A week ago, the price of an average fee was $6. Many already felt that this sum was too high. On Friday, however, the average cost of a transaction fee suddenly jumped to $26. By Sunday, it had settled down at $20 – an amount that is still monstrously high. For people wanting to use Bitcoins to make a purchase, those fees could become prohibitive.
https://www.bestvpn.com/privacy-news/bitcoin-transaction-fees-soar/
This may get worse as the value of bitcoin goes up and more people transfer smaller amounts.
example:
If a bitcoin was not divisible, like it was an integer, you could only ever have a maximum theoretical total of 21,000,000 transactions in the queue at once.
If a Bitcoin was only divisible by 10, than you could only ever theoretically have 210,000,000 transactions in queue at once.
Bitcoin being divisible by 100,000,000 is both a blessing and curse, because that means you could have up to a theoretical 2,100,000,000,000,000 (or 2.1 Quadrillion) transactions in queue at once.
While this would never happen in reality, it probably couldn't either as the price of fees would snowball quickly and the number of stuck transactions would be problematic. Not to mention the fees would include some of that bitcoin, decreasing the theoretical number of transactions in queue.
Let's hope Bitcoin Core developers have solutions in place beside the lightning network to prevent the inevitable traffic jams that will occur as the price increases.
The bitcoin core developers have been resisting blocksize increases until now. Let’s hope they realize that scaling is required now on the bitcoin blockchain and asap on the second layer. A lot of hope rests on the Lightening network but it still isn’t clear how succesful this new concept will be.
Agreed. The lightning network makes sense on the ethereum chain in the form of the Raiden network, which would alleviate problems caused by apps like crypto kitties and move them off chain.
but for bitcoin it seems like the only use for the lightning network would be what the exchanges already provide, but on a more granular business-to-customer scale, or for companies like online casino's and betting, or for a bar tab, or even an app like crypto kittles, but to me that feels like taking 3 steps when you would only need to take one step with a better blockchain - just for the privilege of using Bitcoin, but the fees will still hit you after the off chain transaction is completed.
Yeah, my gut tells me the lightning network will be reinventing the wheel for what other projects already can do without frankensteining their code.
Yes, the fee is just crazy. If you want transfer big sum, it may not hit you too much, but for people who transfer less, it is too big fee.
It's a problem indeed. Both on Bitcoin and Ethereum, scaling is a major issue with PoW blockchains in general. I'm looking at alternatives right now. I really like the EOS project.
great post, but the lightening network will fix this issue , dont worry now for something that will be a mute point...... bitcoin is a store value more than a currency for many people you know.....people don't like spending something that gains value, when it reaches 100k it will be less volatile for sure......