Questionable features of Bitcoin

[Eldestyoung]

As bitcoin spread and gained more popularity, Bitcoin also is becoming cumbersome, slow, and expensive to use.
 
Transaction now take about 20 minutes to validate using the cryptocurrency and the transaction fee is increasing drastically and at a median of about $25 this year.

 I'm beginning to wonder what is really going on in the crypto space.
I think if this continues it will make bitcoin unviable medium of exchange.

What do we think??

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[Zaguru12]

As bitcoin spread and gained more popularity, Bitcoin also is becoming cumbersome, slow, and expensive to use.
 
Transaction now take about 20 minutes to validate using the cryptocurrency and the transaction fee is increasing drastically and at a median of about $25 this year.

First of all it is actually the transaction fees of the bitcoin network that is increase or let me at is high due to the congestion of the mempool but not the transaction time that has increased. Although the default time to mine a transaction is 10 minutes there is no definite time as to when a block is been mined. Even as we get this congestion of mempool the blocks are mined within 1 minutes or less. So there is no actual time but to get your transaction into the next block you will need to pay a higher fee at the moment to compete others.

Not withstanding the current fee saga has actually projected something like a challenge to the bitcoin network and the need to look for a viable solution to this growing congestion which to me doesn’t look good to use bitcoin as a means of payment. But just like satoshi said it is an alternative payment method so at critical times like this it is not bad to use other means convenient and secure to you, hopeful the devs will do something about this problem.

[SilverCryptoBullet]

First of all it is actually the transaction fees of the bitcoin network that is increase or let me at is high due to the congestion of the mempool but not the transaction time that has increased.

Transaction time includes the waiting time to get a first confirmation from Bitcoin miners, is increasing.

Average block time does not change and still is around 10 minutes
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-confirmationtime.html

Although the default time to mine a transaction is 10 minutes there is no definite time as to when a block is been mined.

Transactions are not mined but are confirmed by Bitcoin miners.

Bitcoin miners mine Bitcoin blocks and confirm Bitcoin transactions.

[Zaguru12]

First of all it is actually the transaction fees of the bitcoin network that is increase or let me at is high due to the congestion of the mempool but not the transaction time that has increased.

Transaction time includes the waiting time to get a first confirmation from Bitcoin miners, is increasing.

Yeah the transaction time is the confirmation time for a block as you have rightly said, i don’t think there is case where it is increasing, it is still very much going side ways either taking a longer time to mine a block (20 minutes or more like the OP said) or it is even less like a minute, an example is the 824516 block confirmed now which just took like a minute after block 823515 got confirmed. So we can say the transaction time is actually increasing when the block confirmation time is not definite.

[m2017]

As bitcoin spread and gained more popularity, Bitcoin also is becoming cumbersome, slow, and expensive to use.
 
Transaction now take about 20 minutes to validate using the cryptocurrency and the transaction fee is increasing drastically and at a median of about $25 this year.

 I'm beginning to wonder what is really going on in the crypto space.
I think if this continues it will make bitcoin unviable medium of exchange.

What do we think??

Bitcoin has repeatedly demonstrated its unsuitability as digital electronic money used for daily use for the purchase of goods and services. At the current cost of this, buying a cup of coffee or a bottle of beer will be expensive due to high transaction fees, and you will also have to wait a while for the transaction to be confirmed. Would you be willing to wait 30 minutes or so for a cup of coffee?

Bitcoin has long moved away from its original concept and turned into a speculative investment instrument that is unlikely to be used as electronic money. Institutional investors have been in this area for a long time, which means they will not easily give up the high returns generated in the cryptocurrency industry. Therefore, there will be no outflow of large capital, there will be no decrease in the capitalization of bitcoin, which means that the cost of btc will not fall, but on the contrary, it will only grow. Well, in this regard, commissions will remain high and will only grow. After all, they still want bitcoin at a price of 1 million, right? Now imagine what the transactions will be like at this rate. It's terrible to even imagine.

If a technical solution is not found to reduce fees and transaction processing time, that is, the improvement of bitcoin itself, then in the near future there will be further problems with the congestion of the BTC-network.

[pooya87]

As bitcoin spread and gained more popularity, Bitcoin also is becoming cumbersome, slow, and expensive to use.

The fee rise is not because of Bitcoin's increased popularity. It is all because of an ongoing attack known as Ordinals. You can find a lot of topics about it already.
In short:

• Someone found an exploit in how nodes verify transactions and created a method to use that exploit to inject arbitrary data into the blockchain.
• Then they created a fake market where they scam people by selling them the transactions containing "arbitrary data" by lying to them and calling them "tokens" or "NFTs".
• That market has created the incentive for regular users to join in this attack and create a lot of the same transactions using the exploit so that they can participate in the ongoing scam market.
• That has created an artificial network congestion and fee rise.

I think if this continues it will make bitcoin unviable medium of exchange.

Unfortunately that can be true and this attack will continue until the exploit is fixed.
The only good news is that despite what your title says, this is not a feature of bitcoin. This is just an attack using an exploit that is fixable.

[Despairo]

The transaction takes 20 minutes to confirm because you're not willing to spend high fee to be included into the next block, there's no change on the protocol so the fastest transaction takes ~10 minutes to be confirmed.

Bitcoin feature is decentralized and security, there was no mentioned if Bitcoin would be the cheapest currency.

@OP you can google "ordinals spam/attack" to know what exactly is happening right now.

I feel like the discussion keep repeated over and over.

[adaseb]

Where did you get the $25 medium figure? It doesn’t seem accurate, especially for the entire year. The past 2 months was bad and it was bad in May of this year but even then most transactions would be less than $25.

Look at the mempool for the entire year you will see it wasn’t like this all year. For some reason after summer the popularity dispersed for Ordinals but eventually came back and clogged the mempool again at the end of the year.

Now you can still get a transaction confirmed for less than $25, especially if you use segwit.

[mk4]

This has been talked about time and time again so I suggest doing some searching on Bitcoin scalability.

Basically, base layer is for huge transactions, while the low coffee-price transactions will be on other layers(that aren't really ready for now outside of wBTC on other blockchains).

[Charles-Tim]

Transaction now take about 20 minutes to validate using the cryptocurrency and the transaction fee is increasing drastically and at a median of about $25 this year.

The mempool has been between 100 and 200 sat/vbyte fee rate since days now. If you just have 1 input and 2 outputs, the fee can not be up to $25 which will get your transaction confirmation in the next block. Although, you are not wrong that bitcoin fee is costly right now. With 1 input and 2 outputs right now at 130 sat/vbyte, the fee to be paid when bitcoin price is at $41850 is $7.65.

I think if this continues it will make bitcoin unviable medium of exchange.

For people that are sending little amount of coins. What causes the increase in the fee is because many people are sending bitcoin and the transactions in the mempool is increasing or many already, which makes the fee rate to increase and the fee increases as it is proportional.

[pooya87]

at 130 sat/vbyte,

That rate is 130 times higher than it should be

Basically, base layer is for huge transactions, while the low coffee-price transactions will be on other layers

I wonder what the "censorship" dudes think about this statement

[Natsuu]

Yeah Bitcoin's got a bit of a headache with slower transactions and higher fees lately. It's like the network's feeling the heat from all the new users.  The Lightning Network is trying to come to the rescue by speeding things up and cutting costs with off-chain transactions, but getting everyone to agree on changes is like herding cats in the crypto world. Despite the hiccups, Bitcoin's still standing strong with a massive user base and there's a lot of behind-the-scenes action to make things smoother. So, while it's facing some growing pains, it's worth watching how the crypto community tackles these challenges.

[BlackBoss_]

Yeah Bitcoin's got a bit of a headache with slower transactions and higher fees lately. It's like the network's feeling the heat from all the new users.

Transactions will be speedy and quick like usual if you are ready to join fee race with Ordinals guys.

If you don't join the fee race with them, you will fail and your transaction will be pending for weeks until the hype from Ordinals settles down, but honestly I don't know when it will return to normal and Ordinals will go away.

The Lightning Network is trying to come to the rescue by speeding things up and cutting costs with off-chain transactions, but getting everyone to agree on changes is like herding cats in the crypto world.

To use Lightning Network, you will have to spend some $ to open your Lightning Network channel and not everyone is ready to do this.

[Table] All Lightning Network Threads In One Place.

[kentrolla]

While i appreciate your efforts in pointing out the flaws which has to be worked upon but you will only find people passing the bucks station it's not Bitcoin's fault and give you some lecture. Honestly, in layman's term it's not been used as per it's inception and regardless of reasons, congestion or ordinal things we have to understand it's a flaw and people are investing in Bitcoin just for investment and it will not be the first preferred or even preferred coin which it comes to P2P until these transfer time and fee is fixed.

[bitbollo]

you can also see it the other way around. it is such an effective, durable and capable of producing profits in the future that it is worth using it even with very high fees!
in the end there are a whole series of "off chain" solutions that allow you to make transactions... it is clear that using the blockchain is something that has limits and as such real "waiting lists" are created based on capacity of expense

[big kid]

Well, that's not a problem if you see BTC as an asset, you don't need it to move too often. If you need it for transactions - you can use lightning, but I prefer simply using altcoins for stuff like this.

[AnonBitCoiner]

It is true that Transactions fee is very high and Transactions are getting delayed so much. you said 20 minutes. I saw some transactions taking several days for one confirmation due to low fee used by senders, miners only want to verify transactions with high fee so they can earn high rewards.

but I assure you one thing this has not been like that. and it will not be like that forever. so Future of Bitcoin is not at risk just because of current market conditions. I am very hopeful that bitcoin blockchain will eventually get back to normal.
Also there is Segwit you can use for your convenience. transaction fee is lower there and it take less time to verify.

[Assface16678]

Well, that's not a problem if you see BTC as an asset, you don't need it to move too often. If you need it for transactions - you can use lightning, but I prefer simply using altcoins for stuff like this.

Well, it can't be helped as we do transactions based on bitcoin, or some are earning through bitcoin or making payments through bitcoin, so there are many transactions happening in a day, so even if they treat bitcoin as an asset, it still can't be helped to make a transfer in a day because that's what we do. But the thing is, in these days, the transaction fee is too expensive and the waiting time is getting longer, so what we can only do is wait until the fees are lowered and the transaction will be faster. That's how bitcoin works; it indicates that many people are using bitcoin, and that's why the transactions are being congested. Using altcoins for transactions is also not bad; it is in fact an alternative, but instead of altcoins, why not try using stable fiat currencies like USDT if there is a transaction needed to be done? Bitcoin should not be touched in these days because the fees are too expensive.

[moneystery]

fees have been increasing recently as a result of the network being congested and it's true that it's quite annoying because it seems like developers and miners are enjoying this. currently, if you check the mempool, bitcoin fees are at 213 sat/vb or $12.67, and if the network becomes more congested it is estimated that these fees will continue to increase.

this is the reason why until now bitcoin is more trusted as an investment instrument than for daily payments because the fees are sometimes unreasonable. just imagine, who would want to buy an item with bitcoin at such high fees? even when the fees dropped to 1 usd, people were still hesitant to use bitcoin for daily transactions.

though that doesn't mean bitcoin developers can't solve this problem through consensus to eliminate the causes of a congested network, but they prefer to just leave it alone and not act because they think it will disrupt the current economy of bitcoin.

[SamReomo]

As bitcoin spread and gained more popularity, Bitcoin also is becoming cumbersome, slow, and expensive to use.

First of all, I would like to tell you that Bitcoin isn't slow at all but maybe you're trying to talk about the late transactions and the reason for late transactions is because of the ordinals that are getting minted on the Bitcoin blockchain. The ordinals are one of the worst attacks on the Bitcoin network and that's the main cause of huge fees but the developers are working day and night to find a better solution to cope with those ordinals and once the ordinals issue is solved then we may again be able to get our transactions confirmed within few minutes by paying less fees.
 
Another thing you didn't noticed is that people are now considering Bitcoin more as an asset to hold for long-term instead of a day to day P2P solution that it was intended to be but we can't ignore the fact that still there are a group of people who use Bitcoin for day to day payments and it's working fine for them. I know they might be paying higher fees due to network congestion caused by ordinals but they're still getting confirmed transactions if they're willing to pay higher fees in such times. I hope the Bitcoin network will have less congestion when the ordinals issue is solved but meanwhile you can purchase it as an asset for long-term holding without any issue.