Are High Fees Actually good for Bitcoin? My take after paying $24 to move $100

[briggswillis4real]

I know this will be unpopular, but hear me out.

Last week I had to pay 42 sat/vB - about $24 to consolidate some small UTXOs. I was angry.Then I thought about it differently.

When fees were $0.10 in 2020-2021, we had
- Spam Ordinals inscriptions of 100,000 JPEGs
- Exchanges batching 1 sat inputs with no cost
- People using Bitcoin blockchain as cheap data storage

When fees are $5-$20 now
- Only real economic transactions get through.
- People actually learn to use Lightning.
- Dust UTXOs finally get cleaned up
- Developers are forced to build more efficient wallets.

Satoshi designed fees to rise as block reward falls. Isn't this exactly what should happen? Low fees forever would mean Bitcoin failed to get adoption.

So my question is If we want Bitcoin to be above what it is currently, and used by a billion people, shouldn't we STOP complaining about $5 fees and start admitting high fees are a sign of success?💪

Or am I just coping because I paid $24 yesterday?

Curious what OGs who were here in 2015 think?  you paid high fees before, was Bitcoin better when fees were low and blocks were empty?

[Obim34]

Or am I just coping because I paid $24 yesterday?

You paid the fee because it was your dumb idea to pay it, nobody pays so much as fee?

You should be angry with yourself, up till now, the fee price is still low, I've been paying nothing more than 1sat/vB.

When fees are $5-$20 now

Whatever made you agree to pay $24 as fee? I know it is ignorance, or you are probably making stories to stir conversation.

[Odogwu-Blockchain]

It's insane to pay such fee.

Where do you spend such fee, I know decentralized exchange can't let you spend such high fee, Bybit which is Centralized can let you spend $11 for withdrawing, the last time I checked two months ago.

I haven't seen or heard any Network congestion issues on the blockchain too.

Where did you you spend that high fee on bro?

[Somto9Light]

Satoshi designed fees to rise as block reward falls. Isn't this exactly what should happen? Low fees forever would mean Bitcoin failed to get adoption.

Are you trying to say that the gas fees rises after block rewards are halved? I thought it is when there is congestion in mempool that is when fees begins to rise or is there anything i don't know because I haven't heard that halving block rewards causes high fees. Low fees will not lead to less adoption, it will only cause many miners to resign because block rewards will not be enough and miners will start depending on transaction fees alone.

[Perfectbaby]

Well for days now I have never made any transactions through Bitcoin network.
For me, I will be doing finding about that site before making deposit or withdrawals from any site you should first at least know the fee that would be involved while making deposit. Mempool.space is what you can actually use to know the fee level at hands.
I have never paid such amount to make withdrawal from Bitcoin network, and for that transaction to be prioritized fee has to be on a higher side than orders.

[Antidote47k]

I know this will be unpopular, but hear me out.

Last week I had to pay 42 sat/vB - about $24 to consolidate some small UTXOs. I was angry.Then I thought about it differently.

That’s an outrageous fee for such a transaction, i wonder why you would still proceed to complete the transaction with such a fee.

Satoshi designed fees to rise as block reward falls. Isn't this exactly what should happen? Low fees forever would mean Bitcoin failed to get adoption.

So my question is If we want Bitcoin to be above what it is currently, and used by a billion people, shouldn't we STOP complaining about $5 fees and start admitting high fees are a sign of success?💪

Or am I just coping because I paid $24 yesterday?

Curious what OGs who were here in 2015 think?  you paid high fees before, was Bitcoin better when fees were low and blocks were empty?

Higher fees doesn’t indicate that Bitcoin is being used more successfully, fees can rise due to a higher demand for limited block space, the demand may come not only from monetary transactions but also form inscriptions, speculations and other uses. While a higher fee indicates a competition for block space, the underlying usage might not be economically valuable. OP you might just be coping…. lol

[Ronsbit]

Nobody pay's such amount of money for transaction fees currently as I can remember. Transaction fees are currently very low that few cents can be able to execute some transaction s fast and of I may ask you, what wallet did you use to execute such transactions and can you show is the transaction details so we could trace and see for ourselves.

[SatoPrincess]

You won’t find a lot of users who joined in forum from 2015 in our local board so don’t limit your audience to the OGs. That being said, I find it hard to believe you spent $24 on fees, especially after reading your other topic.

[EluguHcman]

So my question is If we want Bitcoin to be above what it is currently, and used by a billion people, shouldn't we STOP complaining about $5 fees and start admitting high fees are a sign of success?

Unfortunately the transaction fees are not negotiable, it is being determined by different factors which is either based on the transaction speed and depends on the block units.
The faster you want the transaction to reflect is how much you get charged and also determined by the network congestion.
All these is not factorized by the price or value of Bitcoin but there is also need that miners rewards will go high when price grows but does not prioritize that transaction fees is a measure of how much Bitcoin is rated.

There could also be high congestion and the fact you pays high to confirm your transaction fastly does not mean Bitcoin price has increased.

[Josefjix]

You won’t find a lot of users who joined in forum from 2015 in our local board so don’t limit your audience to the OGs. That being said, I find it hard to believe you spent $24 on fees, radically after reading your other topic.

Op should show us the proof where such amount of fee is charged for sending Bitcoin, there was no report of Bitcoin congestion network been high, and the OP even knows more about mempool, to know how and everything about charges, in that post, the highest charge he mention is $15 under the highest speed charges. Something not going right.

[BIT-BENDER]

You won’t find a lot of users who joined in forum from 2015 in our local board so don’t limit your audience to the OGs. That being said, I find it hard to believe you spent $24 on fees, radically after reading your other topic.

Same here it is quite unbelievable to believe someone paid $24 to mover $100 it absolutely insane, I wonder if he set that ridiculous fee by him/herself mistakingly because it just don't make sense.
I here people complain about the high Bitcoin transfer fee on exchange for example binance but I don't even think it's up to that amount, it is just unbelievable to me.

[SatoPrincess]

You won’t find a lot of users who joined in forum from 2015 in our local board so don’t limit your audience to the OGs. That being said, I find it hard to believe you spent $24 on fees, radically after reading your other topic.

Same here it is quite unbelievable to believe someone paid $24 to mover $100 it absolutely insane, I wonder if he set that ridiculous fee by him/herself mistakingly because it just don't make sense.
I hear people complain about the high Bitcoin transfer fee on exchange for example binance but I don't even think it's up to that amount, it is just unbelievable to me.

There are times when the memepool is congested and fees are ridiculously high but nothing of that sort has happened recently.  I believe the OP made the story up, you can see the inconsistency in his timeline. In the beginning of his story, he said he paid $24 in fees last week, then later he says he paid $24 yesterday.

[Sim_card]

If you are paying high transaction fees, you are only feeding the miners and not the network. I don't see high fee as a sign of success for bitcoin because you only did that on your own will and nobody will love to pay high transaction fees because we have low fees as low as 1sat/vbyte to confirm your transaction currently. Next time, you should use mempool.space to see the transaction fee that you should use. The mempool is not congested and you can use even before $1 for your transaction fees. Though, consolidating small small input to one UTXO will cost more than if your $100 is in one UTXO.

[Nathrixxx]

So my question is If we want Bitcoin to be above what it is currently, and used by a billion people, shouldn't we STOP complaining about $5 fees and start admitting high fees are a sign of success?💪

Or am I just coping because I paid $24 yesterday?

Honestly, let me start with the last aspect you talked about. I see no reason why you should pay up to that amount except by mistake. The mempool has always been less congested, and I couldn't remember when it was last this congested, except when the ordinals clogged the network block space, unless I actually missed a recent surge.

Then, talking about the first aspects in your post as I quoted, wait... Are you kidding? Like you really want the transaction fee to be high? I don't know; people have been complaining when it was high, and now that it's not any longer, someone like you is still missing those bad memories we had; we wish we never experienced them again.

[Judith87403]

So my question is If we want Bitcoin to be above what it is currently, and used by a billion people, shouldn't we STOP complaining about $5 fees and start admitting high fees are a sign of success?💪

Or am I just coping because I paid $24 yesterday?

Bitcoin can still skyrocket without the fees being extremely high. It's not because of the increase in price of bitcoin that makes the fees to go high. If Bitcoin fees goes insanely high, it will become a problem to Bitcoin because people might start comparing the fees with the charges of traditional Banks.

You paid $24 for a single transaction or what? That's insane except it involved multiple outputs.

[Callido]

You paid $24 for a single transaction or what? That's insane except it involved multiple outputs.

According to the storyteller, he was transferring $100, the story he tells doesn't add up to a real fact, but only lies. There was also no congestion within the week, every transaction was as cheap as free, i don't notice if i pay a transaction fee because of how little it costs to send and transfer Bitcoin from a non-custodial wallet, except for those who are using exchanges, still, they don't charge up to that amount as service fee and on-chain transaction fee.