5 ms·

> network will continue to function What are transaction fees, still $20 USD average like they were in April? Also, there is a backlog of transactions, so it

by Ologn 5y ago

> network will continue to function What are transaction fees, still $20 USD average like they were in April? Also, there is a backlog of transactions, so it can be days to get a transaction done. Some currency.

vmception 5y ago
No, they’re not. https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_fee https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f... About $2 if you are in a rush, and yes potentially days if you use a lower transaction fee if you are not in a rush. you can always try and then replace the tx if you become rushed. About 1/100th of that if you have a lightning channel open already, I think
- Ologn 5y ago
  Well you're right, $2 is better than $20 Still skeptical about Bitcoin myself
  - vmception 5y ago
    Yeah i figured it wasn’t really about the transaction fees but I didn’t want to prematurely risk writing a strawman argument that wasn’t presented
- thesausageking 5y ago
  It's amazing that you can send $100m to anyone in the world with a phone, anytime day or night and it costs $2. And it's direct to the other person; no banks or payment processors. I don't get all of the negativity HN has towards Bitcoin. This simple ability is so amazing and scifi to me.
  - fsh 5y ago
    And now the receiving computer has an unintentional $100M bug bounty on all its software and hardware. For digital money to be actually usable, you need some kind of authority that can revert transactions in case of mistakes or fraud.
    - vmception 5y ago
      people can build that, and some services offer that its pretty clear there is a market and user story for a segment of the population that doesn't value reversibility
  - taytus 5y ago
    You are sending $100m in monopoly money thou.
    - rocqua 5y ago
      Some would argue (not me) that the value basis of fiat money is the same basis as the value of bitcoin. People believe that others will believe it has value, so it has value to them. Then there are arguments that bitcoin being non-inflationary should even give people more faith in the value of bitcoin than they should have in fiat. Personally I could see bitcoin maybe getting there in a loooong time. But whilst the actual value of bitcoin is fluctuating this hard, the argument doesn't hold up. I also kinda like the argument: "Because taxes need to be payed, and are payed in fiat money, there will always be some basic demand and price for fiat money".
    - vmception 5y ago
      $100mm that can be exchanged for $100mm worth of goods, services, and investments.
  - abvdj2 5y ago
    What specifically is sci-fi about it? If there were no regulations, I would be able to do the same with my bank account or credit card in a much more efficient way.
    - thebean11 5y ago
      Not really, because there would still be intermediaries that could halt your transfer or steal your money..especially if they weren't regulated! Not to mention, $2 wouldn't be nearly enough to cover credit card fees. Not sure how a 1-3% fee could possibly be efficient.
    - thesausageking 5y ago
      How would you do it? The only way I know of to send >$1m+ is wire transfers and they don’t work on weekends or to send to many countries, and they can take a day or more to clear. Also, you the recipient needs to have a bank account and it needs to be in a jurisdiction that’s friendly with the US.
      - vmception 5y ago
        And also SEPA isnt the panacea people make it out to be, there is frequently some europeans that chime in acting like it is I found it to be very similar to ACH within the US Investigating further, turns out many Europeans dont use SEPA between borders. They just send to their friends within the same country using the same major banks, which increases the probability that “Instant SEPA” is used under the hood, which is a good user experience Ive found crypto to have greater guarantees of unimpeded arrival in that monetary union as well.
  - martin_a 5y ago
    > It's amazing that you can send $100m to anyone in the world with a phone, anytime day or night and it costs $2. That's really a problem I'm facing about once or twice a week, and BTC has solved that for me, you're right. > I don't get all of the negativity HN has towards Bitcoin. This simple ability is so amazing and scifi to me. Well, maybe there's the HUGE impact of BTC on global energy usage, mostly generated from fossil fuels (of one kind or another) and that there's actually little benefit for anyone not doing shady business or scamming people.
    - thesausageking 5y ago
      The energy usage is FUD. Bitcoin uses less energy than Christmas Lights, clothes dryers, or the gold industry. And it uses ~1/10th what video gaming does. And it's energy mix is cleaner than those uses because a lot of it comes from flared gas and stranded hydro.
      - vmception 5y ago
        This is correct, people don't want to hear it because the energy use argument was just a convenient trend for them to latch on their already existing “useless crypto” arguments that just lacked a hook. People want to say that there must be some Other use of the energy and aren't aware of how much energy has just been wasted and strewn directly into the atmosphere for decades, with crypto mining onsite being the only economic use so far. The miners also did themselves a disservice by trying to keep their energy sources secret for several years, I know some of them in North America intentionally helped spread the energy misinformation just to slow others down from getting capital to build out their own sites. But honestly all of this doesn't really matter as the oil and gas producers with the sites are the slowest ones to adopt. The ones already polluting for a century who are desperate for a solution are just slow to collaborate with the solution providers, the miners. They aren't stuck on carbon emissions as they have already made that their identity, they get that mining onsite reduces their carbon emissions even though other people ironically arent willing to understand that, the people running sites are just technophobes and computing luddites who dont get crypto, with a slight general concern about safety with adding more stuff to a dangerous site.
  - a_shovel 5y ago
    Most people don't see the benefit of being able to send $100,000,000 for $2 because most people will never need, or be able, to send $100,000,000 to anyone. Or $1,000,000, or even $10,000.
    - Frank_231 5y ago
      [dead]
  - falcolas 5y ago
    > no banks or payment processors. Until you want to get local currency, at which point you have to get involved with a processor. And taxes. And everything else associated with currency movement.
  - shmatt 5y ago
    If you're stating the $ amount and not BTC though, it might be worth $70m by the time you purchase the BTC and your receiver sells them... or $200m, who knows 1 BTC = 1 BTC still true though
    - vmception 5y ago
      if I ever purchased bitcoin specifically to send it to someone else, it would happen so fast that extreme market volatility is so improbable that the user experience isn't different than any other form of payment These are 24/7 markets, so even extreme market volatility happens over 3 trading sessions compared to something like equities, making any single 1-20 minute time period not volatile at all Many people also already own bitcoin, which is a major contributing reason as to why the price is what it is, they dont have to go buy bitcoin when they get ready to send it. They dont have to wait for exchanges to accept their dollars, they dont have to wait for exchanges to process a withdrawal, and they can also move unlimited amounts. Even as a facetious joke, there are better ones
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - rchaud 5y ago
    Until you need to convert this theoretical $100m into real money, at which point intermediaries and payment processors will absolutely be involved.
    - vmception 5y ago
      1) There are enough goods, services, and investments in the crypto ecosystem that this distinction doesnt matter. Even an increasing number of non-crypto related hedge funds accept crypto as the capital investment for a new limited partner, as long as their fund admin accepts it. Any individual or business can skip local capital controls, or financial institution imposed scrutiny, or merely skip worse service hours. 2) there is enough liquidity to convert $100mm in bitcoin to $100mm in dollars. I would expect intermediaries to take about 50 basis points or less in a combination of fees and slippage. percentage based compensation adds up, but its not different enough. But yes, there are intermediaries if that truly was your only point.
- 3np 5y ago
  That's the average transaction-fee paid - and in practice, a fair amount overpay a lot. And making sure you use a reasonable wallet and bech32 addresses makes a big difference as well. So even with the same network fees and bitcoin price, a transaction costs a lot less today than in 2016. Recently fees have been around 1~10 sats/vB. ~40 sats/vB would be $2. Network fees are quite volatile, so we don't have to go back far in time to find that, though. Source: I look at bitcoin fee graphs way too much. Also mempool.space
otoburb 5y ago
>>What are transaction fees, still $20 USD average like they were in April? Looks like txn fees are less than $1 USD [1] today; certainly a lot lower than they were back in April. High priority transactions likely can be pushed to $2+ if you are in a rush to get your txn processed. >>Also, there is a backlog of transactions, so it can be days to get a transaction done. Backlog seems to be low at the moment.[2] [1] https://mempool.space/ https://mempool.space/ [2] https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,1y,count https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,1y,count
ericd 5y ago
Lightning supposedly drops that to a fraction of a cent, so it’s useful for smaller transactions than could be made with a credit card, but I don’t know how functional it is in practice yet.
pibechorro 5y ago
You must love loosing a generation of life savings due to hyperinflation.. its not if, when. Some places on earth every 10 years.

by Ologn 5y ago

vmception 5y ago

No, they’re not. https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_fee https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f... About $2 if you are in a rush, and yes potentially days if you use a lower transaction fee if you are not in a rush. you can always try and then replace the tx if you become rushed. About 1/100th of that if you have a lightning channel open already, I think

Ologn 5y ago
Well you're right, $2 is better than $20 Still skeptical about Bitcoin myself
- vmception 5y ago
  Yeah i figured it wasn’t really about the transaction fees but I didn’t want to prematurely risk writing a strawman argument that wasn’t presented
thesausageking 5y ago
It's amazing that you can send $100m to anyone in the world with a phone, anytime day or night and it costs $2. And it's direct to the other person; no banks or payment processors. I don't get all of the negativity HN has towards Bitcoin. This simple ability is so amazing and scifi to me.
- fsh 5y ago
  And now the receiving computer has an unintentional $100M bug bounty on all its software and hardware. For digital money to be actually usable, you need some kind of authority that can revert transactions in case of mistakes or fraud.
  - vmception 5y ago
    people can build that, and some services offer that its pretty clear there is a market and user story for a segment of the population that doesn't value reversibility
- taytus 5y ago
  You are sending $100m in monopoly money thou.
  - rocqua 5y ago
    Some would argue (not me) that the value basis of fiat money is the same basis as the value of bitcoin. People believe that others will believe it has value, so it has value to them. Then there are arguments that bitcoin being non-inflationary should even give people more faith in the value of bitcoin than they should have in fiat. Personally I could see bitcoin maybe getting there in a loooong time. But whilst the actual value of bitcoin is fluctuating this hard, the argument doesn't hold up. I also kinda like the argument: "Because taxes need to be payed, and are payed in fiat money, there will always be some basic demand and price for fiat money".
  - vmception 5y ago
    $100mm that can be exchanged for $100mm worth of goods, services, and investments.
- abvdj2 5y ago
  What specifically is sci-fi about it? If there were no regulations, I would be able to do the same with my bank account or credit card in a much more efficient way.
  - thebean11 5y ago
    Not really, because there would still be intermediaries that could halt your transfer or steal your money..especially if they weren't regulated! Not to mention, $2 wouldn't be nearly enough to cover credit card fees. Not sure how a 1-3% fee could possibly be efficient.
  - thesausageking 5y ago
    How would you do it? The only way I know of to send >$1m+ is wire transfers and they don’t work on weekends or to send to many countries, and they can take a day or more to clear. Also, you the recipient needs to have a bank account and it needs to be in a jurisdiction that’s friendly with the US.
    - vmception 5y ago
      And also SEPA isnt the panacea people make it out to be, there is frequently some europeans that chime in acting like it is I found it to be very similar to ACH within the US Investigating further, turns out many Europeans dont use SEPA between borders. They just send to their friends within the same country using the same major banks, which increases the probability that “Instant SEPA” is used under the hood, which is a good user experience Ive found crypto to have greater guarantees of unimpeded arrival in that monetary union as well.
- martin_a 5y ago
  > It's amazing that you can send $100m to anyone in the world with a phone, anytime day or night and it costs $2. That's really a problem I'm facing about once or twice a week, and BTC has solved that for me, you're right. > I don't get all of the negativity HN has towards Bitcoin. This simple ability is so amazing and scifi to me. Well, maybe there's the HUGE impact of BTC on global energy usage, mostly generated from fossil fuels (of one kind or another) and that there's actually little benefit for anyone not doing shady business or scamming people.
  - thesausageking 5y ago
    The energy usage is FUD. Bitcoin uses less energy than Christmas Lights, clothes dryers, or the gold industry. And it uses ~1/10th what video gaming does. And it's energy mix is cleaner than those uses because a lot of it comes from flared gas and stranded hydro.
    - vmception 5y ago
      This is correct, people don't want to hear it because the energy use argument was just a convenient trend for them to latch on their already existing “useless crypto” arguments that just lacked a hook. People want to say that there must be some Other use of the energy and aren't aware of how much energy has just been wasted and strewn directly into the atmosphere for decades, with crypto mining onsite being the only economic use so far. The miners also did themselves a disservice by trying to keep their energy sources secret for several years, I know some of them in North America intentionally helped spread the energy misinformation just to slow others down from getting capital to build out their own sites. But honestly all of this doesn't really matter as the oil and gas producers with the sites are the slowest ones to adopt. The ones already polluting for a century who are desperate for a solution are just slow to collaborate with the solution providers, the miners. They aren't stuck on carbon emissions as they have already made that their identity, they get that mining onsite reduces their carbon emissions even though other people ironically arent willing to understand that, the people running sites are just technophobes and computing luddites who dont get crypto, with a slight general concern about safety with adding more stuff to a dangerous site.
- a_shovel 5y ago
  Most people don't see the benefit of being able to send $100,000,000 for $2 because most people will never need, or be able, to send $100,000,000 to anyone. Or $1,000,000, or even $10,000.
  - Frank_231 5y ago
    [dead]
- falcolas 5y ago
  > no banks or payment processors. Until you want to get local currency, at which point you have to get involved with a processor. And taxes. And everything else associated with currency movement.
- shmatt 5y ago
  If you're stating the $ amount and not BTC though, it might be worth $70m by the time you purchase the BTC and your receiver sells them... or $200m, who knows 1 BTC = 1 BTC still true though
  - vmception 5y ago
    if I ever purchased bitcoin specifically to send it to someone else, it would happen so fast that extreme market volatility is so improbable that the user experience isn't different than any other form of payment These are 24/7 markets, so even extreme market volatility happens over 3 trading sessions compared to something like equities, making any single 1-20 minute time period not volatile at all Many people also already own bitcoin, which is a major contributing reason as to why the price is what it is, they dont have to go buy bitcoin when they get ready to send it. They dont have to wait for exchanges to accept their dollars, they dont have to wait for exchanges to process a withdrawal, and they can also move unlimited amounts. Even as a facetious joke, there are better ones
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rchaud 5y ago
  Until you need to convert this theoretical $100m into real money, at which point intermediaries and payment processors will absolutely be involved.
  - vmception 5y ago
    1) There are enough goods, services, and investments in the crypto ecosystem that this distinction doesnt matter. Even an increasing number of non-crypto related hedge funds accept crypto as the capital investment for a new limited partner, as long as their fund admin accepts it. Any individual or business can skip local capital controls, or financial institution imposed scrutiny, or merely skip worse service hours. 2) there is enough liquidity to convert $100mm in bitcoin to $100mm in dollars. I would expect intermediaries to take about 50 basis points or less in a combination of fees and slippage. percentage based compensation adds up, but its not different enough. But yes, there are intermediaries if that truly was your only point.
3np 5y ago
That's the average transaction-fee paid - and in practice, a fair amount overpay a lot. And making sure you use a reasonable wallet and bech32 addresses makes a big difference as well. So even with the same network fees and bitcoin price, a transaction costs a lot less today than in 2016. Recently fees have been around 1~10 sats/vB. ~40 sats/vB would be $2. Network fees are quite volatile, so we don't have to go back far in time to find that, though. Source: I look at bitcoin fee graphs way too much. Also mempool.space

otoburb 5y ago

>>What are transaction fees, still $20 USD average like they were in April? Looks like txn fees are less than $1 USD [1] today; certainly a lot lower than they were back in April. High priority transactions likely can be pushed to $2+ if you are in a rush to get your txn processed. >>Also, there is a backlog of transactions, so it can be days to get a transaction done. Backlog seems to be low at the moment.[2] [1] https://mempool.space/ https://mempool.space/ [2] https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,1y,count https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,1y,count

ericd 5y ago

Lightning supposedly drops that to a fraction of a cent, so it’s useful for smaller transactions than could be made with a credit card, but I don’t know how functional it is in practice yet.

pibechorro 5y ago

You must love loosing a generation of life savings due to hyperinflation.. its not if, when. Some places on earth every 10 years.