Topic: How does clogged mempool affect your crypto business? (Read 377 times)

That's a huge disadvantage of Lighting Network.

The minority of people may learn but the majority of people - never. Many people don't even know about inputs and outputs, they think that it's default 1 and 1, many people use online wallets like blockchain.com, and many people use centralized exchange and withdraw money from it. We also have another problem with many people who use the coins control feature, they don't check mempool.space regularly and believe me, that's the problem. Sometimes 1 block takes more than 40 minutes to be mined and sometimes it takes more than an hour to get even 3 confirmations. When people don't check mempool.space and use the RBF feature to increase transaction fees when it's not necessary, they increase transaction fees for everyone, just like poorly configured ordinals bots do it.

If due to the high fees people learn that it is good to consolidate their inputs and also how to use coin control, then at least they learned something valuable.

Take note that the importance of coin control is not only to reduce tx fees by reducing the number of inputs when you want to spend BTC, but to help bitcoiners keep their privacy as well. I.e. you may not want to spend certain utxo's together for privacy reasons, so with coin control you can select only the utxo you want to use in the tx, it is a tool most people should use often.

The fact that my Lightning channels are not fully connected to all the other nodes means that I still have to suffer from the consequences from a congested mempool every once in a while.

I still try time and time again to add new liquidity to my lightning node in the form of channels, but with the high channel opening requirements in terms of size, I have to save up money in order to open a decent-sized channel with any of the bigger peers.

When I'm low on funds it costs me, that's why I said when I have no liquidity.
Suppose I get a great deal on some cards and I need money to buy them and the only thing I have demand are some refill codes, it will cost me to grab all those inputs and pay up the guy with the cards, so I'm making a profit then I lose money then I make a deal, the headache is not worth it.

Unfortunately for almost a year I'm struggling with liquidity as I have over invested a bit, there are days when I can't get together even $500 despite having over 1btc stuck in different things, poor planning but the fees were uncalled complications.

I was only stating a fact. That fact is that you can receive bitcoin no matter the costs. It's a completely different topic of discussion if you should do it during a time of high fees or if you should temporarily switch to another cryptocurrency. This is, obviously, a question for the two parties involved in the payment. The communication should be honest, and if one side expresses a wish or proposes to use something else for the time being, a reasonable person will do that to not put the other party in an unfavorable position.

It is pathetic that one of the core factors in which bitcoin was marketed to the lay man has been lost. In the early days of Bitcoin, making transaction with a very low transaction fee has been the attribute of Bitcoin. This is why people opted to use bitcoin for international trades and transaction. But with the current mess in the Bitcoin network, it is obvious that bitcoin can no longer be used to purchase a cup of coffee. An individual cannot afford to pay very high fee to buy a product and even the product owner cannot afford to augment the transaction fee. It is clear that many people have started shifting to altcoins payment. The most popular altcoin they are trooping to is litecoin. Even in the other forum, campaigns are gradually moving away from bitcoin payments. I wonder what the future has for bitcoin.

You downplayed this actually but true business people don't do that, the ease of dealing with your customers should be your top priority, if not, you might lose a lot of them. Part of the ease of doing business is to provide them with good deposit and withdrawal options that are not burdensome. I just read from a user now on how a betting site that has always been known to allow Bitcoin alone switch to offer more deposit options, and this is for the obvious reason. I doubt if such a casino had not switched, more customers could have been lost.

According to your, fine, the company/individual receiving the money may not care that much if the other party is willing to accept that payment method and/or the cost, but if there is an alternative where such would pay less, your business could be taken elsewhere if you did not provide it. This is practical as the Bitcoin transaction fee can be annoying at times. You can imagine some trying to deposit $50 into a casino's account and the network fee is also $50. Is it reasonable to still go ahead with that deposit plan if it is the only option provided by a casino? And if the casino is not wise enough to have an alternative, don't you think the person will find an alternative?

This is why business people will not base it on "willingness" as you said, but on competitiveness, and will act smart and fast.

It caused me huge trouble lol. Paying with bitcoin for a long list of participants in the signature would be almost impossible if the fees remain high. No one would pay $100 every time they pay the participants.

nitrobetting only recently enabled altcoin deposit despite their long existence in the industry. They were quite familiar for BTC only casino.

Accepting Bitcoin doesn't cost you a thing. You can always accept BTC regardless of the network state. The real question is, will the other party be willing to pay you in bitcoin, and if so, will you be at a loss if they take into account transaction fees.

You can easily get disgusted with USDT or any other centralized stablecoin if your address becomes associated with hacked or stolen funds. The issuer, Tether, could freeze the USDT in your address even months after an incident happened. The worst thing is, if you didn't even do anything bad on purpose and simply accepted a payment from someone. Better use DAI, especially now with mining fees on Ethereum in the range of 6 to 10 gwei.

When fees are up and I don't have too much fiat or USDT I don't want to accept bitcoin either, I would need to move them to an exceeding and pay myself, I would incur cost and would eat in my profits, If I need $500 and I need to spend small inputs wroth each $20-30 I worked for nothing!


I never had somebody paying me with xrp as for dash it's been months for not years, excluding LTC and USDT I would approximate doge being the majority of the rest, but USDT is really gaining ground against everything, my friend is joking cause he says if I'm dealing so much with USDT why I don't accept credit cards also.

Yeah, that isn't good. Years ago Bitcoin was one of the most accepted and popular currency for cryptocurrency payments, now altcoins have taken its place. In my case also, a majority is Litecoin and USDT, sometimes Ripple, SOL, Dash and Tron.

Yeah, it's not over because mempool is still full of ordinals transactions, more than 50% of blocks are still mostly ordinals.

I never had to be worried about inputs and outputs and now I have to. Today we are forced to be more careful about inputs and outputs and to use coins control feature, this way many people will save on fees.

I think that using Monero is not giving up, the problem is that many stores and exchanges delist Monero, so it's becoming very hard to buy something with this coin.

That's true, but don't forget that many people will gladly give up on security and decentralization if you offer them a more cost-effective and convenient way to pay with crypto. When you try to introduce Bitcoin to anyone and talk about all its strengths and benefits, the inevitable question from their side is, "how much is this going to cost me?" We currently don't have that big of an argument to onboard them.

Tx fees is very high and BTC is unusable right now, especially for small payments, but it is impossible to find a coin like BTC which has the kind of utilities it has. People may be using alternatives right now because of the high fees, but it will hard for them to embrace them completely or hold them like they do with BTC, so i believe the moment fee rate drops, people will start using BTC again.

We can still do all these things, but it's not worth it, considering that mining fees will be too high for the BTC transaction to make sense from an economic viewpoint. I feel sorry for all legitimate users who now have to press the pause button because spammers have infected the chain. Worst case scenario, many turn their backs on Bitcoin completely ad embrace other coins/tokens that aren't affected by this spam exploit. 

Yes it is, and for those who have a lot of inputs, and they need to make a tx very soon, they can keep a very close eye on the fee rate, and if it drops a little lower than this, they should consolidate their inputs and save up on fees for future tx's.
No surprise in this, nobody would want to pay fees which is higher than the amount they want to spend, no matter how much they love BTC. I just hope we can go back to the days of 1 sat/vByte, so people can again start using BTC for payments.

I wouldn't say it's over, it might have slowed down though, and it you have been observing the market, around this time, there is not that much volume. I'm speculating that in the US timezone, people and brc-20 backers or enthusiasts are sleeping. But let's see in the next couple of hours, if my speculation is correct then we might slowly see the mempool being clogged again by Runes or whatever they called it. And for Bitcoin enthusiast, who have been waiting to transfer some Bitcoin because they needed to exchange it to fiat, then this is the best time to do that as it is <50 sat/vB.

Thank god we're slowly hitting normal levels again.



Is the runes hype joever 'for now'?  -- maybe because of the slight dump? and/or folks were just rushing to do transactions before 4th halving which is already over?

In any case, brc-20 hype will start again once btc pumps, I suggest making preparations early like keeping low fee altcoins. For businesses with BTC-only currency, best we could do as users is to suggest alternative payment methods.

It has gone from bad to worse, in the last year.
I even made a topic about it:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.62464631

Right now I almost have no clients taking or paying with bitcoin.
A few LN deal but overall majority is USDT, LTC, DOGE, and I don't think there is a way back.

BTC is almost unusable right now, all thanks to ordinals and now runes; if you are a business owner that accepts BTC, nobody is going to pay you with BTC right now, so you can add other cryptocurrencies and even stablecoins as means of payments. Or you can stop accepting payments in BTC, until the congestion fades away. If spammers continue to take all the space in a BTC block, how do we introduce BTC to people and tell them to use it, that is what i have been asking myself since this madness started.

The last time the network was congested, I don't think the fees went up as high as this time around. Anyways, it a good thing the mempool is getting decongested little by little and I hope the fee drops down to normal very soon. But the question is how long should we continue like this? Something needs to be done to put this issue to bed ones and for all. At the moment, I don't do transactions using Bitcoin, altcoin is the lifesaver.

Why did they create it? Did they created it intentionally or was this upgrade solving any problem and ordinals are just a negative, unwanted side of it?

Bustabit, Bustadice and Freebitco come to my mind that are the most popular websites that accept only Bitcoin. I badly want to know how their finances were affected. I am sure it would be very hard to deposit on these websites and also it would be very hard for these casinos to process withdrawals for their customers.

Sadly this won't be the last time. Lighting Network is very ugly, I don't like it, the way you have to open the channel, close it, etc... Altcoins are good alternatives, I prefer to use Litecoin and Monero but problem is that Monero is not accepted everywhere and it's getting hard to buy.

It is not the first time, and I hope it will be the last, or at least that fees back to normal within the next two days, but you should think about alternative solutions in the future, such as collecting all your transactions in one input, using Lightning Network or altcoins, or using Visa or MasterCard cards that have Bitcoin balance.

I don't have online business but I don't do any transactions for now, I'm waiting until the spamming is done. It's not worth it that I'd some transactions and I have to pay a lot but right now it's around $10 of bitcoin for a priority fee. Is it worth it? No for me, unless I've got thousands of dollars to send and I'm in immediate in need but I am not in that situation. The altcoins are in demand now and they're working with how they're named as an 'alternative'.

The common ones, BNB, LTC, Dogecoin, XRP, TRX but with Ethereum at the rate of 21gwei that's equivalent to $1.34 which is considered low if we're looking at the same fee with Bitcoin.

It's unfortunate that the Bitcoin that was supposed to lead by example is being abandoned for altcoins. This issue has persisted without a solution, and last year alone, people faced a whole lot of issues and had to part ways with huge transaction fees since they did not have any choice. Something must be done and it is a huge regret for Satoshi to have left Bitcoin the way he/they did, if not, a tangible solution must have been meted on the system. It pains me every time I think about this and I fear for the future of Bitcoin as a payment solution whether you guys like it or not.

You can imagine all that you can't do with your Bitcoin as you stated above, what else is remaining? If it can't do it for its adopters, so what's the point? It would have been better if it was once in a while, but it's persisting, and for what use if all such services can be regularly denied many times in a single year? No wonder, every company I know that was using Bitcoin and Ethereum alone as their only payment options are now having more altcoins as alternatives. Transactions that should have passed through the Bitcoin system easily and also encourage businesses and more adoption and trust. But, sadly, it is discouraging businesses.

Exactly before we only says that because of Bitcoin's volatility, merchants or business owners are not going to accept it, so that's a fact. But now, we should include one more entry on that list, and that is the cost of high transaction fees, and it's really bad for business. I also have to pay some of my bills with my Bitcoin, so obviously I'm going to be affected by the high fees and would probably look for a better alternative. And for those who's money are stuck 100% in Bitcoin, going to be a problem as you can't just take out like 100-200$ for payment of your bills. Card is another best alternative for us. Although I already paid 2 credit cards in the last 2 months because I want to close them. But now I have to go back to that payment system or even a cash advance.

I have no business which accepts Bitcoin but with the rising Bitcoin transaction fees to levels never before seen, Bitcoin spenders would probably explore other options and alternatives. While Bitcoin-only is a strong and perhaps even a solid idea, practicality dictates that stablecoins and other altcoins have a role to play. And while centralization is a thing to be abhorred, with network fees sometimes becoming unbearable, it might even be considered. And then there's fiat and the number of online payments based on it.

There is no decrease in profits, it's just that the space for using BTC is now limited because the mempool is so dense that I am not even willing to spend more than $10 for transaction fees, especially now that I see even more crazy in the mempool.

Yes, it's like so many people stop playing with bitcoin for any activity “small transaction form” but I don't know for those who continue to use bitcoin for all other purposes, it doesn't even matter to spamer dust for the ordinals that NFT prints.

For me for alternatives in altcoins, TRX and USDT as activities in gambling or other small transaction amounts, anyway for running their business accepting bitcoin there must be alternative altcoins to choose from.

Same here, I was stuck with using my Visa/Mastercard as most of my funds are into Bitcoin. So no movement at al for me, the next best thing for me is to borrow money from people that I know and the promise to return it the soonest (without interest).

I know it sucks, but as far as gambling goes, I just go to regular and traditional based casinos to enjoy and not go and play online. I can still bet on sport betting, but it again should be on the kiosk or land base casinos. So I guess I'm not the only one on this predicament. And the best thing to do is just hope that the fees will at least be back to like 20 sats/vB which I think everyone can tolerate.

Situations like this shows that's impossible to rely on Bitcoin only. If you're business owner, you must offer alternative payment options. If you're accepting just Bitcoin, then such situations can cost you a lot because I doubt now there is many people who are ready to spand their Bitcoins and overpay a lot.
Not that I'm spending my BTC so often, but I'm affected by this situation. My IPTV subscription is ending soon. Always paying for it with BTC, but this time I will have to look for other way. Don't have much altcoins and to get it now I would have send some BTC to exchange, not going to do it for obvious reasons. So, probably will have to pay by card.

If your business only accepts Bitcoin then you are in deep trouble of losing profits and clients, as a business and merchant operator you should be aware that these things can happen.

This is why we have altcoins, which are alternative coins in case there are disruptions on the chains like what we are seeing now, and it will happen from time to time last time it happened was on a holiday season before the end of this year and after four months it happen again, expects this occurrence from to time because of ordinals or unexpected events.

Businesses that accepts bitcoin also accepts other type of altcoins, tokens because of using payment gateways such as bitpay, coinpayments, rtc. Also cards, ewallets and mostly paypal. So it won't affect them so far, nonetheless those who are only using bitcoin as payment method will be a huge effect, unless using lightning.

If it is business, I expect bitcoin mempool congestion not to affect it because all business has fiat as their primary payment option. For very few that are only having crypto as the only payment option, altcoins can be used. The service that I used online just not quite long supported lightning network and altcoins and I chose lightning network. Although, I was surprised to see it accepting lightning network.

I do not have the people you are calling the spammers to blame. Bitcoin developers created a way for the people that you called spammers to create tokens. If it is accepted as transaction fees need to be replacing the mining reward gradually, but something supposed to have been done to not make the mempool to always not more to 1 to 50 sat/vbyte. It supposed to almost remain low which is 1 sat/vbye.

Despite the increase in the fee, we do not see the proposal developers are towards as of now. Even if it is the proposed drive chain or spider chain, it would be good if it is easy and trusted than the lightning network. But we need something simple like the onchain transaction,and what will not require onchain fee at all if possible. Or bitcoin developers should make the miners transaction fee to be very low by developing ways that the mempool will not be congestion despite bitcoin tokens are becoming many. But I do not think they are ready to do this.

Bitcoin transaction fees are very high, thanks to spammers. I can't spend any satoshi from my wallets because I will have to pay enormously high transaction fees, because of this reason I can't buy anything with my Bitcoins, I can't deposit and gamble in casinos via BTC, I can't buy a VPN via BTC, I can't send someone money abroad via BTC. I am very limited and forced to use altcoins but to do this in a comfortable way, I have to use centralized exchanges to buy altcoins via card with a bad exchange rate.

At this moment, I prefer to stick with Visa/MasterCard and PayPal if I can. How are you doing? I hope some Bitcoin business owners can write down how the current situation affects their businesses. When I check mempool.space, all I see are blocks full of transactions created by spammers, it looks like no one else has been sending coins recently.
Do you experience a profit decline? Did people stop playing with Bitcoins? Did the demand for altcoins rise? Which altcoin is the most popular now?