Ok, since I'm the OP I'm gonna drop another example of some bullshit. I use mellowads as one of my banner ad providers for some of my sites. I typically wait until my balance reaches .01 BTC (currently $17.57) before I withdraw my balance. So, I had .0105 and some odd change in my account and went to withdraw. I paid a fee to mellowads of 0.00005 BTC ($0.09). I have absolutely no problem with that. So I ended up sending 0.01041323 BTC ($18.30) to my CoinBase wallet and ended up receiving 0.009375 BTC ($16.47) which means I paid an additional $1.83 on top of my mellow ads fees somewhere along the way. Not only does neither system tell me about these fees explicitly so I know beforehand exactly how much I am going to have to pay, but that is a 10% fee and I don't even know who took it or where it went. Seriously, if people keep saying this isn't a big deal, then you are an idiot. I'm not usually one to call names, but 90% of the people chiming in on this discussion are saying the exact same thing....make large transactions only, it's not a big deal if you are buying a goddamn house, just don't expect to buy a cup of coffee with bitcoin. Oh, you are so insightful, thanks for explaining the difference between paying high fees for small transaction and low fees for higher transaction....I wasn't at all aware of that. The thing is, if you are one of those people that think this is ok, you are missing the fact that most people actually using bitcoin for purposes other than hoarding digital gold are being screwed. The people who are literally creating the bitcoin economy are the ones getting robbed. Keep telling yourself it's all ok, and we should all just be making large transactions and see where that gets us in a year when nobody can come to an agreement on how to resolve this problem and people stop fucking using it. At some point, investors and developers are going to start looking to other coins that don't have this problem. And then what do you think happens? You think Bitcoin is invincible? Well it's not. If this elephant in the room simply doesn't ever get addressed, you hoarders are going to be sorry you didn't care and the next big party is going to fly right by you while you're blinded by your shiny digital gold.
Ok rant over....
You touched a problem than people usually don't see at first and that's receiving and sending small payments. What you experienced (a 10% fee) is still nothing compared to even smaller transactions, like buying a drink, or a snack. In such case our fee (which is fixed) will take 50% or more, which starts to look like a joke. The answer people are giving is: send only big transactions. OK, so we're not using Bitcoin to buy a drink, a snack, a pack of cigarettes, but when does it become worth it if the fee is constantly rising. At the moment sending $20 with a $2 fee is borderline acceptable, so you you will no longer order a pizza, but buying clothes, jewelry, electronics is still fine. 6 months from now it might no longer be. Ok rant over....
