For several years now Blockstream and Core supporters have been advocating a "fee market" and having full blocks all the time. Many have even gone so far as to claim that Bitcoin is unstable without full blocks, while completely ignoring that the blocks were not full for the first 8 years of Bitcoin's existence.
As any Bitcoin user knows, the network is completely full now. Every business is spending countless hours dealing with customer support requests relating to transaction that haven't confirmed. In the last year confirmation times have gone up from about 10 minutes, to nearly two hours!
I was stunned earlier today when I came across a service that now allows people to pay with CREDIT CARDS to have their Bitcoin transaction confirmed!
This certainly isn't the bitcoin that I signed up for, and I think everyone should be shocked by how bad things have now gotten thanks to Core and Blockstream's misguided economic policies.
Segwit is not the answer.
It is worth noting that this kind of fee market is exactly what the current Core team have been advocating for years. Now they have it, and it is a disaster just like myself, Gavin Andresen, and many others have been saying all along. The owners of Friendster, and then Myspace thought that it would be impossible for any other social network to supplant their position. Facebook proved them wrong.
The current Core developers think that it is impossible for any currency to supplant Bitcoin, but if Bitcoin doesn't grow and adapt to keep up with consumer demand, it will be replaced by something that does, and it will be the current Core developer's fault for blocking every on chain scaling attempt and intentionally implementing disastrous economic policies.
If you love Bitcoin and want to see it become a currency used all over the world, it is time to reject the insane economic policies of Blockstream and Core, and support Bitcoin Unlimited instead.
Segwit is the answer.
i will help you to push tx (transaction acceleration ) i'm bitcoin miner I will include your tx in the block working on 24/7 ,Try our service contact info : https://telegram.me/emmaanjelina
Forum link
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1937408
You sure must be feeling silly now.
Good to have you back on Steemit after 6 months. Good post! :)
May I ask you: Are you against Segwit in general or only against Segwit as a solution for the problem with full blocks (as a scaling solution)? What if we enable Segwit together with a block size increase?
Glad to be back! The improvements made by segwit will also be implemented by the Bitcoin Unlimited team, but are not urgent. Fixing the congestion of the current Bitcoin network is super urgent.
Adopting Segwit would start offloading mempool congestion almost instantaneously, How is this not urgent?
FYI, I am running a bitcoin brokering business doing dozens of transactions with beginners every day and had not a single person complaining about the fee costs even when it's the 1$ range. If blockchain.info receive so many support request for transaction fee problems it's because the wallet has constantly been behind in terms of setting the right fee given the network condition. Still to this day BC.info has no reliable way to select Low Normal or High priority.
I've listened to that whole "debate" at anarcopulco and was completely mind blow by your lack of understanding of why zero-confirmation transactions are not and have never been secure. If anything RBF make these transaction more secure by signaling miners that a doublespend really is a double spend when it's not flagged as RBF. You seem to think that because 99.99% of past double spends attempts have not been included by miners mean that the incentive isn't there for a miner to decide to include a transaction with 100$ transaction fee over the standard fee.
Yes, indeed. I always told friends Bitcoin is fast and there are almost no transaction fees. I can't make those arguments anymore. In its current state Bitcoin looks more like gold. People use it as a safe haven, but as a payment method there are cheaper and faster options.
Steem for example has a 3 seconds block time and always zero transaction fees.
Good luck bro, it's up to people like you to make bitcoin transactions faster. I really miss those 20 minute transaction times from the good old days.
Following both you and your progress!
Nice to meet you steemjesus! The image you are using brings back some good memories. For those who don't know, it was originally created for use on my Bitcoin billboard in Silicon Valley: https://forum.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-discussion/the-newest-bitcoin-billboard-is-coming-to-silicon-valley-t149.html
Dude, you rocked the Acapulco conference. Too bad your beeper went off and had to cut your appearance short. I wish that the soft fork guys had half the passion as you man. Never stop following your heart and soul!
If STEEM has taught us one thing it's that TIME is the most valuable resource we humans have. The passion that you display proudly and publicly brings tears to my eyes knowing of all those who so dearly NEED blockchain tech RIGHT NOW!
Bitcoin Jesus 1.O ain't messing around yall
Transaction are still confirmed within an average of 10 min when you pay sufficient transaction fee.
Mycelium is a good wallet that allows you to set a priority fee it's "standard" fee is usually always next block too.
https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ to know what's a good fee for next block inclusion.
Transfering funds with steem in 3 seconds is a big mistake... Because after this experience and trying to send BTC again is a guarantee to commit suicide then after....
"Every business is spending countless hours dealing with customer support requests relating to transaction that haven't confirmed."
This is my biggest issue right now. I get so many emails about why a transaction has not confirmed and their order hasn't shipped out. And it's not just a couple hours, often we are talking 2-3 days later before a transaction is confirmed.
Yup! I actually had to take a break from helping with support tickets like this to write the article above.
Would I have to run a node to support Bitcoin Unlimited or are there other ways I can do that in my usual Bitcoin transactions?
Sure, running a full node helps. Make sure you have port forwarding enabled for your router as well. You can get the software here: https://www.bitcoinunlimited.info/ and check our percentage of the network here: http://nodecounter.com/
Don't forget to tell all your Bitcoin friends too!
This is the real problem with the Bitcoin model. There's so little ordinary users/stakeholders can do to hold miners accountable. We can sell our Bitcoin, and they are accountable in a loose sense to the Bitcoin price, but it is such a costly form of protest. Further, there is an argument to be made that Bitcoin miners don't actually want the Bitcoin price to rise in the same way stakeholders do. For a Bitcoin stakeholder like yourself, a price rise is pure gain. For miners the story is different. A rising price draws in more mining competition, and the difficulty adjusts as a result. A quickly rising price may justify R&D costs for those competitors, which would not be justified by a more stagnant Bitcoin price. As a result, for many miners, a quickly rising price may mean that their hardware becomes obsolete sooner, which is contrary to their financial interest.
ive made posts about free pushing of TXIDs by ViaBTC and AntPool in the past.
also today a few hours before you ive made a post on how to send BTC fast between exchanges using #litecoin #bitshares or #steem
but surely the full blocks are the problem this are just workarounds
I do agree that blocks could be bigger but the proposal of making blocks unlimited size and letting the network find a consensus for the limit seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
Personally I'd want to see a bump to 2MB in the short term. I think miners would be much more willing to do this now, as they may see the potential in collecting more fees.
Furthermore, I think a large and overlooked component of the recent mempool and fee swelling is well-intentioned but poorly implemented BTC clients that attempt to intelligently calculate a reasonable fee for a transaction. The end result, as we can see watching new transactions scroll by on a website like https://tradeblock.com/bitcoin is an automated inflation of fees beyond what would happen if these clients weren't in play. I think a piece of low hanging fruit in the BTC network is to improve how the clients calculate or estimate fees and additionally make it clear that if you're not in a hurry, a lesser fee may be acceptable.
I've just sent you a transaction over the Steem network to illustrate its speed. As people invested in BTC, we want it to succeed but there is no guarantee. Maximalism is clearly not a tenable position as newer ideas and tech overcomes problems and limitations of the old. Steem is quite different from BTC but it shows that there are other possibilities that can make a real difference in bringing cryptocurrency to a usable state for everyday people.
Nicely stated. Why not SegWit now for the malleability fix, the innovation, and a blocksize efficiency bump, with a firm window for 2MB blocksize if blocks continue to be full (not counting dust)? Unlimited blocksize contentious hard fork will probably be a disaster of unlimited size. Better a contentious soft fork than contentious hard fork IMO.
Instead of constantly trying to fight Blockstream and Core, why not use and market a cryptocurrency that actually has better potential to be a real transactional currency? BTC has continually failed to prove itself as that. I think it may be time to stop wasting so much time and energy on issues that likely won't be fixed.
Forget about the social media aspect of this platform. Is STEEM and its blockchain not better suited for transactions? Is it not as fast as any other crypto and does it not scale very well to handle relatively large transaction capacity?
Here's your answer to the ongoing BTC problems. The trick is reining in the dev team and getting some stability so that other developers can build off of the chain and investors are more willing to invest in projects in the STEEM ecosystem.
I feel you but at the same time Bitcoin market cap is in the billions and comparable to some of the top S&P 500 company. This won't go away whether or not the 7 transactions or so per second is fixed. In fact it's only growing right now.
That being said I see a clear possibility for Steem to take over Bitcoin at some point but that clearly doesn't mean people should just stop looking for ways to improve Bitcoin. Now I don't think POW or any POS will ever be able to compete with DPOS.
The fact that the market cap is in the billions of dollars and the network can't even manage to confirm transactions after several hours is exactly the problem here. There is no advantage for the average person to use BTC over any other existing transfer service, especially without any protection/insurance of transactions.
Add increasing fees to the mix and what exactly is it that makes people value BTC? The fact that they want it to have value? Bitcoin is failing as a currency. In my opinion, Bitcoin is the most overhyped crypto token and it is extremely overvalued compared to how it actually performs
The speculation train will likely come to an end sooner rather than later. It offers nothing useful to anyone who has an actual need to make quick, cheap money transfers. Without BTC being able to do that, it has zero advantages over existing legacy transfer services or newer cryptocurrencies that can actually deliver on the speed, low costs (or free), and scalability.
If actual investors from outside of crypto ever look to get more heavily involved in cryptocurrencies and their blockchains, BTC will most likely not be where they go. (The Winklevoss ETF thing is actually quite laughable to me.)
It's not good good at transferring small amount of money but it still can serve to transfer large sum of money. Also the price of Bitcoin performed better way better than almost all company shares in the last 2 years and the difficulty to mine Bitcoin is going up so the price of Bitcoin in the next year is looking good.
We're not talking about a small decentralized company here. We're talking about a top S&P 500 company. Around top 240 something (link below). We can talk about all the down side of Bitcoin yet this mining industry and what come with it won't go down so easily I tend to think.
I recommend you take a look at my sub-chapter named Bitcoin here, (only the sub-chapter named Bitcoin) if you'd ever wish to learn more about my ideas on the subject.
https://cryptolization.com/
This is "The Titanic can't fail it's too big" logic which has been wrong countless times in the past.
Examples:
Enron
Lehman Brothers
Atari
Circuit City
The Soviet Union
Pets.com
Polaroid
Nokia
Kodak
The Titanic
The fees to transfer Bitcoin will grow as they are right now but that doesn't lead to system failure nor will it lead to people stopping speculating on the price.
I didn't said it can't fail but for the Bitcoin mining industry to go away, Bitcoin would have to systematically fail and the transaction limit isn't a systemic failure its only a known limit. That's what I tried to express with my comment.
Too big to fail logic is an oxymoron. I totally agree.
Do you not agree that Bitcoin can fail due to users leaving and moving to lower cost competitors ? In other words a competitive failure rather than a technical failure.
Yup but I tend to think this won't happen so easily. One of the rare coin that could make it happen is Steem. This is due to the distribution of coins. Bitcoin has one of the best distribution. There's still quite a lot of Bitcoins concentrated in the hands of a few large holders but compare to other coin Bitcoin's distribution is way better off than most if not all and this is quite important. (Steem distribution is another subject altogether)
Also one other reason why Bitcoin seems quite resilient is its mining industry which govern the ongoing distribution and is way larger than the other crypto mining industries. Here's one excerpt from a sub chapter I made on Bitcoin that explain some of the virtuous cycle Bitcoin mining feeds on.
The lower transaction fees aren't so true anymore for small amount but if the cost of "producing" Bitcoin is rising and thus the ability of Bitcoin to store value is ever growing well it seems to lead to what we're seeing right now and with "little" chance of seeing a drastic change in those trends in the near future.
Yet clearly black swan events can come in many forms and a lot of those event can easily be imagined so that's why I put the word little between quotation marks.
This website can give a good idea of distribution of the major coin. Damn Litecoin, Dogecoin and Peercoin. Also 25% of Dash could be own by the founder of Dash because of the ninja mine in the first day of mining. It doesn't look much brighter for Ethereum and when it will switch to POS this will advantage larger holder over smaller one which will further concentrate money leading to selling pressure.
https://bitinfocharts.com/
https://etherscan.io/accounts/1
I know a crypto with zero transaction fee and two second confirmations, all it needs is a bit of liquidity.
And everyone who studied Steem knows its very real potential to grow and see its liquidity follow.
This is an important issue and should be addressed urgently. Thanks for posting this explanation for us.
This is an interesting problem that I haven't paid any attention to so far. Is there a wiki or something that lays out the arguments on either side?
Right on. The price is going up, but that's partly because velocity and the available supply is decreasing. The service is actually getting a lot worse, and endgame is a disaster unless something is done. Thanks for highlighting this crucial issue and standing your ground!
I dunno if you're joking or not. But that site just screams SCAM!
There is nothing they can do to ensure your transaction gets picked up faster .
VIA BTC runs an accelerator, and it's free, https://www.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator/
But they are a huge mining pool and are using that accelerator to spread the word about BU.
For the record TradeQwik is running a full Bitcoin Unlimited node for our hotwallet as a sign of support.
But please make sure to emphasize that this credit card thing is most likely a scam before some poor sod buys into it.
And of course I opened my mouth without checking it out close enough first.
Turns out the site is owned by bitmain, i.e. antpool. So perhaps not a scam, just scammy.
This is the same company that produced most of the empty blocks last month which the blockchain is sitting chock full and nearly 100,000 txs are sitting backlogged.
So glad I pointed my miners elsewhere.
@rogerkver is there any particular reason that bitcoin continues to allow empty blocks as valid? Seems to me that would be a really simple fix to update the clients to reject empty blocks when there are any backlogged transactions at all.
The ViaBTC bitcoin accelerator is total free but has up to 100 tx per hour limit. There is review here http://coinour.com/index.php/review-viabtc-bitcoin-transaction-accelerator/ It still won't fix the inherent issues bitcoin network face. The block increase solution is needed as soon as possible since we could see the blocks are filled up day by day.
This is such interesting news and perfectly know that BitShares and Steem, for instances, are far from having any trouble of this kind. what causes the problem for Bitcoin in the first place is the reason why BitShares was invented!
Thanks for exposing this information and the development of the Bitcoin #1 problem. Namaste :)
Bitshares are not up to it over hyped ,over rated and very unhelpful if you have a problem with there lite client
Steem Jesus meet Bitcoin Jesus :-) This is great! we love each other. This can only happen in Steem Projects and Steemit Community. Your are welcome @rogerkver
Great realizations here. Nearly $7 to confirm a transaction in a timely manner? 🤦♂️ Sounds more like western union.
Hey Roger! Nice to see you post here!
I followed you so long ago, it is really nice to see your name on here my friend!
Any day I trend on the same page with Roger is a very good day LOL. --- There is no doubt we are up against the wall with some big issues here folks.
Nice to see you back on Steemit Roger.
I have no dog in this fight. I just want what is best for Bitcoin and the community.
paying with Visa is bad. Supposedly we "fix"block limit and tx fees. what will be the implications? what about the part of network that refuses that "fix"? after that, you got to think about the electricity power. even if it's by consesus, this means a whole network working by electricity power whose spending will increase more. how about taking a holistic approach and thinking better of consequences?
That were really nice and useful statements on InfoWars with Davee Jones. Thanks a lot for that. I like you beeing just a normal guy with human temper and human guts. Keep it on and have fun!
By the way and don't tell anyone in any case ...
wanna buy some firecrackers? Big Boom, but small price? :)
Good picture update :)
It's good to see you post and even better to see you answer to some of the comments people have made. I mentioned very early somewhere on the Steem blockchain that prominent Bitcoin people would eventually come here to Steem.
I upvoted. It's a funny post. I didn't see this funny info about credit card paid Bitcoin fees anywhere else.
I'm one of those person who wish more Steem post were about cryptocurrencies.
I would really like to read your opinions on ripple.
Roger you need to post more here on Steemit. Money is lost when you don't.
I wouldn't miss my opportunity to upvote your post. I watched your video with Tone Vays and I have to admit, your logic was spot on. I was just in the DASH forum, and I found your tweet in there, which I commented on. The more we connect all these worlds together, the better. Thanks for your brilliance.
Thank you for your support!
phew, thank god segwit is around the corner, and your desperate lobbying for BU won't prevent it. By the way, did the clowns, you call them devs in BU, fix the bugs in BU yet? Last time there were some issues with blocks
I think you missed the point of my post. The developers behind Segwit openly support and advocate for full blocks and a fee market like we are experiencing now. They don't want it to go away with Segwit or anything else.
I didn't know that you are on the platform. You have new follower now! :)
Woah! BTC may not recover from this. That's scary for the whole cryptosphere.
Nice to see you posting again @rogerkver!
I can't believe its 2017 and the block-size issues has still not been resolved yet.
Good to see you around!
Lol, perhaps its not so bad for large amounts to be sent safely and quickly, but could certainly spell disaster if other coins could solve BTC's numerous problems without too much "compromise" on security (since BTC's PoW seems to be the benchmark for security in cryptos..)
Thanks for the information, I've yet to look into BU and should do so asap :)
Why do you think BU will be enough? It might be a small improvement for now, but it won't bring us any closer to a real cryptocurrency revolution.
We need much, much higher transaction speed. We should have already had it in last year. All this fighting over what kind of improvement should be implemented is just wasting resources and delaying the revolution.
I think we are already in the situation where abandoning Bitcoin is the only choice. I just wrote about it: Do you want to see a financial revolution? Stop using Bitcoin
The article points out that "if Bitcoin doesn't grow and adapt to keep up with consumer demand, it will be replaced by something that does". It just occurred to me to wonder, does this matter? Is the attachment to bitcoin anything other emotional. Surely the market will provide us with what we need, maybe it'll be bitcoin, maybe not.
To try to answer my own question;-
Well, those fees are obviously for the big investors or serious traders, not just everybody. Bitcoin is good for capital flight, like in China. And, yes, I prefer Litecoin. Lots of other altcoins over there, too
"Fixing the congestion of the current Bitcoin network is super urgent."
SW is solution for full blocks. I'm trying to retrieve valid arguments from your debates and articles Roger, why you are against SW, but cannot find any (only censorship and freedom of speech complaints). It's already almost common knowledge, that SW gives room for almost twice as many transaction within 1MB block, but what is more important, it is indispensable to implement LN, which is valid solution for scaling issues. All the more, this is safe path of scaling, as no hard fork is required. So i guess some political reasons makes you opponent of off-chain scaling, or maybe it's a speculative play agains altcoins? As a saying goes: "when no one knows what it's all about, it's probably about money"
Fun fact
i was buying a service online 2 days ago; the item i was purchasing was $1.99 USD / 0.0015723 BTC. i busted out my trusty Jaxx wallet and scanned the qr code; price was embedded so proceeded to send the fund. i was presented with an option of what fee i would like to pay; normally this would not be an issue. i have just checked again now and the fees are still the same and are listed below
i choose the slow option as it was not critical and i did not want to spend more of fees than the product it self.
FYI: this was a basic TX (1 standard input and 2 standard outputs)
TX took roughtly 26 hours to confirm; i was lucky the website i was purchasing from was still listening for the confirmation even though the payment gateway had expired the address (payment gateway had registered the payment was made as soon as it hit the mempool but after 15-20 minutes the message changed to expired; the service was no accepting unconfirmed txs.)
I can imagine that the story above you result in a support ticket being raised with the service provider if i was not willing to wait it out and seen what happened knowing full well the state of the network and my choice of fees; also helped that my item was only $2 ;)
I tried paying for a cheap item using bitcoin recently, the transaction fees weren't properly taken into account and they ate the majority of the transaction to cover fees - I ended up giving up after 4 transactions and switched to using paypal.. lol!
Awesome to have you here! I'm sure you already know this but Steem has zero transaction fees and it takes seconds to send. To be honest going back to bitcoin feels like comparing instant messaging to a carrier pigeon.
I actually know relatively little about it, but will try to read more when time permits. I haven't given up on Bitcoin yet though.
None of us have given up on Bitcoin - I think of it as analagous to gold to where we have silver, copper and other commodities.
Hey Roger. Good to see you reviving yourself on Steemit.
Upvoted
@shayne
Roger, you should give up pushing Bitcoin overseers or the cultish followers to change their minds. There are so much newer tech in some altcoins that would bring back that old feel of discovering something revolutionary. History tells us over and over the same mistakes are always repeated. It has always been "innovate or die."
Perhaps that day will come, but it hasn't come yet.
Good Good
Servira para nosotros los venezolanos ?
Good Day to you Roger! I hope you are feeling well. I have a slight issue and was wondering your thoughts on something. Have you ever heard of Wallofcoins.com ? Im in the process of waiting on some BTC and Im afraid because the site phone # doesnt work proper and the chat doesnt respond.
Is wallofcoins.com safe?
Now there are three bitcoin transaction accelerators on the market. http://coinour.com/index.php/comparing-three-bitcoin-transaction-accelerators-on-the-market/
Your buddy Jihan is actively blocking progress on Bitcoin AND Litecoin. Blame Core Devs all you want, but the community knows who the problem is. It's you and Jihan Wu. Bigger blocks will end up how? FULL! Transactions will end up how? EXPENSIVE! Real scaling means getting creative. If you want faster, cheaper transactions, stop actively standing in the way of progress. Of course, then your buddy Jihan won't have a 30% mining advantage through ASICBOOST. The truth is out. You're either a fraud or too stubborn to admit you're wrong. It doesn't matter either way. Bitcoin and Litecoin WILL have segwit, with or without you and Jihan Wu. Take a long walk off a short cliff, Roger.
It was great chatting with you in Acapulco.
Has Ethereum Foundation’s proof-of-stake model, dubbed Casper, to replicate the security and scalability of tested proof-of-work models been completed?
i will help you to push tx (transaction acceleration ) i'm bitcoin miner I will include your tx in the block working on 24/7 ,Try our service contact info : https://telegram.me/emmaanjelina
Forum link
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1937408
Please Note sutch Blog about Bitcoin:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@svtechnik/bitcoin-is-near-end-of-lifetime-why-nobody-can-believe-it
A member is accelerating transactions for free : https://goo.gl/yrKM3s
There must be another way.Are you gonna try to screw BTC holders?I mean selling off and buying a way cheaper BCH would certainly make you even richer.
Are you Bitcoin Jesus or Bitcoin Judas?
Hey Roger. I'm Aggroed. I'm the number 8 witness on the platform. I host a radio show through Discord. I'm hoping you'll join me for a show. you can find me through Discord. I'm also hosting an cross crypto panel discussion on January 27th. I'd love it if you can join me for that.