How high can the transaction fees become?

[AHOYBRAUSE]

The sky is the limit.
We had some good years with solid low fees but these days and weeks it's just ridiculous. Making small transactions now has become impossible because of this.
I recently had to pay something and it had to be confirmed fast, so I had to spend 10$ for the transaction fee.
That's crazy.
Even sending Etherium right now is much cheaper than btc recently, and that says a lot.
Hopefully this kind of high fees won't become a normality in the bitcoin world, if so we really need some innovations to fix that.

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[philipma1957]

It’s impossible to calculate this, or rather practically impossible, at least I can’t imagine how to calculate how much a transaction in bitcoins will cost in the future. In any case, even when a person calculates the cost of a transaction in the near future, this amount will still change; it depends on so many factors that it is impossible to imagine.

It's impossible to know what the exact fee will be, but we can more or less predict it by using common sense.
Currently the average fee is $18 according to bitinfocharts. The historical top is $60 at the 2021 price peak when people were trying to exchange money fast, taking advantage of the premium. The price at the time was $60k, so the fee they were willing to pay was 1000 times lower than the price per bitcoin. If we were to estimate that people are ready to pay the price/1000 that would put us somewhere at $35 in fees and this is actually forming a resistance on the chart, because in May 2023 when the price went to $30k for the first time this year, people were paying $30 in fees and that was the top that lasted less than 2 days.



This is by no means a rule, but if we were to hit $100k next year, you could expect people to be ready to pay close to $100 for their transaction.

yeah if you started stacking last year at 16k and have 2 btc when it hits 100k you grab 200k for 32k

who cares if you spend 200 or 300 to cash it out.

[ZAINmalik75]

Have there been made any calculations how high the transaction fees for bitcoin main network could get in the future?

I currently have my BTC stored on a MultiSig cold wallet, which can't be connected to a lightning node. Do you think it's a better idea to move them to a lightning wallet like on electrum for example before the transaction fees get too high? I want to avoid paying a big amount just for one transaction in the main network

That's a good idea. I did not give it a thought, but in my opinion, you should. It is not that the fees are going to touch the sky soon; they are just temporary spikes due to the ordinals and other manipulation by the bad actors of the market, which will be solved soon, but it is best for you and all of us to follow this idea.

Because to setup the lighting network, we do have to pay the current fee, so if we want to avoid that, we should setup one when the fee comes down. Actually, in my opinion, I don't think fees are going to come back at the normal rate anytime because the ordinal problems are increasing day by day. Today I just checked the volume of Ordinals transactions, and it was ATH since its inception.

I was stunned for a moment, but if it keeps increasing, then it will be best for all of us to move to LN nodes before the halving because, after the halving, the price might become double what it is now.

[ChiBitCTy]

I got to be honest, it's times like these where sometimes my love and faith of bitcoin starts to waiver a little.  I went to go send just like one hundred or one hundred and fifty dollars worth of bitcoin from one of my wallets to one of my online gambling accounts and at one point it wanted $15 and at another point it wanted as much as $25, and these are expedited transactions either, just medium speed. I decided against making the transaction and lost out on the chance to use that "money".  We need better than this.

[philipma1957]

Have there been made any calculations how high the transaction fees for bitcoin main network could get in the future?

I currently have my BTC stored on a MultiSig cold wallet, which can't be connected to a lightning node. Do you think it's a better idea to move them to a lightning wallet like on electrum for example before the transaction fees get too high? I want to avoid paying a big amount just for one transaction in the main network

That's a good idea. I did not give it a thought, but in my opinion, you should. It is not that the fees are going to touch the sky soon; they are just temporary spikes due to the ordinals and other manipulation by the bad actors of the market, which will be solved soon, but it is best for you and all of us to follow this idea.

Because to setup the lighting network, we do have to pay the current fee, so if we want to avoid that, we should setup one when the fee comes down. Actually, in my opinion, I don't think fees are going to come back at the normal rate anytime because the ordinal problems are increasing day by day. Today I just checked the volume of Ordinals transactions, and it was ATH since its inception.

I was stunned for a moment, but if it keeps increasing, then it will be best for all of us to move to LN nodes before the halving because, after the halving, the price might become double what it is now.

It is not going to be ‘solved’.  How hard is this for people to understand.

If people want to use an oil tanker to ship a 1 quart can of oil this will continue to happen over and over and over and over  again.

People need to using the right shipper to transport .

Every suggestion I have read does not stop this issue.  Here are some ideas


truly banning any sends under 0.0001 btc
making smallest fee 0.00001 btc
make blocks 8mb
no pool can greenlight smaller fees

[Biznesmen]

Have there been made any calculations how high the transaction fees for bitcoin main network could get in the future?

I currently have my BTC stored on a MultiSig cold wallet, which can't be connected to a lightning node. Do you think it's a better idea to move them to a lightning wallet like on electrum for example before the transaction fees get too high? I want to avoid paying a big amount just for one transaction in the main network

The thing is you should have to be kept the fee at an average level. Otherwise people who are making smaller transactions are struggle with high transaction fees. It shouldn't be a regressive fee( like regressive tax, the tax rate decreases as the taxable income or wealth of individual or entities increases) but it should be progressive (progressive tax, the tax rate increases as the taxable income or wealth of individuals or entities increases). Progressive fee or taxes can be used as a tool for income redistribution providing social welfare programs, and reducing wealth concentration. They may promote greater social equity by shifting resources to support lower income individuals.

[Youngkhngdiddy]

The thing is you should have to be kept the fee at an average level. Otherwise people who are making smaller transactions are struggle with high transaction fees. It shouldn't be a regressive fee( like regressive tax, the tax rate decreases as the taxable income or wealth of individual or entities increases) but it should be progressive (progressive tax, the tax rate increases as the taxable income or wealth of individuals or entities increases). Progressive fee or taxes can be used as a tool for income redistribution providing social welfare programs, and reducing wealth concentration. They may promote greater social equity by shifting resources to support lower income individuals.

    Transaction fees are not set by any one person or entity—they exist in a free market. The more people who use the Bitcoin network, and the more complex their transactions, the longer it takes for the average transaction to be processed, because there are only so many miners, and their processing power (and time) are limited. So as the number of Bitcoin users increases compared to the number of miners, the more you’ll typically need to pay to get your transaction processed in a timely manner. Of course since fees are paid in Bitcoin, the higher the Bitcoin price, the more your fee will be valued in USD, even if the same fee a few years back would have only “cost” a fraction of the current amount.
   Transaction fees are high or low depending on how long it takes transactions to be included in a block at any given time. If there’s a higher backlog of transactions waiting to be included in a block, then transactions will take longer to be included in a block. Transaction creators can include a transaction fee, or set their transaction fee higher, to increase the incentive for a miner to include their transaction in the block candidate.

[Mr. Magkaisa]

Why the big spike causing the fee to double to $18 in one day? Who knows? Ordinals?

Yes, as you can see there's a sudden high liquidity in this token and Bitcoin fee is increased at this time too. You can check the recent block in mempool.space, take this TX as an example where someone willing to send 0.00000546 BTC by paying $11.24 fees, 546 Satoshi is a dust limit/smallest valid transaction in Bitcoin network.

     -  The equivalent of the fee of charges in Electrum is about that amount, so when I saw that I did not continue to transfer Bitcoin to another address, maybe I should wait for the tension to decrease with what is happening now with the network fee.

It hurts my eyes and pocket when the transaction fee's like that makes my eyes widen to be honest. How long will it take for the fee for each transaction made by bitcoin holders to drop again?

[m2017]

Have there been made any calculations how high the transaction fees for bitcoin main network could get in the future?

I currently have my BTC stored on a MultiSig cold wallet, which can't be connected to a lightning node. Do you think it's a better idea to move them to a lightning wallet like on electrum for example before the transaction fees get too high? I want to avoid paying a big amount just for one transaction in the main network

Even if the commission becomes high in the future, you will more than compensate for these costs with the profit you receive. The growth in the value of bitcoin will still be much higher.

If a MultiSig cold wallet provides a greater level of security than simply storing bitcoin on electrum, then I believe future high transaction fees can be neglected. Security and reliability of storage are now incredibly more important.

There is a balance between greed and safety.

[Bushdark]

It’s impossible to calculate this, or rather practically impossible, at least I can’t imagine how to calculate how much a transaction in bitcoins will cost in the future. In any case, even when a person calculates the cost of a transaction in the near future, this amount will still change; it depends on so many factors that it is impossible to imagine.

Calculating how high Bitcoin fee could go should not be what we need to be calculating. The market is still in the loading phase and that is what we need to be calculating. We need to make plans on how to buy more Bitcoin and keep because the bull market is going to be massive. Bitcoin tend to go extremely bullish by next year and we don't have to keep waiting for what will happen next how how the bull will look like. Investing should be a paramount not calculating how far the network fee could go.

[philipma1957]

It is an  easy  fix stack your btc and leave it alone in a cold wallet. think store of wealth.

Keep small amount of btc usdt ltc doge in an exchange like coinbase. think small buys sells etc low value etc.

If most people did this the high fees would be a non issue for most people.

If you insist on being a btc on chain only and nothing else you are feeding into the problem.

Here is an example I am trying to win an auction. If I win the price may be 0.0003 btc or about 12 dollars.   if fees are at 100 sats that will be 0.000226 or close to 9 dollars.

the seller is willing to take doge or ltc

fees will be well under 1 dollar.

[Mate2237]

But question now is will this not affect business in the ecosystem? What is happening on the bitcoin network (blockchain) is not really speak well to the system. How can someone want to make a transaction of $100 and transaction fee is $12.5. in my country Currency to dollar exchange rate right now, that amount is very much big. So if such amount is only meant for transaction fee then many people will not do transaction for a long period of time. And this will not end anytime soon so many people bitcoin will stock in their wallets for long time. And as I have said before no one can calculate the future of this scenario and only thing here is for everyone to wait until the scenario is over.

[panganib999]

I don't think you could. That's a pretty tough deal to ask, and even harder to predict than the price of bitcoin cause at the very least we have concrete definitive factors that could play a part in what the price of bitcoin would be in the future. Fees on the other hand are a little more tricky since it all depends on the current congestion rate in the network, which is already something that's hard to predict to begin with unless you get something like the ordinals coming in.

I say you shouldn't worry about trivial matters like that. Reinvest your time and effort into much more important stuff like actually preparing for the foreseeable future bitcoin-wise. Good enough that you're saving your money on a multi-sig wallet, but I would suggest using multiple wallets for different types of expense and transactions.

[philipma1957]

I don't think you could. That's a pretty tough deal to ask, and even harder to predict than the price of bitcoin cause at the very least we have concrete definitive factors that could play a part in what the price of bitcoin would be in the future. Fees on the other hand are a little more tricky since it all depends on the current congestion rate in the network, which is already something that's hard to predict to begin with unless you get something like the ordinals coming in.

I say you shouldn't worry about trivial matters like that. Reinvest your time and effort into much more important stuff like actually preparing for the foreseeable future bitcoin-wise. Good enough that you're saving your money on a multi-sig wallet, but I would suggest using multiple wallets for different types of expense and transactions.

Multiple wallets are an important way to manage and secure your wealth.



Having everything tied to single wallet will eventually jam you up or worse lose you some coin.

[Renampun]

Have there been made any calculations how high the transaction fees for bitcoin main network could get in the future?

I currently have my BTC stored on a MultiSig cold wallet, which can't be connected to a lightning node. Do you think it's a better idea to move them to a lightning wallet like on electrum for example before the transaction fees get too high? I want to avoid paying a big amount just for one transaction in the main network

Bitcoin fees are really going crazy right now, reportedly because the ordinal protocol is again disrupting the Bitcoin network, why hasn't the best solution been found to make Bitcoin fees more stable because to be honest, this condition is really disturbing!  ordinal protocol is like a parasite that eats away at the bitcoin network, they ride on the bitcoin network because their NFTs don't sell on the altcoin network, it's really sad, I didn't expect that yesterday when I wanted to send bitcoin from my safepal wallet, the fee requested reached more than $20, I didn't expect that, did others also experience the same thing?

[Yamifoud]

But question now is will this not affect business in the ecosystem? What is happening on the bitcoin network (blockchain) is not really speak well to the system. How can someone want to make a transaction of $100 and transaction fee is $12.5. in my country Currency to dollar exchange rate right now, that amount is very much big. So if such amount is only meant for transaction fee then many people will not do transaction for a long period of time. And this will not end anytime soon so many people bitcoin will stock in their wallets for long time. And as I have said before no one can calculate the future of this scenario and only thing here is for everyone to wait until the scenario is over.

Imagine paying $15 for a single transaction, nobody will spend those fees anymore, not this time until the fees come down as I'd rather use fiat money. This is the reason why Bitcoin is boldly considered as an investment, not a currency due to the volatile nature of its fees and price.

We're not sure how long the situation will be over. Some of my transactions stuck up and I don't want to increase the fees just to complete, I couldn't afford to do it. I'd say that increasing fees is also a reason why people were holding, not just only because the price is cheap.

[gunhell16]

But question now is will this not affect business in the ecosystem? What is happening on the bitcoin network (blockchain) is not really speak well to the system. How can someone want to make a transaction of $100 and transaction fee is $12.5. in my country Currency to dollar exchange rate right now, that amount is very much big. So if such amount is only meant for transaction fee then many people will not do transaction for a long period of time. And this will not end anytime soon so many people bitcoin will stock in their wallets for long time. And as I have said before no one can calculate the future of this scenario and only thing here is for everyone to wait until the scenario is over.

Imagine paying $15 for a single transaction, nobody will spend those fees anymore, not this time until the fees come down as I'd rather use fiat money. This is the reason why Bitcoin is boldly considered as an investment, not a currency due to the volatile nature of its fees and price.

We're not sure how long the situation will be over. Some of my transactions stuck up and I don't want to increase the fees just to complete, I couldn't afford to do it. I'd say that increasing fees is also a reason why people were holding, not just only because the price is cheap.

In what is happening right now, the holdings of some of the bitcoin holders are actually being squeezed again. Have you had this problem recently? Think about how long we've been doing transactions in Bitcoin with low transaction fees, and now that we're attacking the high fees again, we're getting a little burdened.

How long can we face this fee problem? Do you have any ideas? Edi, if we have an emergency, for sure we have no choice but to pay the expensive fee for this matter. The headache of these fees being charged to us is too much.

[FinneysTrueVision]

The mining algorithm has nothing to do with transaction fees.

yes it does.

sha-256 is setup to mine BTC. btc is 10 blocks an hour

scrypt is setup to merge mine 20 blocks of LTC an hour and 100 blocks of doge an hour.

So  room for 10 blocks of tx fees vs

room for 120 blocks of tx fees

both Algos have LN  service

So scrypt can do 12x the volume of btc

The fact you posted what you posted shows how deep the problem runs as you did not understand my concerns in the least or the reasons I keep writing this.

using btc via sha 256 for cash in small amounts is at a 12x disadvantage to using scrypt LTC/Doge

So rather then complain about high fees lets move on to proper use for

BTC
Large value movement of wealth
Large value storage of wealth

LTC/Doge
small value payments
small value storage.

The solution above would work . At least that is the way I see it.

Bcash and Bcash SV use the SHA-256 algorithm also and their fees are comparable to or perhaps even cheaper than LTC and DOGE. Ethereum has higher throughput capacity than LTC & DOGE, yet its fees are higher. Fees are more a result of demand for blockspace and total capacity rather than the consensus algorithm used.

[philipma1957]

The mining algorithm has nothing to do with transaction fees.

yes it does.

sha-256 is setup to mine BTC. btc is 10 blocks an hour

scrypt is setup to merge mine 20 blocks of LTC an hour and 100 blocks of doge an hour.

So  room for 10 blocks of tx fees vs

room for 120 blocks of tx fees

both Algos have LN  service

So scrypt can do 12x the volume of btc

The fact you posted what you posted shows how deep the problem runs as you did not understand my concerns in the least or the reasons I keep writing this.

using btc via sha 256 for cash in small amounts is at a 12x disadvantage to using scrypt LTC/Doge

So rather then complain about high fees lets move on to proper use for

BTC
Large value movement of wealth
Large value storage of wealth

LTC/Doge
small value payments
small value storage.

The solution above would work . At least that is the way I see it.

Bcash and Bcash SV use the SHA-256 algorithm also and their fees are comparable to or perhaps even cheaper than LTC and DOGE. Ethereum has higher throughput capacity than LTC & DOGE, yet its fees are higher. Fees are more a result of demand for blockspace and total capacity rather than the consensus algorithm used.

Bcash and bcash sv have under 2% of the sha-256 network. ie almost no security .

scrypt mining ltc/doge merged have well over 95% of the network very secure.

so the glaring defect of btc is it can not move 12x the tx that it is moving now.

if it could you would not need scrypt and ltc/doge merge mining.

we can argue semantics forever.

so rather that do that.

I mean 95% or more of the hashrate ie BTC and Ltc/doge both have that thus they are secure.

but btc has 1 block every 10 minutes

and ltc/doge have 12 blocks every 10 minutes.

the most secure coin in terms of gear  hash rate percent power use is Btc
the second most secure is ltc/doge.

I see what you mean by it is not the algo.

So I am clarifying myself

ltc/doge 95% of the algo’s hashrate a lot of expensive gear and high power use= safe
btc        95% of the algo’s hashrate  a lot of expensive gear and high power use = safe

ltc/doge 12 blocks per ten minutes
btc 1 block per ten minutes


doge/ltc could use another super low hash algo but it would mean junking a ton of gear. the gear is in place the infrastructure is there.

[hatshepsut93]

Look at the fee spikes of the past and double or tripple that to get some idea of how high they can get in the coming years. If Bitcoin shoots up, the traders will have more value in their hands and they will be able to tolerate higher fees when they move coins in/out/between exchanges. But the good news is that spikes don't last for long, just a few weeks and then fees go down to a more manageable level.