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When did $4.30 transaction fees become even close to acceptable. I thought high TX fees was one of the things Bitcoin was purported to solve.

by niij 9y ago

Klathmon 9y ago
I'm not saying they are acceptable, i'm saying that $20 fees per average transaction isn't true in all cases except once in the history of bitcoin.
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  Is there reason to believe that sort of congestion won't reoccur?
  - mrgordon 9y ago
    Every major blockchain is working on scalability (sharding, offchain transactions, and various other solutions are in the works) So ideally there will be more traffic but less congestion
    - Tepix 9y ago
      I think Bitcoin has maneuvered itself into a corner where the remaining dev team doesn't dare to do any hardforks in the future even if they are important to keep Bitcoin competitive.
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    There is zero reason to believe that, and I'd even go so far as to say it WILL happen again, and probably soon. There are solutions being worked on, but they are not ready for primetime yet.
eterm 9y ago
My bank charges nothing for instant transfers of up to £10,000. That's both cheaper than and faster than bitcoin. (And this isn't a cost hidden in a perk of a monthly fee, there's no monthly account fee either.) I'm pretty sure if Satoshi re-appeared "he" would be lamenting those artificially keeping the blocksize small. The 2MB limit was put in as a temporary solution to a problem of too many worthless transactions. Bitcoin has the opposite problem now.
- emj 9y ago
  Does that stand for transfers over (nation) state borders as well?
  - patrickk 9y ago
    Yes, at least in the SEPA area (EU, plus countries in the EU orbit): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area#Coverage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area#Cove... As a means of payment in the SEPA region, Bitcoin is far worse on cost (free vs $5-10 in my experience), and sometimes worse on speed (1 - 1.5 business days for SEPA to clear). So in this geographic area, Bitcoin is literally losing to a combination of the legacy banking system, and a huge, multi country, multi lingual, somewhat unwieldy bureaucracy.
    - emj 9y ago
      That is still an EU payment system, which has improved a lot since the start of Bitcoin. I just need to transfer money to strange places and banks are pretty often crappy at that stuff, best solution I have is to send my credit card around the world.
      - patrickk 9y ago
        > That is still an EU payment system, which has improved a lot since the start of Bitcoin. Which shows how pathetic the main development team behind Bitcoin is (the core team). The fact that they haven't managed to fix problems that are years old and steadily getting worse is inexcusable. It should be a walk in the park for them to out compete a massive, political entity like the EU and the traditional banking sector. I hear you on the "strange places", that was where BTC was supposed to shine. It hasn't made any inroads into underserved markets that I'm aware of, e.g. less well-off countries and unbanked people. That is a pipe dream as long as the fees are so high to move funds around.
speedplane 9y ago
It will certainly be interesting if bitcoin fails because it is less efficient than humans.

When did $4.30 transaction fees become even close to acceptable. I thought high TX fees was one of the things Bitcoin was purported to solve.

by niij 9y ago

When did $4.30 transaction fees become even close to acceptable. I thought high TX fees was one of the things Bitcoin was purported to solve.

Klathmon 9y ago

I'm not saying they are acceptable, i'm saying that $20 fees per average transaction isn't true in all cases except once in the history of bitcoin.

ceejayoz 9y ago
Is there reason to believe that sort of congestion won't reoccur?
- mrgordon 9y ago
  Every major blockchain is working on scalability (sharding, offchain transactions, and various other solutions are in the works) So ideally there will be more traffic but less congestion
  - Tepix 9y ago
    I think Bitcoin has maneuvered itself into a corner where the remaining dev team doesn't dare to do any hardforks in the future even if they are important to keep Bitcoin competitive.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  There is zero reason to believe that, and I'd even go so far as to say it WILL happen again, and probably soon. There are solutions being worked on, but they are not ready for primetime yet.

eterm 9y ago

My bank charges nothing for instant transfers of up to £10,000. That's both cheaper than and faster than bitcoin. (And this isn't a cost hidden in a perk of a monthly fee, there's no monthly account fee either.) I'm pretty sure if Satoshi re-appeared "he" would be lamenting those artificially keeping the blocksize small. The 2MB limit was put in as a temporary solution to a problem of too many worthless transactions. Bitcoin has the opposite problem now.

emj 9y ago
Does that stand for transfers over (nation) state borders as well?
- patrickk 9y ago
  Yes, at least in the SEPA area (EU, plus countries in the EU orbit): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area#Coverage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area#Cove... As a means of payment in the SEPA region, Bitcoin is far worse on cost (free vs $5-10 in my experience), and sometimes worse on speed (1 - 1.5 business days for SEPA to clear). So in this geographic area, Bitcoin is literally losing to a combination of the legacy banking system, and a huge, multi country, multi lingual, somewhat unwieldy bureaucracy.
  - emj 9y ago
    That is still an EU payment system, which has improved a lot since the start of Bitcoin. I just need to transfer money to strange places and banks are pretty often crappy at that stuff, best solution I have is to send my credit card around the world.
    - patrickk 9y ago
      > That is still an EU payment system, which has improved a lot since the start of Bitcoin. Which shows how pathetic the main development team behind Bitcoin is (the core team). The fact that they haven't managed to fix problems that are years old and steadily getting worse is inexcusable. It should be a walk in the park for them to out compete a massive, political entity like the EU and the traditional banking sector. I hear you on the "strange places", that was where BTC was supposed to shine. It hasn't made any inroads into underserved markets that I'm aware of, e.g. less well-off countries and unbanked people. That is a pipe dream as long as the fees are so high to move funds around.

speedplane 9y ago

It will certainly be interesting if bitcoin fails because it is less efficient than humans.