IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE BITCOIN BLOCKCHAIN NETWORK?

[Common-Sense007]

I am concerned because $50 worth of BTC and the transaction fee is $126.00.

Please see that there is an anomaly or spike in transaction fees on these Bitcoin Block Heights:

Block 842,167    2.44 BTC
Block 842,168    5.65 BTC
Block 842,169   5.19 BTC
Block 842,170   3.64 BTC
Block 842,171   2.64 BTC
Block 842,172   2.77 BTC
Block 842,172   2.77 BTC
Block 842,173   4.10 BTC
Block 842,174   3.90 BTC
Block 842,175   4.89 BTC
Block 842,176   5.58 BTC
Block 842,177   4.86 BTC
Block 842,178   4.252 BTC
Block 842,179   3.73 BTC
Block 842,180   3.05 BTC
↓↓↓   
↓↓↓      
Block 842,188   1.03 BTC

I am trying to build my portfolio and asks if the integrity of the Bitcoin network would be dependable in the future?

[Poker Player]

I don't know what you're worried about, currently with little more than $1 you can get a transaction into the next block. I think you are late to worry about fees. There was a huge spike around halving and then ups and downs until we got to the levels we are at now, which are the lowest in quite some time recently. So no, right now there is nothing wrong with the Bitcoin blockchain.

By the way, we are on block 843380.

[pooya87]

I am concerned because $50 worth of BTC and the transaction fee is $126.00.

If you want to know more about fees look at the sites that report the fees and the mempool state like https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,24h,weight

Now if you are paying 202000 satoshi as fee, and with the fact that the current fee rate sits below 20 sat/vbyte that means your transaction size is massive and around 10000 bytes. That is not a normal bitcoin transaction.

* You are either participating in the ongoing spam attack by exploiting the protocol trying to inject arbitrary data into the chain. In which case you are part of the problem for the currently high fees and you have to pay the price!
* Otherwise this means your transaction had a large number of inputs in which case you have to rethink what you have been doing. Stop receiving dust payments so that when you want to spend those coins you don't end up with such a huge tx.

[sheenshane]

I am concerned because $50 worth of BTC and the transaction fee is $126.00.

Really?  What Bitcoin wallet you've used?
If that's a custodial wallet, I wasn't surprised by the fee they asked but if a non-custodial, it seems pretty not normal.

Use this every time you make a transaction and for reference for the fee cost, https://mempool.emzy.de/
Currently, while posting this, for the low priority, it costs 12 sat/vB, which is $1.

[adaseb]

Fees have been low recently. They spiked very high for a couple of days after the halving set in because of Runes protocol but have calmed down.

Provide more info on what wallet you are using. The way it fetched the fee was incorrect or maybe you are using some exchange which over charges on the fees.

[Apocollapse]

Yes, Bitcoin network was attacked by shit tokens called inscriptions, ordinals and runes. As you can see almost all the transactions are for minting runes, that's why the fee went spikes even though Bitcoin price was relatively stable, not yet in bull run.

We can expect it will happen again in the future, either during bull season or there would be someone create another shit token using different name.


https://mempool.space/block/00000000000000000002aef794313e441548e03e4ebf5f4344af11f04a466d6d

[Hatchy]

I am trying to build my portfolio and asks if the integrity of the Bitcoin network would be dependable in the future?

These were blocks that were mined after the halving block 840000. During that time the transaction fee was around 146$ for medium fee and close to 169$ for priority. Everyone knew that the developers of the runes were the cause of this hike. And everyone was upset but have to wait. A lot of persons kept complaining of which I told them to be patient as it will be back to normal as it usually has in the past few spike. There's nothing to worry about here mate. Bitcoin fee hasn't experienced what happened during this halving period but the spike in fee is a normal nature that come with bitcoins volatile nature. But it will usually return to normal. Just like others have said, you can get your transaction confirmation with 1$ fee as of now so there's nothing to be worried about.

[Lucius]

Really?  What Bitcoin wallet you've used?
If that's a custodial wallet, I wasn't surprised by the fee they asked but if a non-custodial, it seems pretty not normal.
~snip~

It is true that the "fees" for transactions from CEXs, which some call custodial wallets, can be much higher because it is actually about on-chain fees + service fees, but still the OP certainly does not have such a problem considering that it refers to some blocks when fees were much higher than they are today.

People who don't know that things like ordinal nonsense happen on the blockchain ask questions like this for a reason. Fortunately, such events are currently happening periodically, but who says that in the future there won't be more and that we won't have fees that will simply make most transactions impossible?

[tranthidung]

It is true that the "fees" for transactions from CEXs, which some call custodial wallets, can be much higher because it is actually about on-chain fees + service fees, but still the OP certainly does not have such a problem considering that it refers to some blocks when fees were much higher than they are today.

Centralized exchanges charge very expensive withdrawal fees that are on-chain fees + service fees (like wallet management, maintenance fees and more)

Old story. Exchanges get profits from users' withdrawal fees.

They proceed transactions in batch, not single one for each user but by charging each user a same expensive withdrawal fee, they get benefit from withdrawal processing.
I hope OP will see that topic is helpful.

• Minimize your transaction fee with Electrum wallet

[348Judah]

I am concerned because $50 worth of BTC and the transaction fee is $126.00.

As Poker Player already mentioned, there is nothing to worry on as of now and concern on the future, this has nothing to do with the attack on the bitcoin network o blockchain or whatever similar to that, even when the whole blocks had been mined, this is not a reason for higher transaction fees, am quite aware that bitcoin network is one of the most affordable one to use with lesser fee rate unlike some others, higher fee rate on transaction is not a permanent thing to have, just like now that everything has come down and being affordable.

[Zaguru12]

Centralized exchanges charge very expensive withdrawal fees that are on-chain fees + service fees (like wallet management, maintenance fees and more)

Old story. Exchanges get profits from users' withdrawal fees.

They proceed transactions in batch, not single one for each user but by charging each user a same expensive withdrawal fee, they get benefit from withdrawal processing.

Exactly the fees from centralized exchanges are definitely much higher than those from non-custodial wallets but still they don’t fix it at certain price rather it differs base on the congestion in the network and also on the type of withdrawal address picked. Right now it is certainly not more than $10, way much less than what the OP insinuated.

Yes those batch transactions also reduces the fee if they use just one utxo( one input) for all transactions but still it will not be much reduction because the outputs will still be much in a single batch.

People who don't know that things like ordinal nonsense happen on the blockchain ask questions like this for a reason. Fortunately, such events are currently happening periodically, but who says that in the future there won't be more and that we won't have fees that will simply make most transactions impossible?

We certainly cannot predict the future or the next spam attack we will face, we went passed ordinals and thought that was it and later got affected with Runes after the halving again. I don’t also think this things are gone. My advice to anyone holding bitcoin and possibly has multiple UTXOs right now is the best time to consolidate them. In the past I don’t take this consolation thing too seriously but right now it’s one of the little things to do to save fees in the future

[jrrsparkles]

These inscriptions spams showed that attacking the blockchain is possible but they have fo pay the price for doing it like paying $100 or whatever the amount they decided to for thousand of transactions every minutes which means it's like how 51% attack os not realistic and it's pretty much close to it. Whenever you see fee hike, let's take a break of keep some funds on LN to tackle.

[odolvlobo]

I am concerned because $50 worth of BTC and the transaction fee is $126.00.

Please see that there is an anomaly or spike in transaction fees on these Bitcoin Block Heights:

Block 842,167    2.44 BTC
↓↓↓      
Block 842,188   1.03 BTC

I am trying to build my portfolio and asks if the integrity of the Bitcoin network would be dependable in the future?

I don't see anything obviously wrong.

If you are paying 200k sats for a transaction when the current fee is around 12 s/vb, then the reason is likely that you have received your BTC through a large number of transactions.

I encourage you to learn more about how fees work. The best solution for you now is probably to wait until fees are very low and then send all of your bitcoins to yourself in a single transaction. It will probably still cost a lot, but less than what it would cost when fees are high.

On the other hand, it also could be one of these:

• you tried to send when the fees were temporarily high or
• your wallet is not very good at recommending fees, or
• you are choosing a fee that will guarantee that your transaction will be in the next block.

[Maus0728]

If you're that worried about the price of bitcoin and the fees when you do some transactions, it's probably in your best interest to learn how to use Lightning Network so you don't have to worry about huge fees when you transfer small amounts of bitcoin plus it's much faster that way, when it comes to the network, it's probably that way for a very long while but the fee goes down eventually, it's just that sometimes, there's so many people that are using the network to do their transaction at the same time as you.

[YUriy1991]

I agree with @Maus0728 and the view that if the transactions we carry out are only small scale I think it is not too problematic, and using the Lightning Network can be an effective solution that helps reduce the load on the main blockchain and reduces the amount of fees paid for processing the transactions we want to carry out. What needs to be taken care of is that you don't make the wrong choice, maybe there are many providers now, but choose one that is trusted so that it is safe and reaches your destination wallet.

[kryptqnick]

I used to rely on recommended fees by Electrum (ETA mode), but at some point, the fees got way out of sync with what was reasonable, so I switched to fees based on mempool, and I also just check mempool space every time before making a transaction. I find it a very reliable source, with very practical estimates. The fee is now around $1 or a little bit more for the highest priority. Fees occasionally get crazy, but it has nothing to do with specific blocks (I mean, there's no pattern there). It's just other events like spikes of Ordinals' activities or something like that.

[tranthidung]

Yes those batch transactions also reduces the fee if they use just one utxo( one input) for all transactions but still it will not be much reduction because the outputs will still be much in a single batch.

A reduction is a reduction and you missed a point.

Centralized exchanges charge same withdrawal fee on all users and they don't take into account how many user withdrawal will be batched into their batch transaction. This means they use batch transactions to proceed withdrawals for users, but don't discount any % for their users.

Reduction of transaction size, transaction fee will all make benefit for the exchange, not their users.

The hilarious thing will come when Bitcoin mempools congested and centralized exchanges will raise their withdrawal fees. Again, their users will bear the loss, exchanges still get benefit just by processing on-chain transactions.

[btc78]

People who don't know that things like ordinal nonsense happen on the blockchain ask questions like this for a reason. Fortunately, such events are currently happening periodically, but who says that in the future there won't be more and that we won't have fees that will simply make most transactions impossible?

There’s nothing much to worry about right now as fees these high usually calm down after a while but you are right and the possibility of these fees increasing more in the future and potentially staying that way may make other people reevaluate the purpose of bitcoin. I will not be surprised that as more people get curious about bitcoin, the more fees will be higher.

We need to come up with something that could solve this problem efficiently and as  quickly as possible.

[NotATether]

I used to think that people were crazy for spending several times more in fees than the transaction volume, as if they were gifting the miner. Now I know that it's just how the various inscriptions protocols work, except that doesn't make the people who are doing it any less crazy.

I do see that there is a secondary market for made-up "sats", and that is what they are spending all this money on to chase after, but in the end, most of these people aren't going to catch the wave but be swept away by it.

[Abiky]

I am concerned because $50 worth of BTC and the transaction fee is $126.00.

Please see that there is an anomaly or spike in transaction fees on these Bitcoin Block Heights:

Block 842,167    2.44 BTC
Block 842,168    5.65 BTC
Block 842,169   5.19 BTC
Block 842,170   3.64 BTC
Block 842,171   2.64 BTC
Block 842,172   2.77 BTC
Block 842,172   2.77 BTC
Block 842,173   4.10 BTC
Block 842,174   3.90 BTC
Block 842,175   4.89 BTC
Block 842,176   5.58 BTC
Block 842,177   4.86 BTC
Block 842,178   4.252 BTC
Block 842,179   3.73 BTC
Block 842,180   3.05 BTC
↓↓↓   
↓↓↓      
Block 842,188   1.03 BTC

I am trying to build my portfolio and asks if the integrity of the Bitcoin network would be dependable in the future?

There is nothing wrong with the Bitcoin blockchain. It's just that people raced to inscribe Ordinals within minutes of the halving event. The increased demand for block space, led to a substantial rise in network fees. Completely normal, imo.

Right now, fees have declined to a considerable level. When the hype fades away, it's the perfect time to move your BTC across the network. As simple as that. But if you're in a hurry, then I'd suggest you check out the Lightning Network or an altcoin such as Litecoin or Dogecoin for fast and cheap payments. Hopefully, BTC Core developers will introduce a mechanism to prevent fees from spiraling out of control. As long as decentralization is prioritized, nothing else matters.