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

[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.