Topic: Bitcoin miners extorting people that are making transaction? - page 2. (Read 443 times)

Tell him that miners are not extorting people because the network congestion is a network related problem and miners have nothing to do with it. The miners aren't doing anything to harm the Bitcoin community but those useless ordinals have caused congestion in the network and the miners have their limits which they can't cross.

There are more than 354,110 unconfirmed transactions at the moment of writing this post and the number is growing. Currently, the low priority transaction fee is 353 sat/vB and the high priority transaction fee is 531 sat/vB and that's why the miners aren't accepting the transactions that have no priority, I mean the ones with low fees. I'm sure that the network congestion will end soon and we may have good transactions once again.

The users who want to have their transactions in high priority mode are paying very high fees and if a miner is getting high fee for a transaction then why would he include the low fee transaction in the next block? The system is getting out of control and I believe the whole blame should not be put on the shoulders of the miners.

The users are also increasing the fees to have faster transactions. We should have to find an alternative way for the transactions at the moment, I believe in current network congestion times we may move towards the alternative coins that have low fees, and when network's congestion ends then we can again have Bitcoin transaction or we may move towards LN as that's also a possible solution.

It is a free market and your friend was free to attach any fee at all to their tx, they chose the fee for high priority in order to outbid other users in the mempool and the miners confirmed their transaction, that is complete freedom and the opposite of extortion. If miners controlled the fee rate in the mempool and forced people to pay whatever they want, then people can complain about the miners, but they don't control the fee rate in the network, the 'community' does, in the sense that when the network is congested, fee rate rises and when it is free, fee rate drops. Your friends has to learn this.

Still with what you have explained I can easily have more points to let him know that he is wrong. Sometimes you may not know the right meaning of the word that you used except the people that are using a native English. People also correct each other.

You can call someone a moron if you want but not in cases like this. We are different and people can not be the same but if you call someone like a friend a moron in something like this. I wonder how your friends would feel comfortable around you unless you are not like this in real life.

There are times to use the word moron, foolish person or a stupid person, but like I said, it has not gotten up to that.

As I have also learned from people like LoyceV and many other veteran members, I have not seen them call anyone a moron or using an abusive word. People are not the same though but I prefer people like LoyceV approach. They make their word also stand out but without abusive words.

Let me spell this again for you!

HE IS A MORON!

When you say stupid things, you're being stupid which makes you a moron!
Clear enough for you?

Second, this is not tinder so I have to butter up to you and watch my language so I can have a one night stand with you, I tell things as they are!
And the more people and sooner they do call your fried a moron the sooner he realizes and stops saying stupid things, but pampering him will just lead to more non-sense!

You are correct but it has not gotten up to this unless you want to prove that you are a moron. Just make correction and let us have a happy discussion.

He's a moron!


extortion:

Yeah, that's how bitcoin was supposed to work!
Remember how when there will be no block reward you're going to have to pay fees for the security, you're just experiencing it now !

Angry at the high fees? That's what everyone predicted the future will be like!


NO, they are not!
Income per th/s is 12 cents, it was 20 cents for Q1 2022, and it was 40 cents per th/s much of 2021.
So miner's income is actually 3 times lower than the peak!
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-mining_profitability.html#3y

This is not blackmail, when your friend is willing to pay high transaction fees to send Bitcoin, it is called his willingness to pay a certain amount of fees on a transaction. If he objects to high transaction fees, he can postpone it until transaction fees return to normal. He has two options, agree to high transaction fees or not.

Blackmail can be interpreted as coercion or forcing Bitcoin users with all threats to follow the miners' wishes to immediately carry out transactions at high fees. So far I have never seen Bitcoin miners doing such ridiculous things, so what your friend is experiencing is not blackmail.

In short. A lot of people don't understand how markets work and when they don't understand basic things like this, which are based on supply and demand, they start seeing conspiracies.

I've spared myself the "free" market because they are often more intervened than we think but in Bitcoin it's pretty close to what a free market is. If you want a transaction confirmed fast, you pay more.

The use of the word "extortion" is either a joke or not understanding anything at all.

Umm wrong word used here I would say, they are not extorting anyone. It's just that they are taking advantage of a situation that is going on right now.
Due to these Ordinals, people are willing to pay high amount of transaction value and those who are not involved in these Ordinals are not willing to pay such a high fee which makes them feel like they are being extorted. It's just miners earning money on people being impatient.

I don't think it is extortion because the money they are making is legally earned. You won't also blame them because everybody wants to make a profit. If you are in their shoes you would want this inscription to continue. Except miners take a moralistic position on Ordinals inscriptions, it will continue because money is now the determining factor.  

This high transaction fee is a serious issue that is not affecting just individuals but businesses. Some businesses depend on Bitcoin to pay for goods and services so telling them to wait until the mempool becomes freer makes little sense to them because they need to make urgent payments. Paying high transaction fees will affect the profitability of the business. I think these businesses should consider using the lighting network or switch to an altcoin until the network becomes stable.  

It's not an extortion scheme but it's not a good thing for many people, it's like an exploit scheme more than anything but then again, we can't blame miners for going with all this even if it's a dogshit times for doing transactions due to ordinals, they're trying to get as much profit as they can while halving hasn't arrived yet. Your friend is lucky OP, he's only paying 10 dollars for the transaction meanwhile I'm still sitting on my bitcoins in Binance waiting for the fixed transaction fee to go down, the amount that I'm paying is enough to buy myself a novel so I'm waiting for the opportunity that it finally goes much lower, losing sleep waiting for the tx fees to go down.

This is not extortion by any means. The network is crowded because more people are making transactions. If they don't do it, there will be less traffic and the fees will be low. If we choose to make a transaction when the network is crowded, how does that make it an extortion? We are the ones choosing to give fees in order to make transactions. So we hold the power in this case. All we can do right now is to wait for the mempool to become normal again or use some alternatives.
Imagine when the BTC price will skyrocket. It will be more crowded than this. And people will still pay higher fees because they will be making more profits anyway. So it is always a "US" issue. The miners or the developers have nothing to do with this. They can come up with a solution but things takes time.

Miners extorted money from your friend with a gun to his head? What prevented him from using any other cryptocurrency, faster and cheaper, of which there are millions thousands? After all, these altcoins were created as an alternative to bitcoin (faster and cheaper), right?

A couple of weeks / months ago (and also in the last cycle, when the bitcoin's price was ~$70k), these developers were not guilty of anything, right, but now they suddenly turned out to be so. It seems to me that we should look for the real reason for what happened.

$10 is not such a high commission that others have encountered. Also, your friend could delay his transaction or use alternative solutions. In any case, he was the one who pressed the “send” button.

And I will say, we need to look for a solution to this problem, because this is not the first time this has happened and each time it creates a lot of whining and extra costs for users. Only miners is happy.

Regarding the high cost of Bitcoin transactions, in my opinion there is no element of extortion at all. Because this is absolutely caused by network congestion. One of the reasons is the BRC 20 token. So your friend's opinion is completely incorrect. Because transaction fees in Bitcoin can actually be regulated, and there is no pressure to always comply with expensive fees.

Seems a little melodramatic.  It's like an auction.  If there aren't many rival bidders, you could get something really cheap.  If there are lots of bidders all trying to buy the same thing, it's probably going to cost you a lot more.  That's not the definition of 'extortion'.  That's just how life goes sometimes.  

I believe your friend saw other options like TRC which he can use and pay some cents instead of the $10 worth of bitcoin but he chose to use bitcoin. No offence but this is not new and I'm very sure he is aware of these ups and downs especially times like this when the bull run is fast approaching, the fees will be higher as the mempool becomes so congested with the transaction and the miners didn't design the chain, they met it like that and they have to use it in accordance to the consensus protocol. If only there was a way this would have been reduced or solved without affecting the decentralization and security of Bitcoin, I believe they would have done so all these years.


See my friend, if you are saying that miners are extorting people, that's a false accusation because this has been the same since the inception of Bitcoin right in 2010, there have not been any changes regarding this but the only thing I can accuse miners and developers are ordinal inscriptions that were allowed in bitcoin network. Just because something is open source should be a strict rule to disallow some playmakers from taking advantage of people, these ordinal meta structures have taken more than half of mempool transactions and they are paying way more than what ordinary people are paying for their transactions.

Who is enjoying these fees, the miners and their activities are affecting ordinary people who are trying to use Bitcoin. There has been a call to stop it on the network but currently, miners are already in their peak of 2022 revenue fees and they are enjoying it, they don't want their revenues to be affected else if this is not generating fees, it would have been stopped by now but we know meme better how they ended after the 2022 run, even these ones will settle down after the trend and will become useless as usual. They are even given excuses that these ordinals will force people to use LN, like WTF? Must I use LN to use Bitcoin?

ASIC's do not choose the transactions.. they just sha256 hash

I would say your friend was very wrong, miners have no hands on the increase of transaction fees they are only enjoying the result of the high tx, because no miner decides what price a transaction worth but are only claiming the rewards for securing the network.

The ordinary meaning of extortion could defend miners in this case because it's deals with force or threat for it to be classified extortion hence your friend wasn't force to carry out the transaction by force, he/she choice to take the fee. If your friend wasn't in haste he could wait for the price to go down before making transactions.


It's even more sad to me as a beginner because when we talk of Altcoins it sounds like it's a big mistake to get involved with any altcoins. but now this same people advise you use them when we have such issues with Bitcoin spending. doesn't that sound weird? BTW, desperate times comes with desperate measures.

I can agree that the word 'extortion' makes the case on hand more of an accusation than a theory and although, I can say that it is because we are nearing the halving that's why such is happening with high fees than normal.

Something should be done about this quickly because we can't be preaching about how Bitcoin is the currency of the future, how it is easy to be used for transactions across borders with lower fees than the fiat system and still expect people to throve in to use a system that is now way more expensive than before with prospects of it rising further and making it even difficult for those with some of it to spend or reinvest it due to high fees demand from miners.

He willingly paid for the service with his own free will though?  He wanted the transaction immediately at that time and I'm assuming that he knows transaction fees are supposed to be paid, whatever it is at the time for every transaction. In a sense miners are just doing their job really, fees are afaik no way influenced by them (or at least, the job itself anyway). They are raking in money though with the recent high fees though.

As for the devs though, they can't exactly cater to only one side of things. The community itself votes for what gets pushed and not to the development of Bitcoin so it's definitely going to take a lot of time and effort for something to happen, if it ever happens.  
Then simply play around to make the losses minimal. If it requires you to DCA every month instead, then plan that out. I've never particularly had any issue with me doing it monthly instead of weekly tbh.