Bitcoin Transaction Fee is Too Damn High!
What is going on with the transaction fee???? I have to make a transaction later today and I see this.
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html
$41.619 for an average transaction fee!? That is outrageous. At this point, wiring money at the bank is cheaper. This chart only goes to yesterday (12/20) so I checked other websites to see what the CURRENT fees are like.
According to: https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/
"The fastest and cheapest transaction fee is currently 940 satoshis/byte.
For the median transaction size of 226 bytes, this results in a fee of 212,440 satoshis. "OR $34
According to: https://btc.com/stats/unconfirmed-tx/
"Current best transaction fees 825 Satoshis/vbyte | 0.00825 BTC/KvB." OR 186,450 satoshis for 226 byte transaction. OR $29
So, it seems not as bad as yesterday. But I also have to account for the fact that the Bitcoin is down to $15,643 right now from around $17,000 yesterday. Also, median transaction size of 226 bytes is a very conservative estimate for transaction sizes.
This article is a little outdated but it says that in October 2015, average transaction size for a basic transaction was about 600byte.
Lets use the previous example of 825 Satoshis/byte to see how much it would cost to send a 600 byte transaction today in a timely manner. 825*600=495000 Satoshis=$77(@1BTC=$15655)!!!!!!
I feel the same too about the fee. I thought the fork will make it cheaper. I pray it reduce soon.
... probably only going to go up, the miners will eventually be paid completely by fees. Bitcoin isn't really the best solution for everyday spending, slow expensive transactions make its usecase more like a long term storage of larger amounts of value. Other blockchains are more suited for the microtransaction world of everyday spending. Bitcoin has its value and usecase as do many other cryptocurrencies. its an everchanging landscape out there, keep researching! =)
The transaction fees might keep going up but with it, but it seem to be causing the price of bitcoin to decrease. If the price can't remain stable or increase, would people trust it to store a large amount of value?
Segwit upgrade can solvethe fees problem. It is predicted that if everyone update to a Segwit wallet, the current mempool would always be empty, making fees go to lower values or even free! The thing is that Segwit is a opt in upgrade, so lot's of industry companies that use a lot of the block space for itself like Coinbase and Blockchain haven't implemented it yet, and as a consequence everyone is suffering. It is a sad state of affairs and I would like these big companies to already have implemented it, but they certainly have their own agenda to delay and harm the ecosystem doing it. Our best chance to get rid of fees is second layer solutions like lightning. It is already ready for use, people are just testing it, and next year we might see a slow adoption of the technology.
Yeah, it seems like everytime Segwit comes up for Bitcoin core client, there are many big players against it. They definitely have their own agenda. It's like as big money starts pouring in, so did bad politics. Lightning is already implemented in Litecoin though from what I heard. I wonder why its not being implemented for BTC yet.
A test of two lightning transactions was done in the main BTC network two weeks ago. So I guess it is already implemented in BTC as well. The thing is that Lightning, like segwit, is an opt in upgrade to Bitcoin's functionalities : ( expect the same slow adoption as Segwit is having.
The lightning network runs on top of the blockchain though right? So, my understanding is that some people can have it implemented on their wallet and it doesn't effect the blockchain as a whole. Once people who has the lightning network wallet start saving time and money, I think the word will get around and more people will start using it.
That's right : )
The more people use it, the more people will want to use it, this is the network effect. Let's hope it comes around quickly with lightning!
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