5 ms·

The 137,000 satoshi price quoted isn't an average - it's the price to have your transaction almost guaranteed to be accepted in the next block It also shows 30

by nikcub 9y ago

The 137,000 satoshi price quoted isn't an average - it's the price to have your transaction almost guaranteed to be accepted in the next block It also shows 30 satoshi a byte gets you transaction accepted in 3-80 blocks, which based on experience is usually 3-12 blocks - and that works out to be 50c for the average transaction

bduerst 9y ago
For POS transactions though don't you want it to be instant? 3-12 blocks is half a hour to two hours wait. The chart shows 30 satoshis/byte to take 40 minutes to a 19 hours total wait.
- gruez 9y ago
  i think that's strawman at this point. even if bitcoin had 1GB block sizes, bringing the wait time to 1 block (10 minutes), it's still not going to be acceptable for POS. it's either going to be on-chain with no confirmations, or through layer2 protocols.
  - xorcist 9y ago
    Orphan blocks are common, one block has never been considered secure. Early in Bitcoin, a best practice emerged to consider six blocks secure. So that takes an hour, best case. (Given the insane hash power now maybe that standard can be lowered, but on the other hand it's not common to get a spot in the next block anymore.) So point of sale was never a good fit for Bitcoin. What most real world merchants do when the amount is small enough is to eat the risk. Even if it's easy to double spend in practice most customers won't bother for a can of coke.
- thephyber 9y ago
  I think it's important to consider the alternative. In Zimbabwe, you could lose a significant percentage of your cash's value if you delay a purchase. Taking a risk that the other side of the transaction might not be as big of a problem if you can look at their account balance before the transaction begins. Sure, you risk getting caught in a double-spend that is rejected from the blockchain, but if the alternative is to hold onto cash or to lose out on a transaction in a tough economy, you might be willing to take on that risk.
- nikcub 9y ago
  Accepting zero confirmation transactions at POS is a different problem to fees (which are atm admitantly high but that should improve) Merchant picks a solution based on who they integrate with - something like BitGo Instant[0], GreenAddress[1] or an analytics/fraud API provider that adds a risk score to a tx no different to a credit card transaction [0] https://www.bitgo.com/solutions#instant https://www.bitgo.com/solutions#instant
- SilasX 9y ago
  You definitely do want it to be instant, but this isn't quite an apples-to-apples comparison. That two-hour figure is the amount to get the transaction to the point of irreversibility so it can be re-spent without worry. The equivalent figure for credit cards is ~45 days and checks can take a week to clear. But you're right, making transactions on chain is not going to be practical in an untrusted environment and it still depends on intermediaries.
  - uncoder0 9y ago
    What you're describing sounds like zero confirmation transactions which bitcoin used to support before RBF. You can't reliably take zero-conf in btc anymore though. So you have to wait for settlement to turn over goods or services.
    - xorcist 9y ago
      Zero conf was never secure. Many did demonstrate double spends long before RBF was thought of. Still, that argument was made against RBF and was enough of a hindrade to consensus that RBF was made opt-in. And it still is. So you are absolutely free to accept zero conf transactions, and take the risk, as long as you don't accept those who flag for RBF. Most wallets won't even make them by default (which in my opinion is stupid with the fees we have today). The argument for a golden age before RBF isn't a good one. It was never reliable. And what little reliability it had is unchanged.
drdaeman 9y ago
I believe, dust collection is prohibitively costly. And if one's using Bitcoin any actively, they'll end up generating a lot of dust, I think. At the current BTC/USD rates, I have a few dollars worth of dust. However, it's spread over 17 inputs, so it's basically unspendable. It would require ~3.1KB transaction so even at 30sat/byte the fees would be, like, 0.00093 BTC ($6.5 at $7K/BTC). For poorer countries even $2-5 could be a well significant amount. One can probably have a meal for that money.
- freeloop3 9y ago
  > For poorer countries even $2-5 could be a well significant amount. One can probably have a meal for that money. Or ten... You're a little out of touch for whom you speak for.
  - drdaeman 9y ago
    Yes. You're right.
- nikcub 9y ago
  Many wallets and users don't do dust sweeps anymore since it associates all the utxo's with a single user and reduces your privacy Theres nothing wrong with having many utxo's of varying sizes - good wallets will give you a choice on how to select them when composing a transaction (such as Electrum) and you can sweep part of it back to yourself in what would otherwise look like any other transaction

by nikcub 9y ago

bduerst 9y ago

For POS transactions though don't you want it to be instant? 3-12 blocks is half a hour to two hours wait. The chart shows 30 satoshis/byte to take 40 minutes to a 19 hours total wait.

gruez 9y ago
i think that's strawman at this point. even if bitcoin had 1GB block sizes, bringing the wait time to 1 block (10 minutes), it's still not going to be acceptable for POS. it's either going to be on-chain with no confirmations, or through layer2 protocols.
- xorcist 9y ago
  Orphan blocks are common, one block has never been considered secure. Early in Bitcoin, a best practice emerged to consider six blocks secure. So that takes an hour, best case. (Given the insane hash power now maybe that standard can be lowered, but on the other hand it's not common to get a spot in the next block anymore.) So point of sale was never a good fit for Bitcoin. What most real world merchants do when the amount is small enough is to eat the risk. Even if it's easy to double spend in practice most customers won't bother for a can of coke.
thephyber 9y ago
I think it's important to consider the alternative. In Zimbabwe, you could lose a significant percentage of your cash's value if you delay a purchase. Taking a risk that the other side of the transaction might not be as big of a problem if you can look at their account balance before the transaction begins. Sure, you risk getting caught in a double-spend that is rejected from the blockchain, but if the alternative is to hold onto cash or to lose out on a transaction in a tough economy, you might be willing to take on that risk.
nikcub 9y ago
Accepting zero confirmation transactions at POS is a different problem to fees (which are atm admitantly high but that should improve) Merchant picks a solution based on who they integrate with - something like BitGo Instant[0], GreenAddress[1] or an analytics/fraud API provider that adds a risk score to a tx no different to a credit card transaction [0] https://www.bitgo.com/solutions#instant https://www.bitgo.com/solutions#instant
SilasX 9y ago
You definitely do want it to be instant, but this isn't quite an apples-to-apples comparison. That two-hour figure is the amount to get the transaction to the point of irreversibility so it can be re-spent without worry. The equivalent figure for credit cards is ~45 days and checks can take a week to clear. But you're right, making transactions on chain is not going to be practical in an untrusted environment and it still depends on intermediaries.
- uncoder0 9y ago
  What you're describing sounds like zero confirmation transactions which bitcoin used to support before RBF. You can't reliably take zero-conf in btc anymore though. So you have to wait for settlement to turn over goods or services.
  - xorcist 9y ago
    Zero conf was never secure. Many did demonstrate double spends long before RBF was thought of. Still, that argument was made against RBF and was enough of a hindrade to consensus that RBF was made opt-in. And it still is. So you are absolutely free to accept zero conf transactions, and take the risk, as long as you don't accept those who flag for RBF. Most wallets won't even make them by default (which in my opinion is stupid with the fees we have today). The argument for a golden age before RBF isn't a good one. It was never reliable. And what little reliability it had is unchanged.

drdaeman 9y ago

I believe, dust collection is prohibitively costly. And if one's using Bitcoin any actively, they'll end up generating a lot of dust, I think. At the current BTC/USD rates, I have a few dollars worth of dust. However, it's spread over 17 inputs, so it's basically unspendable. It would require ~3.1KB transaction so even at 30sat/byte the fees would be, like, 0.00093 BTC ($6.5 at $7K/BTC). For poorer countries even $2-5 could be a well significant amount. One can probably have a meal for that money.

freeloop3 9y ago
> For poorer countries even $2-5 could be a well significant amount. One can probably have a meal for that money. Or ten... You're a little out of touch for whom you speak for.
- drdaeman 9y ago
  Yes. You're right.
nikcub 9y ago
Many wallets and users don't do dust sweeps anymore since it associates all the utxo's with a single user and reduces your privacy Theres nothing wrong with having many utxo's of varying sizes - good wallets will give you a choice on how to select them when composing a transaction (such as Electrum) and you can sweep part of it back to yourself in what would otherwise look like any other transaction