bitmine, Antpool, Via BTC or F2Pool?

Nobody!

Thinking about this possibility - unlikely, in my opinion - don't these companies have too much power?

Yeah, so , what can one do about it?  Nationalize them? Ban them?
Freedom is always a double edge sword, when you have a permissionless blockchain that means, well...it is what it is.
You want a decentralized censorship resistant network but you want a body that governs it and regulate it ? Of course not!
Bitcoin is a tool, when used correctly it works flawlessly, the problem just like with cars or guns is with the one using it, and we humans have a habit of screwing around.

[thecodebear]

Anyone who thinks Bitcoin was going to always have low fees simply doesn't understand how Bitcoin/blockchain works.


Of course, that doesn't mean there isn't plenty of reason to complain about prematurely high fees caused by ordinals nonsense clogging up the network for passing around stupid pictures or whatever instead of monetary transactions. But the extreme flurries of ordinals activities always calm down after a few days or a couple weeks. Fees look to already be back down to the $4-$7 range. So if you try to make a transaction and it happens to be during an extreme ordinals moment and you see the fee is something absurd like $20+, if its not a transaction you absolutely have to make right now, just wait a week or two and fees will more than likely be back to ~$5 or lower.


Long term though yeah anyone who understands how blockchain works knows that fees in the future will cost a lot more than today. That's fine. L2 is where we will all be transacting in the future anyway, where we will be paying like 5 cents per instantaneous transaction.

As for anyone who only want to have a small amount of Bitcoin, an amount in which it wouldn't make sense to pay high fees to move around a small amount of money, that kind of person will just be sticking to custodial solutions anyway and never touch the chain itself because they have no reason to.

There's gonna be all sorts of layers of the bitcoin ecosystem. In the future on-chain transactions will be for individuals moving a decent amount of money around (like shifting around their long term savings for whatever reason), large purchases, large batched transactions, or single-time on-boarding/off-boarding to L2's. Regular everyday transactions will be done over custodian services for convenience, or over L2's for those who want more ownership/decentralization. Only the rare large transactions are going to accrue the large on-chain fees.

Fees may very well be like $100+ as the norm in the future, in fact thats pretty much a guarantee, which will be cheap for most of the kinds of transactions that actually need to be done on-chain. A new bitcoin owner in the future will go directly to custodian or L2 networks, however that all gets set up. And before you all freak out about me saying it'll be normal for people to never have their own bitcoin wallet and to possibly only use custodians....realize that for the majority of people that is WHAT THEY WILL WANT!! Most people are going to want a bank-like experience where they don't have to think about anything dealing with the blockchain. There are going to be thousands and thousands of bitcoin transactions occuring per second on L2's and off-chain custodian networks compared to the 5 or so on-chain transactions.

So yeah, fees in the future are going to get much higher. Anyone who knows how Bitcoin works understands this. And most people who use Bitcoin in the future will never or rarely even be paying an on-chain tx fee unless they are rich or were lucky enough to get rich by getting into bitcoin in the 2010s or 2020s to the point where they have so much bitcoin they are moving around 6 or 7 figures USD in bitcoin on-chain so that paying a $100+ tx fee is nothing.

[Haunebu]

Interesting perspective op. Even if the fee increase is justified logically/technically, do you expect investors to suddenly stop complaining about the crazy high fees associated with BTC these days?

BTC is one of my favourite cryptocurrencies and I absolutely loved the fact that its fees were somewhat on par with LTC, Doge etc fees. Sucks that it took such a big U-Turn recently.

[Natsuu]

Interesting perspective op. Even if the fee increase is justified logically/technically, do you expect investors to suddenly stop complaining about the crazy high fees associated with BTC these days?

BTC is one of my favourite cryptocurrencies and I absolutely loved the fact that its fees were somewhat on par with LTC, Doge etc fees. Sucks that it took such a big U-Turn recently.

It's understandable that the recent fee increase in BTC might be disappointing, especially if you appreciated its lower fees in comparison to other cryptocurrencies. While logical or technical justifications may exist, youre right that investor complaints will persist as high fees can impact user experience and overall sentiment.

[franky1]

Anyone who thinks Bitcoin was going to always have low fees simply doesn't understand how Bitcoin/blockchain works.

bitcoin runs via code. and ASICS have no use for the code of transaction/fee selection. pools do
so pretending that bitcoin runs on the needs of miners is not true

code can be made/fixed to allow good utility of the bitcoin network without punishing everyone equally to need to pay your preferred amount of $100

you thinking bitcoin intents to be a $100 fee per transaction shows you dont know how bitcoin works
there are many ways to code bitcoin so that individuals do not need to pay more, while still giving mining pools a nice total to then distribute to miners as they see fit

the whole spot market economics will compensate mining pools with rich fiat conversion prices for totals of rewards for multiple more halvings. it is not even time this decade where fee's are an essential element of compensation.
and the amount of fee's per user can be mitigated via many scaling methods, of only penalising spammers to make spamming reduce to allow more regular genuine transactors.
making transactions lean can allow more regular transactors
increasing the block capacity can help too..
heck even uncludgy the bad math of miscounting bytes of the 4mb limit can effectively then let in a 2x-3x increase of transactor potential without even needing to go beyond the 4mb currently allowed limit
heck even changing small details like min fee incrementer to be 1sat per 10 bytes instead of 5000sat per kb increments can change how people bid/compete. thus reducing how volatile the fee's can ramp up

all where over the next few decades when fee's do become more of a consideration, there will be more transactors per blocks thus less cost individually

as for your talk of subnetworks. yes in future there will be many subnetworks meeting the needs of many niches of subgroups needs..
however the current limp,buggy flawed subnetwork promoted as the "solution" is not solving anything.

[joker_josue]

And if 1000 guys paying 10$ is not enough, the only option is....100 000 guys paying 2$. 
But, cough , cough, roger ver...big blockers...bsv...

So we come to the point. There is no need for high fees, but for many transactions. That's what I advocate, rates are low and the use of Bitcoin as payment is promoted, this problem no longer exists.

Because in reality the cost of mining only increases if the cost of energy increases. At the moment, even though there are some increases, miners generally have an excellent price on energy.

The network must be in a situation that makes it viable to be used, and at the moment it is not viable, we are in an auction scheme for whoever gives the most. This makes the network unfeasible for everyone, even for moving a lot of money. The problem is that most users who have a lot of BTC got that BTC at a very low cost. And when you have "easy" money, it's also "easy" to spend it.

What I defend is that the network has to create a mechanism to make room for all types of transactions, regardless of the rate used.

Be ready to first defend yourself from incoming pitchforks, these are dangerous ideas, see above! 

Of course, this has to be done in a balanced way, to reduce abuse.
I already explained part of my idea, in this topic or another - I don't remember. But, I will create a topic with the idea. I know that the majority will not support it, but it is an idea that can be worked on and help create a definition for this scenario, otherwise we will always be like this, which is not good for Bitcoin.

Anyone who thinks Bitcoin was going to always have low fees simply doesn't understand how Bitcoin/blockchain works.

~~

There's gonna be all sorts of layers of the bitcoin ecosystem. In the future on-chain transactions will be for individuals moving a decent amount of money around (like shifting around their long term savings for whatever reason), large purchases, large batched transactions, or single-time on-boarding/off-boarding to L2's. Regular everyday transactions will be done over custodian services for convenience, or over L2's for those who want more ownership/decentralization. Only the rare large transactions are going to accrue the large on-chain fees.

Sorry, but saying that the future of Bitcoin is to be used by the majority via custody services is really not knowing Bitcoin.

People often recommend L2 as a solution, but the fee problems are the same. Just camouflaged.

Let's see, who here is going to save $10,000 in L2? I believe no one. Especially if you are just one user.
If you have a monthly expense of $1000, you will want to move that $1000 to L2 to make small purchases.
Are you willing to move $1000 and pay $100 in fees? In other words, you only have $900 to spend.
In turn, as you will still have to pay small fees per transaction on L2, in the end you pay 120$ in fees, to move 1000$.
Where did L2 solve the fee problem?

I raise another question: what guarantees that L2 channels will not increase their rates in the future? It's just that mining still has the block reward. L2 channels only depend on rates. Do you really believe that if mass adoption occurs on L2, node owners will be limited to fees of 5 cents? If now, people are not satisfied with fees of 1$ in L1, those in L2 are already good Samaritans and will be satisfied with 0.05$. 

[the rise]

My simple way to overcome all this is to use alternative coins. such as Litecoin and Tron which currently remain the mainstay for transactions. bitcoin and ethereum are already very expensive. this is very natural because they are both iconic coins of cryptocurrency. The age, fundamentals, community of these two coins cannot be doubted. Of course anything related to these two coins is definitely not cheap, of course this is because the miners continue to increase so they require high gas for each transaction.

[BitcoinTurk]

Yes, I am a little frustrated with the transfer fees that are rising day by day and unfortunately I feel sad when I think that this will continue to be the case in the future. During the last few weeks I couldn't transfer the Bitcoins in my wallet due to high transfer fees and I don't think I will be able to do so again for a while. This situation was a bit annoying because I cannot transfer the Bitcoins in my wallet anywhere and I cannot use my capital stuck here for my short-term buy-sell transactions.

To be frank, it is quite sad that this situation may continue in the future because all this time we have been using Bitcoin to transfer money around the world quickly and with lower fees than financial institutions such as banks. Nowadays, due to rising transfer fees we make transfers more costly than financial institutions such as banks and unfortunately we cannot transfer money as quickly as we used to.

Predicting that the transfer fees that have increased recently and the longer transfer process will continue in this way in the future is both annoying and something that restricts people from making Bitcoin transactions. Although it seems certain that this process will continue in this way in the future I hope that there will be a positive development in transfer fees and transfer processes and we will be able to make transfers faster and at more affordable costs.

[kentrolla]

My simple way to overcome all this is to use alternative coins. such as Litecoin and Tron which currently remain the mainstay for transactions. bitcoin and ethereum are already very expensive. this is very natural because they are both iconic coins of cryptocurrency. The age, fundamentals, community of these two coins cannot be doubted. Of course anything related to these two coins is definitely not cheap, of course this is because the miners continue to increase so they require high gas for each transaction.

Yes this helps and I do use Tron especially for quick an cheaper transfer and it works if you are making transfer from an exchange and for that purpose even USDT is good because you don't risk any fluctuations in that but if you have to make transactions in BTC only or if you have BTC in your wallet and needs to transfer BTC itself to others then there is no way of escaping either hefty transfer fee or slow transactions, both in some cases.