When did bitcoin get so expensive to use?

Barbarian

sr. member

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Quote from: Sanukk on March 11, 2017, 11:34:41 PM

Hi,

Tried to move some cash from my computer to the wallet on my phone (about £75), it's been sitting unconfirmed for a couple of days, and the phone app says I should up the mining fee to fifteen bloody quid! Hadn't used BTC for a while, and at those prices, I can't see me using it much ever again. What gives?

~S

It has gotten a lot more expensive lately, I remember sending a transaction about some months ago and the average fee was 0.15 dollars now it has almost tripled that price.

Cereberus

legendary

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Quote from: Sanukk on March 11, 2017, 11:34:41 PM

Hi,

Tried to move some cash from my computer to the wallet on my phone (about £75), it's been sitting unconfirmed for a couple of days, and the phone app says I should up the mining fee to fifteen bloody quid! Hadn't used BTC for a while, and at those prices, I can't see me using it much ever again. What gives?

~S

I think your transaction has a lot of inputs and low fees. I just transferred yesterday 0.08 BTC which almost the same amount as 75 pound and it got confirmed within 20 minutes. I only used one input address and I choose a relatively low fee so I the other user got a net amount of 0.07971486 btc within 20 minutes.

Try to send all your bitcoins to a single address and then sending from it. It usually results in faster confirmations.

AdolfinWolf

legendary

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Quote from: Kemarit on March 12, 2017, 03:34:35 AM

Quote from: Sanukk on March 11, 2017, 11:34:41 PM

Hi,

Tried to move some cash from my computer to the wallet on my phone (about £75), it's been sitting unconfirmed for a couple of days, and the phone app says I should up the mining fee to fifteen bloody quid! Hadn't used BTC for a while, and at those prices, I can't see me using it much ever again. What gives?

~S

First off, you are not the first one to complain about the increasing transaction fee's almost everyone using bitcoin is, and others have move away from bitcoin because of this issue. The growing miner fee has left Bitcoin unfit for small transactions. As one member has said, It's not expensive, it just costs more than it used to. At present, we can only hope for the developer??? community to come up with few quick fixes that can at least temporarily resolve the issue with transactions. Only thing you can do is too wait or increase your fee so that it has a higher chance to be confirmed.

For the further adoption of bitcoin we need SegWit, I agree that transaction fees are way too high for small transactions, and it is only going to rise more and more. Can someone give some arguments why people would be against segwit? The integration is already there. Bitcoin is never going to be a solid currency if you need to pay a fee of 0.5$ on every transaction.

Wusolini

legendary

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no need to carry heavy money bags anymore

Quote from: Sanukk on March 12, 2017, 12:34:32 AM

Hi,

Sorry, should have given numbers in BTC, I was transferring 0.07577... and the fee the app suggests using is 0.014467..., that's around a fifth of what I want to move.

The bitcoin has been sitting in my desktop wallet for over a year, so should be in blocks far back in the chain and therefore no needing extra work (or have I misunderstood how the blockchain works?).

I understand that as halving reduces the mining 'prize' fees would go up, and I expected to pay more than I did a couple of years ago when I was using bitcoin quite a bit, but the amount the app is suggesting I pay here is ridiculous.

I'll give it another couple of days and see what happens with the current fee.

~S

Hi, the reason is probably too many 'dust transactions' (very small transactions like faucet payments ) in your address.

Check my post in older topic.

Quote from: Wusolini on January 25, 2015, 05:57:29 AM

...

I had a same issue in the past ... used single addy for all my mining, testing various pools, companies, buying small contracts .... A BIG MISTAKE.
Had around 300 transactions in single addy, but only 0.02 BTC in total. When i want to send them out, the fee was more than half. Sweep to blockchain.info didnt work (too many transactions).
This was year ago, when BTC price was high, so I was looking for any way to avoid high fee and to take all the coins out took me whole month.

When sending larger amounts you can add these small dust transactions without raising the fee ... like sneak them in.
So whenever I made a bigger transaction (from different addy in same wallet) I add a small amount of BTC (usually sum of 5 or 8 transactions) - you need to have wallet which can do this, I used armory.
This way reduced total number of transactions to less than 200 and then sweep to blockchain.info worked. This all cost me 0.0001 BTC and lot of time.
...

Kemarit

legendary

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Quote from: Sanukk on March 11, 2017, 11:34:41 PM

Hi,

Tried to move some cash from my computer to the wallet on my phone (about £75), it's been sitting unconfirmed for a couple of days, and the phone app says I should up the mining fee to fifteen bloody quid! Hadn't used BTC for a while, and at those prices, I can't see me using it much ever again. What gives?

~S

First off, you are not the first one to complain about the increasing transaction fee's almost everyone using bitcoin is, and others have move away from bitcoin because of this issue. The growing miner fee has left Bitcoin unfit for small transactions. As one member has said, It's not expensive, it just costs more than it used to. At present, we can only hope for the developer??? community to come up with few quick fixes that can at least temporarily resolve the issue with transactions. Only thing you can do is too wait or increase your fee so that it has a higher chance to be confirmed.

Holliday

legendary

Activity: 1120

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Quote from: Sanukk on March 12, 2017, 12:34:32 AM

or have I misunderstood how the blockchain works?

Yes. Transaction fees are based on the size of your transaction.

Here is a valuable tool for getting an idea of how much you should pay.

https://bitcoinfees.21.co/

If you wallet software is giving you an extreme fee for no reason, perhaps you need to update your software or find a different wallet.

Sanukk

newbie

Activity: 8

Merit: 0

Hi,

Sorry, should have given numbers in BTC, I was transferring 0.07577... and the fee the app suggests using is 0.014467..., that's around a fifth of what I want to move.

The bitcoin has been sitting in my desktop wallet for over a year, so should be in blocks far back in the chain and therefore no needing extra work (or have I misunderstood how the blockchain works?).

I understand that as halving reduces the mining 'prize' fees would go up, and I expected to pay more than I did a couple of years ago when I was using bitcoin quite a bit, but the amount the app is suggesting I pay here is ridiculous.

I'll give it another couple of days and see what happens with the current fee.

~S

bamboylee

hero member

Activity: 1148

Merit: 504

Quote from: Yuuto on March 11, 2017, 11:51:35 PM

Quote from: pooya87 on March 11, 2017, 11:37:41 PM

i have no clue how much "15 quid" is but right now a normal size transaction costs only 45000 satoshi or $0.53 and that is more expensive than it should be but it is not expensive as you say it is.
read more: http://bitcoinfees.21.co/

if you are paying higher fees, your transaction size in bytes must be bigger because you have had lots of small inputs to spend

A quid = a pound(slang).

Your imputs are probbaly all unconfirmed, low fees, and you have a lot of inputs. Otherwise the average bitcoin transaction shouldn't cost more than 0.0005 BTC in fees. Just wait till the transactions confirm, or use a lower fee and use a tx accelerator(viabtc) which is free. However you may find yourself having to wait a few more hours or even days till your transactions confirm.

But you're right about the high fees being a problem.

He is right, your bitcoins must be full of small transaction inputs that makes the size bigger (more bytes) thus jacking up the price of the fee. Even though, the suggested transaction fee is ridiculously high. You can try using 65 sats per byte, it works for me. I do not normally follow the suggested fee, I limit it to what I am comfortable to give. Sometimes it just takes longer than normal to confirm.

Yuuto

hero member

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Quote from: pooya87 on March 11, 2017, 11:37:41 PM

i have no clue how much "15 quid" is but right now a normal size transaction costs only 45000 satoshi or $0.53 and that is more expensive than it should be but it is not expensive as you say it is.
read more: http://bitcoinfees.21.co/

if you are paying higher fees, your transaction size in bytes must be bigger because you have had lots of small inputs to spend

A quid = a pound(slang).

Your imputs are probbaly all unconfirmed, low fees, and you have a lot of inputs. Otherwise the average bitcoin transaction shouldn't cost more than 0.0005 BTC in fees. Just wait till the transactions confirm, or use a lower fee and use a tx accelerator(viabtc) which is free. However you may find yourself having to wait a few more hours or even days till your transactions confirm.

But you're right about the high fees being a problem.

Holliday

legendary

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It's not expensive, it just costs more than it used to.

The resources required to facilitate censorship-proof transfer of value and a seize-proof store of value are quite expensive.

Since the dawn of Bitcoin, this cost was paid for through inflation (new coins entering the market through the coin base reward were given to those who used resources to secure the network).

At time passes, the inflation rate (supply of new coins) continues to be cut in half (so that Bitcoin isn't constantly inflating at a rate which would erode it's value).

Yet, the network still has costs to maintain.

Transaction fees paid for by those who enjoy Bitcoin's properties will slowly take the place of the coin base reward as a means to pay for the security of the network.

As more people come to value Bitcoin's unique properties, there will be more competition to have transactions written into the permanent ledger in a timely manner, and fees will increase.

Some users have grown used to the block reward subsidy paying for the utility which Bitcoin provides and will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future if they want to continue to enjoy Bitcoin's unique and useful properties.

pooya87

legendary

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i have no clue how much "15 quid" is but right now a normal size transaction costs only 45000 satoshi or $0.53 and that is more expensive than it should be but it is not expensive as you say it is.
read more: http://bitcoinfees.21.co/

if you are paying higher fees, your transaction size in bytes must be bigger because you have had lots of small inputs to spend

Sanukk

newbie

Activity: 8

Merit: 0

Hi,

Tried to move some cash from my computer to the wallet on my phone (about £75), it's been sitting unconfirmed for a couple of days, and the phone app says I should up the mining fee to fifteen bloody quid! Hadn't used BTC for a while, and at those prices, I can't see me using it much ever again. What gives?

~S

Topic: When did bitcoin get so expensive to use? (Read 2291 times)