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When that article was written the transaction fees were around $1.50-$2.00 USD which is already a lot for meals and snacks. Now that the average transaction fee

When that article was written the transaction fees were around $1.50-$2.00 USD which is already a lot for meals and snacks. Now that the average transaction fees are anywhere from $7 - $60 I doubt people are buying much with bitcoin's dialup throughput. https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html#3m https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees...

atweiden 5y ago
Doesn’t the Lightning Network scale to millions of transactions per second, which is what El Salvador will be using? Fees are miniscule on LN, as well.
- CyberDildonics 5y ago
  That would mean people aren't actually using bitcoin, they are using this wallet's centralized lightning network balance. If they want to actually send money to someone using bitcoin, they will have to get their balance on to the main chain, which means that they will have to take it off this wallet and then incur the transaction fees for getting to the bitcoin chain. Then they will have to take the hit of the transaction fees again to get their actual bitcoin balance somewhere else. This is what happens when you use a purposely crippled cryptocurrency like bitcoin. They could use litecoin, monero or bitcoin cash directly and not have any 'wallet app' that keeps their balance. Then they would be in control of their own money.
  - atweiden 5y ago
    > If they want to actually send money to someone using bitcoin, they will have to get their balance on to the main chain Strike payment recipients can withdraw their USD balance as BTC to any Lightning-enabled wallet (or any other wallet, for that matter) [1]: How to purchase bitcoin with Strike 1. Open a Lightning wallet or Bitcoin wallet of your choice. (If you do not already have one, see our recommendations below) 2. Generate a receive address or invoice for the amount of btc you wish to purchase. 3. Scan with Strike and hit send. Done! You have just converted USD from Strike to btc in your wallet. [1]: https://strike.me/faq/howtopurchase https://strike.me/faq/howtopurchase
  - Vecr 5y ago
    I don't think so, if I have inbound capacity on my lightning node (hooked to my full node, so not centralized), they can just send money to me as long as the routes through the network have enough capacity.
- tomtomtom777 5y ago
  > .. millions of transactions per second, which is what El Salvador will be using? Why would that be what El Salvador is using? That is such a weird notion, and one of the reasons Bitcoin is often incorrectly called unscalable. How many financial transactions do you think an average person does per day? I don't know but probably not much more than one, maybe even less. If you handle special B2B cases like high frequency trading separately, financial transactions ceases to be big data.
  - wokwokwok 5y ago
    You think the average person does less than one financial transaction per day? O_o I mean, sure, not everyone is out getting a coffee every morning, but that strikes me as roughly an order of magnitude below reality. Let’s say, shopping three times a week, with 5 transactions per shopping trip; that’s already an average of 2 transactions a day, but worse, since it’s clustered in small time intervals. How do possibly get 0-1 transactions per day per person? That’s.. a society where people don’t use money. It’s not a thing.
    - yorwba 5y ago
      Over the last three months, I've made on average slightly more than two transactions per week, most of which is due to buying food every 3 or 4 days. Everything else is a rounding error. Now I won't claim my consumption pattern is typical, but it certainly shows that 0-1 transaction per day is possible. (What are the five shops you visit three times a week?)
      - ben_w 5y ago
        Working from home during the pandemic, I’ve been making 4.3 transactions per week. If I was still commuting, I’d add at least 5 a week for lunches, might add another 5 a week for train station Brötchen and cookie. If the restaurants were back to normal, might add two more per week for evening meals. I think I prefer my new normal of the bulk shopping being a once a week collection, so that probably won’t go back to my old habit of whatever/wherever, but even then the local doesn’t have everything I want, so there will be a few additional transactions with grocery stores. (My commute costs will likely be a once-per-year expense, so a rounding error for transactions per week).
- ulzeraj 5y ago
  Apparently they are already using it. There is a local company running nodes and publishing their wallet for people to use.
rawtxapp 5y ago
Strike is using lightning where the fees are barely a few satoshis (much smaller than cents) most of the time. This isn't the Bitcoin of 2015, there has been lots of new development, lightning is here and is being used with growing adoption (1ml.com), there are other changes coming to improve the base layer itself (taproot, eltoo, etc).
- CyberDildonics 5y ago
  > This isn't the Bitcoin of 2015 I agree, because I used bitcoin in 2015 and it actually worked well instead of being crippled to a few transactions per second for the whole network. How are they getting their balance on to the bitcoin chain? How much does that cost? Once they are in control of their money and actually have it on the real chain and not some wallet app maker's sub-chain they still have to eat more giant transaction fees. This approach will only work for people using this app, which defeats the whole purpose.
  - staktrace 5y ago
    Maybe you should try to actually read up on what the lightning network is before you argue against some ill-informed strawman version of it.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      No, CyberDildonics is right - and asking the pertinent question. Strike doesn't denominate customer deposits in any kind of crypto. They're a traditional custodial wallet for fiat deposits, and a registered money services business. They appear to be using the lightning network to move money between Strike's own accounts. They seem to use their own lightning nodes - that they don't allow third parties onto - to move money between their own accounts, rather than amending the centralized database of who owns how many dollars directly. However, it's all closed and internal, and I simply do not get why they would do this.
- dariusj18 5y ago
  I still don't understand how the lightning network works and maintains the important blockchain feature of bitcoin.
bubersson 5y ago
Transaction fees are 5 cents in the last couple days. The mempool is empty (see https://mempool.space/ https://mempool.space/). If you are paying more, then that's an issue with the exchange or wallet that you are using.
- CyberDildonics 5y ago
  No they aren't, you are misunderstanding that link. It gives an 'estimate' of 1 satoshi per byte. The actual current block is 12 satoshis per byte. Transactions are not a single byte of course. This is why the average transaction fee is $7 right now and was $60 a few weeks ago. https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html#3m https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees...
  - bubersson 5y ago
    Maybe you should actually check the blocks. If your transaction pays fee 5 cents it would easily get included in the mined blocks. Often immediately. As I mentioned, if people are using wallets or exchanges that set the fee higher, that's their fault. They are stupidly overpaying and that's why average is high. Since mempool is currently empty, the blocks include transactions with 1 sat/vB. For average transaction with 140vB that would be 140 sats, which is currently ~0.05 USD.
landemva 5y ago
The fees do fluctuate, thus layer 2 solutions. A few days ago I moved some bitcoin and two transaction fees were equivalent of USD 0.78 and 0.72. For finality in a few minutes, I thought it was reasonable.
- lottin 5y ago
  It depends on what country you live in. A few transactions like these every day would amount to $20-30 per month. Whereas you could use cash and pay no fees.
  - incrudible 5y ago
    > A few transactions like these every day... You don't do "a few of these" every day. It's for moving significant amounts of money, where security starts to matter. Lightning network is for small transactions. You don't need your daily purchase of a coffee to be on the Bitcoin blockchain for the rest of history. > Whereas you could use cash and pay no fees. Somebody still has to spend time and money managing all that cash, particularly in less safe countries.
    - lottin 5y ago
      > Lightning network is for small transactions. That's why I said a few transactions every day on average, as in 2 or 3, which seems a conservative estimate. > Somebody still has to spend time and money managing all that cash. I don't know how you manage your cash, I manage it myself, and I certainly don't know anyone who pays $20 a month to have their cash "managed". Especially in a third-world country, it seems unimaginable.
      - atatatat 5y ago
        They mean not being robbed.
      - incrudible 5y ago
        > That's why I said a few transactions every day on average, as in 2 or 3, which seems a conservative estimate. Lightning network has virtually no fees. You were replying to someone who managed to get a "real" Bitcoin blockchain transaction through for less than a dollar. > I certainly don't know anyone who pays $20 a month to have their cash "managed" I was thinking of the people managing cash registers.

atweiden 5y ago

Doesn’t the Lightning Network scale to millions of transactions per second, which is what El Salvador will be using? Fees are miniscule on LN, as well.

CyberDildonics 5y ago
That would mean people aren't actually using bitcoin, they are using this wallet's centralized lightning network balance. If they want to actually send money to someone using bitcoin, they will have to get their balance on to the main chain, which means that they will have to take it off this wallet and then incur the transaction fees for getting to the bitcoin chain. Then they will have to take the hit of the transaction fees again to get their actual bitcoin balance somewhere else. This is what happens when you use a purposely crippled cryptocurrency like bitcoin. They could use litecoin, monero or bitcoin cash directly and not have any 'wallet app' that keeps their balance. Then they would be in control of their own money.
- atweiden 5y ago
  > If they want to actually send money to someone using bitcoin, they will have to get their balance on to the main chain Strike payment recipients can withdraw their USD balance as BTC to any Lightning-enabled wallet (or any other wallet, for that matter) [1]: How to purchase bitcoin with Strike 1. Open a Lightning wallet or Bitcoin wallet of your choice. (If you do not already have one, see our recommendations below) 2. Generate a receive address or invoice for the amount of btc you wish to purchase. 3. Scan with Strike and hit send. Done! You have just converted USD from Strike to btc in your wallet. [1]: https://strike.me/faq/howtopurchase https://strike.me/faq/howtopurchase
- Vecr 5y ago
  I don't think so, if I have inbound capacity on my lightning node (hooked to my full node, so not centralized), they can just send money to me as long as the routes through the network have enough capacity.
tomtomtom777 5y ago
> .. millions of transactions per second, which is what El Salvador will be using? Why would that be what El Salvador is using? That is such a weird notion, and one of the reasons Bitcoin is often incorrectly called unscalable. How many financial transactions do you think an average person does per day? I don't know but probably not much more than one, maybe even less. If you handle special B2B cases like high frequency trading separately, financial transactions ceases to be big data.
- wokwokwok 5y ago
  You think the average person does less than one financial transaction per day? O_o I mean, sure, not everyone is out getting a coffee every morning, but that strikes me as roughly an order of magnitude below reality. Let’s say, shopping three times a week, with 5 transactions per shopping trip; that’s already an average of 2 transactions a day, but worse, since it’s clustered in small time intervals. How do possibly get 0-1 transactions per day per person? That’s.. a society where people don’t use money. It’s not a thing.
  - yorwba 5y ago
    Over the last three months, I've made on average slightly more than two transactions per week, most of which is due to buying food every 3 or 4 days. Everything else is a rounding error. Now I won't claim my consumption pattern is typical, but it certainly shows that 0-1 transaction per day is possible. (What are the five shops you visit three times a week?)
    - ben_w 5y ago
      Working from home during the pandemic, I’ve been making 4.3 transactions per week. If I was still commuting, I’d add at least 5 a week for lunches, might add another 5 a week for train station Brötchen and cookie. If the restaurants were back to normal, might add two more per week for evening meals. I think I prefer my new normal of the bulk shopping being a once a week collection, so that probably won’t go back to my old habit of whatever/wherever, but even then the local doesn’t have everything I want, so there will be a few additional transactions with grocery stores. (My commute costs will likely be a once-per-year expense, so a rounding error for transactions per week).
ulzeraj 5y ago
Apparently they are already using it. There is a local company running nodes and publishing their wallet for people to use.

rawtxapp 5y ago

Strike is using lightning where the fees are barely a few satoshis (much smaller than cents) most of the time. This isn't the Bitcoin of 2015, there has been lots of new development, lightning is here and is being used with growing adoption (1ml.com), there are other changes coming to improve the base layer itself (taproot, eltoo, etc).

CyberDildonics 5y ago
> This isn't the Bitcoin of 2015 I agree, because I used bitcoin in 2015 and it actually worked well instead of being crippled to a few transactions per second for the whole network. How are they getting their balance on to the bitcoin chain? How much does that cost? Once they are in control of their money and actually have it on the real chain and not some wallet app maker's sub-chain they still have to eat more giant transaction fees. This approach will only work for people using this app, which defeats the whole purpose.
- staktrace 5y ago
  Maybe you should try to actually read up on what the lightning network is before you argue against some ill-informed strawman version of it.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    No, CyberDildonics is right - and asking the pertinent question. Strike doesn't denominate customer deposits in any kind of crypto. They're a traditional custodial wallet for fiat deposits, and a registered money services business. They appear to be using the lightning network to move money between Strike's own accounts. They seem to use their own lightning nodes - that they don't allow third parties onto - to move money between their own accounts, rather than amending the centralized database of who owns how many dollars directly. However, it's all closed and internal, and I simply do not get why they would do this.
dariusj18 5y ago
I still don't understand how the lightning network works and maintains the important blockchain feature of bitcoin.

bubersson 5y ago

Transaction fees are 5 cents in the last couple days. The mempool is empty (see https://mempool.space/ https://mempool.space/). If you are paying more, then that's an issue with the exchange or wallet that you are using.

CyberDildonics 5y ago
No they aren't, you are misunderstanding that link. It gives an 'estimate' of 1 satoshi per byte. The actual current block is 12 satoshis per byte. Transactions are not a single byte of course. This is why the average transaction fee is $7 right now and was $60 a few weeks ago. https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html#3m https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees...
- bubersson 5y ago
  Maybe you should actually check the blocks. If your transaction pays fee 5 cents it would easily get included in the mined blocks. Often immediately. As I mentioned, if people are using wallets or exchanges that set the fee higher, that's their fault. They are stupidly overpaying and that's why average is high. Since mempool is currently empty, the blocks include transactions with 1 sat/vB. For average transaction with 140vB that would be 140 sats, which is currently ~0.05 USD.

landemva 5y ago

The fees do fluctuate, thus layer 2 solutions. A few days ago I moved some bitcoin and two transaction fees were equivalent of USD 0.78 and 0.72. For finality in a few minutes, I thought it was reasonable.

lottin 5y ago
It depends on what country you live in. A few transactions like these every day would amount to $20-30 per month. Whereas you could use cash and pay no fees.
- incrudible 5y ago
  > A few transactions like these every day... You don't do "a few of these" every day. It's for moving significant amounts of money, where security starts to matter. Lightning network is for small transactions. You don't need your daily purchase of a coffee to be on the Bitcoin blockchain for the rest of history. > Whereas you could use cash and pay no fees. Somebody still has to spend time and money managing all that cash, particularly in less safe countries.
  - lottin 5y ago
    > Lightning network is for small transactions. That's why I said a few transactions every day on average, as in 2 or 3, which seems a conservative estimate. > Somebody still has to spend time and money managing all that cash. I don't know how you manage your cash, I manage it myself, and I certainly don't know anyone who pays $20 a month to have their cash "managed". Especially in a third-world country, it seems unimaginable.
    - atatatat 5y ago
      They mean not being robbed.
    - incrudible 5y ago
      > That's why I said a few transactions every day on average, as in 2 or 3, which seems a conservative estimate. Lightning network has virtually no fees. You were replying to someone who managed to get a "real" Bitcoin blockchain transaction through for less than a dollar. > I certainly don't know anyone who pays $20 a month to have their cash "managed" I was thinking of the people managing cash registers.