3 ms·

Transfers of a certain size were never free, the fee however is tiny (0.0001 BTC) and doesn't compare to transfer fees or other international money transfer ser

• exelius 12y ago
  Don't forget that there is a cap on the number of transactions that the blockchain can process in a given amount of time (IIRC it's like 7 transactions per second). That's what we call a scarce resource, which will eventually lead to rent-seeking. I guarantee there will be payment processors that spring up as a result of being able to guarantee priority on your transactions because they have agreements with multiple large bitcoin mining pools. I'm also willing to bet that this fee settles out close to the transfer fee for existing international money transfer services.
  • FatalLogic 12y ago
    >Don't forget that there is a cap on the number of transactions that the blockchain can process in a given amount of time (IIRC it's like 7 transactions per second). 7 transactions per second is an arbitrary limit that was imposed to keep things manageable, because Bitcoin is a beta, an experimental system. Transaction fees may rise for the reasons you've described, but referencing the '7 TPS cap' as if it is a real limit makes the situation look far worse than it is. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability