Topic: Fees are high - a problem? Not for everyone! (Read 358 times)

I have to admit that I once tried to test LN and did not go further than that, because most of the services and payments I used with Bitcoin did not support that option. There is definitely a lot of repetition of what the members read, but they are far from understanding what they are actually writing about.


That would certainly be a big problem because miners are certainly not in that "business" because they believe in Bitcoin, but they are interested in profit. We can assume that with the reduction of rewards per block, there will be fewer and fewer people who will mine, and in some 6+ years, when only 1% (210 000) BTC remains, I don't see how mining will be profitable anymore if there is no significant increase in fees. All solutions that go in the direction of LN or something similar are only part of the solution, and without miners and POW Bitcoin would not be what it is today.

So you're saying that there is a wallet in which you have total control of the seeds, in which you don't need to open a LN channel and you don't need to move funds to the wallet owners address and still works?

Please do tell more!


I love that everyone says just use LN, use LN, but if we would be able to go around with a lie detector and ask if they have used LN in the last 30 days we will see that there is a lot of empty untested regurgitated advice in all those lines.


You can't use LN without the main chain!
As long as you don't lock (or whatever word suits the action better) your coins from the main net you won't be able to use it, simple as that.
Second, I'm really curious how this will work when miners will not get a single cent in fee, but I can picture it already, some scrap diver collecting 100-200 old miners from the dumpster will be able to not 51 but 99% the chain for a few months if he wishes.

I know a category of holders who paradoxically rejoice at high commissions. It's surprising, but it's true. They say that high commissions are an indicator of the network’s demand. And it's really hard to argue with that. Currently, we do not see a sufficiently reliable solution to this problem. Even the Lightning Network does not solve this problem satisfactorily enough. After all, you have to pay to open a channel. Basically, you also have to pay to close the channel if you want to get the locked bitcoins out of the channel. Therefore, Bitcoin without altcoins is not viable.

It's a madness and a bad thing that this is happening to bitcoin right now and there doesn't seem to be any signs that it's going to stop being like this anytime soon. I wanted to sell a part of my long-term stash because I wanted to celebrate the Christmas holiday and New Years with at least a decent food and gifts for the family but in the end I had to do some cuts on my other altcoin because I just can't think that there's a way that I can justify why I would spend $20+ worth of bitcoin for the transaction fees, it's just not for me and I was fortunate I was still able to whip out something during the holidays but to be honest, I don't think that I can stand it anymore that we are shouldering the burden of this so-called "ordinal madness" hopefully though we get to see something different this year. Totally agree that it fails as a payment method but it's probably a temporary thing so the best we can do is be patient.

It's strange because we often think it's a small thing for us to teach other people in the remaining months, even though the complaint for those who want to learn how to struggle or perform in the future has to be what they don't know before they take a step.

so they keep complaining about several topics that they may not have discussed in the previous discussion.

It's strange how you didn't think of that ten days ago when you were giving advice to a friend, because it would help him a lot to save on fees every time he makes the new transaction. Maybe in the future, everyone who has a complaint about fees should forget about complaints (especially public ones) and simply start using LN? When the matter is already so simple, why at least twenty topics on the subject of high fees?

I also believe this that it's the miners who were the first beneficiary of this experience we are all having with high transaction fee, but we can also take a look of it from this angle, this wasn't what they already planned for or knew coming base on my personal understanding, the block size was increase to allow for more capacity that can contain more Bitcoin transaction thereby leaving the mempool less congested before the realization of the other use case of this same space.

But on ordinals inscriptions and miners took advantage of the whole thing to make their own income from it, which if we were also in such possible could possibly do the same by accepting what pays higher as our first priority before considering others.

Lightning network is online. It is good for small amount of money. So why need to open a channel? You can use some wallets that have a channel for you. All you will need to do is to download the wallet, open the wallet and do backups and start using lightning network without opening any channel. In addition, those wallets that have their own channels are very easy to use. They are even the ones that make lightning network adoption to be increasing.

Of course there is an alternative, but how many people even know what Lightning Network is and how to use it, even on this forum? In addition, in order to use LN you have to open a channel, and to do that you have to pay an on-chain fee, which is again a problem when the fees increase significantly. What will happen if someone comes up with a way to make LN transactions disadvantageous in any way - the new LN?


Interesting thinking, I don't know what on-chain transactions should be for and why we use them all the time? If by some chance you invented Bitcoin, you would probably have invented LN first, and only then Bitcoin, so today we wouldn't have problems with fees because everyone would use LN - really genius

I read the Bitcoin whitepaper again and in the conclusion Bitcoin is only an electronic transaction system without the need to rely on trust and without going through financial institutions called third parties.
Bitcoin through its whitepaper is not meant to replace fiat money but as an alternative to make it easier for people to carry out transactions anywhere with just a digital signature as a solution to not needing a third party.

Many countries that I know of still carry out strict supervision of Bitcoin because its use in framing violates the provisions even though it is not guaranteed to be 100% correct.
If one day we experience for ourselves that Bitcoin will become the most widely adopted currency, I think that will be the time when they realize that using Bitcoin technology is more effective than a transaction system using fiat.

Fees are increasing, in my opinion, not because of the large adoption of Bitcoin but because there are several ongoing problems that are still being sought for solutions.
High fees can be a problem for business people who use Bitcoin as a means of payment. However, I am confident and optimistic that the problem of high Bitcoin transaction fees will return to normal. I'm sure it will be finished in about two months.

"Tough moments don't last but tough people do," so I encourage us to stay put and be focused and everything will be alright over time. I miss those days too when you could use as low as $0.03 to send your Bitcoin in a high-priority mode. Some people even told me they had done $0.01 before but I have never witnessed such and didn't have any reason to witness it.

The miners are the ones making the money now and I don't think developers are innocent of this either. They should have done something about it and stopped overlooking on Ordinance and BRC-20. Even the two can still be used for smoother networking but the fear is the scalability which they will always advise against. But for how long will this be protected in the name of decentralisation?

Bitcoin can never replace fiat, I know this from the beginning as it is an asset and not the very first, so if others can't do it, it can't. Also, the world will not agree to a decentralized asset and there will always be individual countries' currencies, which is why fiat will always remain. The to-and-fro exchange of the two is good as we see now, and I believe it will continue to remain so.

But for cross-border payments, Bitcoin has done what most fiats can't do even with the current fee issues, it effectively replaced it, my friend. I have moved money through a wire transfer and was charged about $59 due to the correspondent banks involved. This is as some countries will disallow my country to use some fiat services to send money speedily and cheaply thereby forcing me to pay more and wait more. It can't be that bad now, so Bitcoin is trying so well in this regard. But developers should help to make people be prouder of the coin.

That means you at least have $100K in Bitcoin, unfortunately not many people are big holders.

Even though centralized exchange is bad to hold your coins, I don't see any reason why someone need to withdraw their coins even though they only have little amounts. Just keep accumulating until it reach a specific amount that you won't feel hurt to pay the withdrawal fees.

That is the same case when you are transferring Bitcoin using a non-custodial wallet. If you want your transaction to get confirmation in 10 minutes you would need to pay high fees. The exchanges are charging a high fee for faster confirmation and I am not sure whether they have any hidden charges. The best way to find out is to check the memepool.space to compare the transaction fees provided by any exchange similar to high-priority fees shown over there.

Cheap transaction fees don't last forever but fortunately expensive transaction fees won't last forever.

We will have times with cheap fees than times with costly fees. Wait for cheap fee times to move our bitcoin, consolidate inputs and cash out to fiat or stable coin for spending later. When fee is costly, wait for cheap fee times.

Don't forget about holders.

I hold a significant amount of bitcoin and I don't trade it, so for me there's no difference if the fee is $10 or $100. I had to pay that fee 2 or 3 times last year when I wanted to buy something and when I move my funds it's usually a significant purchase, so I'm not going to cry when fee takes 0.1% of the transaction.

People who complain about fees usually pay what their wallets recommend them to pay for fast transaction. For instance, my Electrum recommended fee of 200 sats per byte for a 10 block confirmation, but I checked fees using a third party site and decided to manually adjust it to 82 sats. The transaction was confirmed in less than an hour with that fee.

Don't complain if you overpaid

It is possible miners could allegedly have a hand in the increase in transaction fees at least, they are a beneficiary too in this fees acceleration. Anyway, with time the truth will dig out itself if it be that miners have a hand in it or not.

With the transaction increment many bitcoiners especially those with very little asset are confused about how to go about how to go about it. And it is pertinent to emphasize that making use of altcoins as solution based on their low cost fees is for me not a recommendable solution but an exposure to a bigger  risk. I guess we have to be careful of cheap articles as we try to boycott the high cost  of bitcoin transaction. Just my 2 cents.

miners do not choose the transactions, they dont disregard transactions either.. becasue they have nothing to do with creating a block template... they just get given a extra bonus for hashing on a pool. where the pool manager makes the transaction selections for blocktemplates

its like Apple employees dont set the price of the new iphone nor the malware thats on the OS. they just benefit from a christmas bonus if their sales period reached more then its target

the pool manager could change his blocktemplate scripts to ignore transactions it doesnt validate content of(the junk) but pool managers dont get to keep the majority of block reward so their greed to maximise their X% commission makes them want to accept junk for the expectation to keep fee wars going

also worth noting that many wallets/nodes make suggestive fee's far higher then needed. so you cant blame pool managers if its the node software pushing people to pay more or fee bump by large increments.

Anyone who decides to make a transaction would just have to accept the current high fees, mostly when the transaction is important and profitable.

What I have an issue with is the case of an exchange having a withdrawal limit of nothing less than $5 and that's not a problem for those with merchant expertise but for those who trade or transact in little amounts.

It's not a problem for those who rarely make transactions and just hold Bitcoin. I wouldn't mind paying a $50 or $100 fee when I will be taking tens of thousands of dollars in profit. It's actually a paradox to say that Bitcoin is failing because fees are high - it's a sign that it's actually very popular. Even if now ordinals are spamming the network, still a lot of users are making real economic transactions and are willing to pay high fees.

Where some see a problem, others see an opportunity. It has been always like this in this world. I don't really blame anyone for using the high fees phenomenon to promote their projects and views on crypto industry. It's a free land of opportunities where the best working ideas and concepts must prevail, although what bothers me is the possibility of sabotage the network could be suffering, in order to escalate an unnecessary problem, to sell an initially unnecessary solution as well, in the end.

It's like the bureaucrats always do in our traditional societies. They create unnecessary regulations to difficult citizens' lives, so they can sell the solutions or facilitate those difficults for a price, aiming personal profits and advantages for allied groups of power. For that reason, it makes total sense OP directly connects the high fees phenomenon to the satisfaction of centralization's enthusiasts who assemble themselves in monopolies or oligarchies to manipulate and exert great influence inside a niche or industry.

I miss the days when I didn't need to worry about BTC TX fees. Ordinals changed everything last year in a bad way which sent BTC back to the dark ages where we had to worry about congestion and other annoying issues.

BTC fails hard as a payment method due to these issues which is why it isn't capable of replacing FIAT, but is an amazing asset to trade as an investor.

Miners are the highest beneficiary of these ordinal inscriptions and many of them will always support the project because the profit is huge. It will take selflessness and love for Bitcoin for these miners to block these inscriptions.

I also believe that nothing lasts forever, very soon these ordinal inscriptions will be handled. But for now, there is no solution in sight because this threat is becoming more popular and many people are making more money from it.  Nobody knows how long this will last because many people have been forced to hold more than their Investment plans. This is not good news for Bitcoin because one of its selling points was low transaction fees.

Bitcoin wasn’t even invented by Satoshi to replace fiat currency but rather to be an alternative to it. And if you ask me I will say it has actually play that role perfectly for someone like me, i use it mostly for only cross boarder transactions which if I am to go through banks will actually cost me a lot and will be a thing of stress.

I don’t agree with the bolded part above as I believe it is probably a typo from you. I don’t see bitcoin been used as a currency for transactions due to the recent high transaction fees most especially for small scale transactions rather an asset for investment because of its ability to hedge against inflation making it a store of value.


I am among those who are still optimistic about this transaction fee of a thing, I believe the said bug which the ordinal developers are exploiting will soon be addressed by bugs. But for now, i am treating it as an asset now and only make transaction with it only if fiat currency will be an hassle for me

In addition to volatility,  high fee is one of the things hindering Bitcoin penetration into the mainstream. People are increasingly becoming discourage to integrate Bitcoin payment into their businesses. Even when there seems to be a way around it, many people are not aware and those who are may not feel comfortable using them. For instance, not much people know how to use the Lightning Network, hence the reason it is not too popular.

There are option for people that want to hold little amount of bitcoin. Lightning network and side chains. But their security is not as strong as that of bitcoin blockchain.

In my country, wẹ use local currency mostly and not using bitcoin or cryptocurrencies for spending. I have no option than to first convert my coins to fiat if I want to purchase something. I can say that many of us that were frustrated has been because higher amount of bitcoin is now required to move signature campaign earning and posting about it.

Let us hope something will be done about this mempool congestion.

it's called L2. Anyone can use bitcoin as a means of payment if they are using L2. Whether that is LN or some future L2 networks. No reason to think people can't use bitcoin as a means of payment in the future cuz of fees, because nobody is going to be paying mining fees to make payments because that is not what the base chain is for.

You are quite right Bitcoin possibly cannot replace Fiat. The best possible outcome is Bitcoin will only become more adopted as a currency for transactions. However looking at the odds this is still going to be challenging based on the fact that most governmental  laws are against Bitcoin in many countries and also because as Bitcoin adoption increases so will fees.

As for this you are right .Bitcoin fees is definitely not a problem for everyone but it is for a majority of users. Even those who are able to pay these high fees easily are still not happy with it because they are aware that it is possible for them to pay lesser.

Maybe this is another in a series of topics about how the fees are too high these days, but considering that a lot of members are literally disappointed that they can't use Bitcoin the way it should be used, maybe we should clarify some things so that everyone would not continue to pretend that we live in a world where we should continue to expect that Bitcoin will become a global means of payment that will be used by just about everyone.

Bitcoin has long since become a money-making machine, and in order for the machine to work well and be profitable, it needs to be given a little extra energy from time to time, even if this means that it will have a negative impact on its main task. While the average user who just wants to send an on-chain transaction has problems and is looking for a solution to the problem in a single free transaction accelerator, let's try to summarize who all benefits from the fact that fees have exploded.

Miners certainly benefit from what I personally call "ordinal madness", and suffice it to say that in recent days the rewards per block amounted to over 10 BTC, and considering that the reward without fees is 6.25 BTC, it is clear how much their profit has increased. Without going into any conspiracy theories, isn't it logical to think that some of them (miners) have their fingers in all of this? Who knows, maybe we'll find out one day.

CEXs (centralized exchanges) also benefit from high fees, not only because they can increase their service fees more than necessary, but because high fees discourage most of their clients from withdrawing Bitcoin to their non-custodial wallets. Let no one be fooled that the people behind such companies have any good intentions towards Bitcoin, they only care about profit and they don't care what they will generate it from, that's why they support hundreds of shitcoins without any problems regardless of what they know that bunch of people will lose their money trading with that garbage.

Creators of altcoins who will use every opportunity to say that their project is better than Bitcoin and that their transactions cost only $0.01 and that you should invest in their project. What they will not tell you is that the security of their transactions is so great that you have to wait for several days to be sure that your transaction will not be messed up in some way.

Economic and financial experts are perhaps the last, but no less important in this story. For them, moments like this are a time in which they rejoice because they think that the idea of Bitcoin as a currency is collapsing before our eyes, and of course they say this all the time. On the other hand, they have nothing against Bitcoin being "used" to generate profit, which again leads us to the fact that the idea of Bitcoin as a currency should be "killed" in every possible way, and on the other hand, trading should be encouraged.

In the end, it's no secret that the whole world has its foundations in centralization, and above all, finances are important because they control people most effectively. Bitcoin as an idea is dangerous in that sense and I have no doubt that "they" will do everything to reduce that idea to mere trading and nothing more than that.

However, you should not be pessimistic because I believe that there are millions of those who own Bitcoin and they will not give up so easily, and if we have ever been at an advantage, it is today, because we understood what Bitcoin is much before them and we have much more of it than them. If they want it, I tell them "the price is $10 million per BTC" and only if you ask me nicely