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>You can simplify this by using a different payment rail (in my case, Lightning over Bitcoin), but now you have a different problem: nobody has Bitcoin. The pr

>You can simplify this by using a different payment rail (in my case, Lightning over Bitcoin), but now you have a different problem: nobody has Bitcoin. The problem is that Lightning essentially is a subscription service. The user has to lock much more Bitcoin in a channel in order use Lightning for micro transactions, which defeats the purpose. The minimum fee to get a Bitcoin transaction confirmed in a reasonable amount of time is often over $20 USD at this point. That's a very large deposit for a $20 fee to be worth the effort. They could deposit a smaller amount of Bitcoin in a custodial wallet, but at that point you might as well use a credit card or Paypal. It defeats the underlying appeal of Bitcoin, which is controlling your own money. More people would have, and more importantly use, Bitcoin if it was allowed to scale on-chain. Why that hasn't happened yet is a different rabbit hole.

herbst 6y ago
I realize the issue is even less people having it. But there are chains like Tron that have the fee issue basically solved.
- willmadden 6y ago
  That's a non-sequitur. The "fee issue" was caused by a group of shady developers and hacks that hijacked the Bitcoin repository and rate limited it. When the community protested, they were censored and banned from the online forums.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 6y ago
"often over $20" is a lie. Fee for the priority transaction (to skip the queue) is $7 right now. It rarely exceeds that amount. You don't usually need a priority transaction when funding LN channel, so ~$1 fee will be enough.
- willmadden 6y ago
  I literally transact almost every day. To give you an example, the withdraw fee for BTC on Kraken is 0.0005 BTC, which is currently about 17.50 USD. Here is the current mempool: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,24h https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,24h To get your transaction confirmed in the next few blocks, you have to be in the "yellow" of the chart, and use a fee of around 120 satoshi's per byte. The average transaction is around 200 bytes, so you need to pay 24000 satoshis, which is 0.00024 BTC. That's 8.40 USD right now. The problem is that it's a double blind auction, so to have a very high likelihood of getting into the next block, you often have to pay 200-400 satoshi's per byte, which puts you right up at the $20 level. If your transaction is larger, it can be significantly more. Also, if the mempool gets even more backed up than it is right now, the fees can literally go as high as people are willing to pay when fighting over the restricted block space. >You don't usually need a priority transaction when funding LN channel, so ~$1 fee will be enough. If you try sending a Bitcoin transaction with a $1 fee right now it may not confirm for days and might confirm at all! That isn't a user experience that's going to create mass adoption. It needs to be an improvement on the existing options. How, exactly, is my statement that the fees are often over $20 a lie? You should stop accusing people of being liars without data to back it up. This forum is supposed to be for intelligent discussion, not trolling. This isn't twitter.
  - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 6y ago
    You confirmed it yourself, indicating that the fee is $8.40 right now. No, $1 fee will not get tx stuck for days, it will be confirmed within next few blocks. If you want "data to back it up", here it is for your service: http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=historic+btc+tx+fee+rate http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=historic+btc+tx+fee+rate

herbst 6y ago

I realize the issue is even less people having it. But there are chains like Tron that have the fee issue basically solved.

willmadden 6y ago
That's a non-sequitur. The "fee issue" was caused by a group of shady developers and hacks that hijacked the Bitcoin repository and rate limited it. When the community protested, they were censored and banned from the online forums.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 6y ago

"often over $20" is a lie. Fee for the priority transaction (to skip the queue) is $7 right now. It rarely exceeds that amount. You don't usually need a priority transaction when funding LN channel, so ~$1 fee will be enough.

willmadden 6y ago
I literally transact almost every day. To give you an example, the withdraw fee for BTC on Kraken is 0.0005 BTC, which is currently about 17.50 USD. Here is the current mempool: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,24h https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,24h To get your transaction confirmed in the next few blocks, you have to be in the "yellow" of the chart, and use a fee of around 120 satoshi's per byte. The average transaction is around 200 bytes, so you need to pay 24000 satoshis, which is 0.00024 BTC. That's 8.40 USD right now. The problem is that it's a double blind auction, so to have a very high likelihood of getting into the next block, you often have to pay 200-400 satoshi's per byte, which puts you right up at the $20 level. If your transaction is larger, it can be significantly more. Also, if the mempool gets even more backed up than it is right now, the fees can literally go as high as people are willing to pay when fighting over the restricted block space. >You don't usually need a priority transaction when funding LN channel, so ~$1 fee will be enough. If you try sending a Bitcoin transaction with a $1 fee right now it may not confirm for days and might confirm at all! That isn't a user experience that's going to create mass adoption. It needs to be an improvement on the existing options. How, exactly, is my statement that the fees are often over $20 a lie? You should stop accusing people of being liars without data to back it up. This forum is supposed to be for intelligent discussion, not trolling. This isn't twitter.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 6y ago
  You confirmed it yourself, indicating that the fee is $8.40 right now. No, $1 fee will not get tx stuck for days, it will be confirmed within next few blocks. If you want "data to back it up", here it is for your service: http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=historic+btc+tx+fee+rate http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=historic+btc+tx+fee+rate