Seems to be the elephant in a the room nobody wants to talk about...
The trend is clear, and no signs of improvement in the past months.
With more than $20 fees for on-chain transactions, Bitcoin is already not usable for money transfers below $200-$300 (who would pay 10% on every transaction?).
Which means some users — and merchants — will stop using Bitcoin.
Mullvad VPN for instance, one of the few (good) VPN providers accepting BTC, has a unique plan of $5/month. They don't accept Lightning, which means users who don't want to pay by bank card will simply run away (or burn 5 months of subscription just for fees).
Lightning is the way but still, isn't this a tiny bit worrying?
Buy Mullvad vouchers here using Lightning.
The fees will pass. Necessity breeds creativity.
reply
Can confirm this works. I'm not sure what stops the issuer from using your Mullvad token, though.
reply
You don't need to enter your Mullvad token
reply
Oh yes look at that, you can buy a voucher instead. Perfect then.
reply
I would call it perfect if they wouldn't even allow to enter your token.
Imo, that just gives people bad habits when it comes to security.
It feels similar to how many nostr clients just straight up ask for your nsec. As if there is no other way.
reply
The fees will pass.
How will miners be subsidized in the future, when block coinbase rewards are minimal?
reply
If the value of Bitcoin increases as much as we expect it will, and deflation happens as we expect it will, the fees would be plenty. The cost of everything in Bitcoin terms will decrease and ROI will increase.
It's hard for most people to get out of the habit of viewing the world through the fiat lens that they've been so accustomed to.
reply
Can confirm this as well.
reply
Yep, this site is awesome.
reply
Fastvpn through name change offers 88 cent a month vpn plan then 7.99 after first month or 12.99 a year. No logs. Tcp, ikev2, udp, and wire guard with over 60 locations worldwide. Super fast and multiple ports as.well with a scramble feature. Oh and you can pay with crypto
Fees are going to go through the roof if Bitcoin becomes the global settlement layer. Degens may have pushed us into a high fee environment earlier than we expected, but the end result is the same.
This could be a passing fad. Maybe not. But next time there's a lull in the fee market, it would be prudent to consolidate UTXOs and open channels.
reply
Seems to be the elephant in a the room nobody wants to talk about...
Lol, yet every few days somebody brings it up, always insinuating that bitcoiners are ignorant or stupid. Basically, spreading FUD.
reply
No FUD here, just facts.
reply
Facts, and a kind of surprising ignorance of what people have been talking about. It's come up repeatedly and regularly.
reply
What facts, high fees is the main bitcoin topic these days, everybody brings it up and looks for way around!
reply
Facts.. fees have been higher in the past and went down. Facts.. if fees were low fudders would whine that mining isn't a sustainable business..
Everyone should take a deep breath and think through next steps and not make "foot-gun" style panic mistakes. It's perfectly valid to be concerned and discuss accordingly. However it is normal for any technology or business to hit major growing pains that force innovation, and that innovation takes time. When living through that time it feels like forever, but once past it feels like a blip. What everyone remembers as the iPhone was actually the third iteration. No one remembers or cares about how bad the first two were since then they became amazing. All businesses or technologies today that seem amazing started out very clunky and imperfect. Unfortunately great tools only emerge from actual real world immediate need that people are willing to pay for, and not potential future need. This is a human reality no one cares to admit. We focus on the problems we actually have and deal with them as they emerge. Be concerned, research what works best for you, debate the best solutions, but just don't hit the panic button. Bitcoin is not a panacea or perfect. It's just the best store of value and money ever created by man and it is rapidly improving. There will always be tradeoffs and constraints with Bitcoin or any other technology or tool. In 2-3 years we will likely have Fedimints, ARK, widespread ecash in many forms such as Cashu, and things we likely can't even imagine. It'll be awesome, but we'll face plenty of bumps getting there.
reply
No one likes paying high fees. It happened sooner than we thought and few of us were prepared.
The good thing is that companies like Mullvad will need to add LN. They should even make it LN only, and so should we. Buying small to medium sized goods and services need to go to upper layers of bitcoin. We all know this.
reply
People get priced out of all sorts of things. Block space will be no different.
Billions of people are priced out of ever owning a car or taking a flight but can afford to ride the bus or a train. Will technology and productivity increase enough to allow everyone to have a car or take a flight possibly but unlikely.
As a utxo holder it does suck to know that I might be priced out someday from making an onchain transaction but I just hope innovation comes to solve this problem so not too many people are priced out. For example I use lightning and liquid to hide from onchain fees currently if I can.
reply
We need a proper L2 that:
a) a user can onboard to directly without needing to manage liquidity. b) a user can confidently hold their bitcoin on long term, with the keys in cold storage.
Lightning is not that and never will be. The lightning experiment ran it's course, we all know its strengths and weaknesses at this point. It's time to experiment with something else (Ark, validity rollups, etc).
reply
Bitcoin fees aren’t paid in dollars. If you want to measure fees in dollars, they’re going to infinity
reply
If it was priced in satoshis would the % of fee be any lower?
Wonder what is an acceptable percentage for transactions for most users? I am thinking that at some shops will charge 3% or a flat fee if paying with a card.
reply
Strangely, the whole world is measuring fees in $ (including reference websites).
But you can reason in sats if you want . 350 sats/vB right now, instead of 20 a few months ago. For you, does it change the problem discussed here?
reply
Look again. Where are you getting your data from? At the time of your post, the feerate required to get into the latest block (#823272) was 117 sat/vB, not 350 sat/vB.
reply
reply
  1. Those estimates are way off. I don't know how they get those numbers, but clearly we need more accurate tools for fee estimates.
  2. The estimate for "≤ 20 min" is always going to be extremely high from time to time. 13.5% of the time there won't even be a new block in 20 minutes. When on-chain fees are a concern, 24 hours or more would be a more realistic target. Yes, having to choose between very slow (and still rather expensive) and very expensive (and still potentially slow) limits what activities can be done economically on chain, something that should have been clear since fifteen years ago.
reply
The point to figure on is that Bitcoin increases buying power and USD loses buying power. So there is going to be a flippening.
I don't like the fees either but I have to look historically at Bitcoin and I can even rationalize that if I want Bitcoin I will pay the on chain fee for those who pay me by eating the fee in my sales. I still want 80 to 20 80 percent Fiat and 20 percent Bitcoin.
Also we have L3 too. This platform is level 3.
Miners who just want FIAT will not understand and will over leverage until no one accepts FIAT then power companies will mine Bitcoin by taking over large operations.
It's a mental exercise.
reply
A Blockchain with PoW decentralized DOES NOT SCALE. DEAL WITH IT. THAT‘s why we need layer 2+.
reply
Not worrying at all when a system works as designed
reply
deleted by author
reply
Can the worlds daily transactions be put on a layer 1 that isn't a centralized solution?
reply
deleted by author
reply
Can the worlds daily transactions be put on a layer 1 that isn't a centralized solution?
reply
Mullvad VPN for instance, one of the few (good) VPN providers accepting BTC, has a unique plan of $5/month. They don't accept Lightning, which means users who don't want to pay by bank card will simply run away (or burn 5 months of subscription just for fees). Lightning is the way but still, isn't this a tiny bit worrying?
easy problem to solve! I pay it with Lightning ( Tor available ) https://vpn.sovereign.engineering/
From my understanding, the builder of this site brought a bunch of top-up codes and then offered this service. However, if you would like to use this tool, a better practice is to use the purchase voucher option and then redeem the voucher without even giving away the account number.
more here.
Lightning is the way but still, isn't this a tiny bit worrying?
Maybe more Bitcoiners need to learn to dance, e.g.
  • swap what you need for daily stuff when it's relatively low fee
  • hodl onto your big stash
  • keep learning and educating others
reply
As you can check with the new goggles feature on mempool.space a lot of transactions are currently still inscriptions spam that are among other thing misusing a bug introduced with taproot.
This spam will eventually be priced out, but it will take a while. Further it is unclear how this will be the case. Will the scam run out of suckers or will it be harder and harder to propagate these transactions and blocks as more and more node runners and some miners (e.g. Ocean, stratum v2) will take measure against it, is unclear.
Time will tell.
reply
Yes it is. I dont understand who pays this much. I believe the only incentive to pay so much for fees is if you are mixing your coins and if you are in a hurry. But who knows :)
reply
This is by design - Why the hell do people complain about it?
Subsidy goes down - fee goes up.
Otherwise bitcoin will die.
reply
High fees is a feature… not a problem for humans to “fix.”
reply
What is the alternative? Closing costs on a real estate transaction are thousands of USD. Plus you pay thousands in property tax every year you own it. Want to send a tonn of gold overseas? Hire an armed security transport vessel for a month long voyage that'll be tens of thousands USD. Many businesses today are still paying $25 bank fees to send fiat wires overseas.
BTC fees are still extremely cheap compared to what those fees are buying for you.
BTC doesn't win by being cheap. It wins by being the best. People are going to pay for quality.
reply
The base layer blocks are containers on a container ship. No ordinary person pays the high cost to ship a container. Instead, normal people will operate only on higher layers.
Everytime this is a conversation I wonder to myself if the people complaining have ever thought about how a mature Bitcoin based economy will work.
reply
This is a very, very bullish trend..
reply
It's not at all worrying, we knew from day 1 that at the margin, miners will only make money from fees.
High fees were inevitable, they just happened faster than most expected due to an unanticipated side effect of introducing SegWit and Taproot upgrades.
Keep calm and use Lightning.
reply
Lol, "miners only making money from fees" is supposed to happen in 120 years....
reply
That's the "at the margin" state when subsidy goes to 0. Surely you didn't expect this switch to happen overnight? Surely you're aware that this would be a multi-year, if not multi-decade, transition period?
reply
dunno but i havent been paying $20 for spending small amounts. have you sent some transactions lately? maybe quarter of that tops. we're paying more than a year ago sure but not $20
reply
🎯💯
"Fees are currently artificially and temporarily high due to JPEG clownery, but it is nothing more than a glimpse into the future. Scaling doesn’t happen on L1 [...]"
"Demanding low fees for Level 1 transactions is not just ignorant, it feeds into an attack on #Bitcoin [...]" https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-fees-20-month-high-miner-revenues-match-69k-btc-price
reply
Bitcoin is like water it adapts and finds new paths to nurture the future!
reply
Just to add a bit of context: Ordinals inscriptions are a big part of the great increase in fees lately.
reply
iVpn accepts LN.
reply
This is why Lightning was created, Too bad for Mullvad VPN BTC payments
reply
If you don't own one Bitcoin, you don't have any right doing an onchain transaction, stick to Lightning Network
reply
Seems to be the elephant in a the room nobody wants to talk about...
lolwut. it's a constant topic of discussion
reply
My friend just paid nearly $50 in transaction fee 😂
reply
It is a bit worrying. Hopefully it is a forcing function for Lightning improvement and other layer 2 development. Everything is good for Bitcoin eventually and we all know fees must rise over time but the non onchain layers are not ready for a world where on chain is only used for major transactions and fees are $100 or more.
reply
Bitcoin Onchain transaction is not for every Bitcoiner so know this and know peace
reply
There is a low fee payments mechanism for bitcoin. Mulvad chooses not to use it. This sounds like a Mulvad problem, not a Bitcoin problem.
reply
Put me in the camp that thinks this is not good. How can we preach self custody and then when self custody on chain becomes too expensive just tell everyone to use layer 2 and say layer 1 is for the big players only. Doesn't that sound a lot like the traditional banking system?
reply
Yes, this is what the big blockers (BCH'ers keep screaming).
I think they get a lot of stuff wrong, but this is one point that I wish we would discuss more.
It's literally the only thing that worries me about BTC. It's a big deal, and it feels like we're generally ignoring it as a community.
reply
How can this be a top post...
reply
Increase block-size.
reply
increase block size = an even bigger wall for the ordinals graffiti.
reply
reply
What speaks against it?
reply
We had a war because of this in 2015-2017 (the "Block-Size War") and we won. Check this answer from the Spirit of Satoshi AI:
Maintaining a block size of 1 MB is crucial for the long-term success and security of the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin's block size limit was intentionally set at 1 MB to ensure that the network can handle a high volume of transactions while keeping the blockchain size manageable. If the block size were to be increased significantly, it could lead to a number of negative consequences.
Firstly, a larger block size would result in larger blockchain files, which could make it more difficult for miners and node operators to participate in the network. This could lead to centralization, as only a few powerful miners with the necessary resources could maintain the network. This centralization would undermine the decentralized nature of Bitcoin and potentially compromise its security.
Secondly, a larger block size could lead to slower transaction times and higher fees. As the network becomes congested, transactions may take longer to confirm, and fees may increase significantly. This could make Bitcoin less practical for everyday transactions, as users may not be willing to pay such high fees.
Lastly, a larger block size could compromise the security of the network. With more data to store and process, the network may become more vulnerable to attacks and malicious activities. This could erode trust in the Bitcoin network and potentially undermine its long-term viability.
Therefore, it is important to maintain a block size of 1 MB to ensure that Bitcoin remains a decentralized, secure, and scalable digital currency that can be used by a wide range of users.
reply
That's bullshit, dude.
The network's already congested, look at the fees and outstanding tx's lately...
It's far from what it should be.
Y'all want adoption but won't budge in order to achieve it. There is no way around this problem other than changing Bitcoin.
Lightning? A joke and a solid way to lose your funds or be a victim of attacks and other "scaling solutions" aren't better.
Y'all good at "but that's not the spirit of Satoshi", well I've got news for ya; If people can't move their UTXO's because the fees won't let them or would pretty much eat up the UTXO, people are gonna jump ship- and rightly so.
"Remember that $10 gift card I gave ya? Yeah... Its Pretty much useless on it's own right now... Wanna buy some more to move your funds? Pathetic.
reply
Well, you can create your own fork and "fix" Bitcoin. Others have tried before, so why don't you give it a try?
reply
Because it doesn't fix anything.
There's no good reason why there should not be an increase in block-size, and the whole competition for block-space might very well hinder Bitcoin from true adoption, not just people hoping to sell it higher.
reply
So what is the correct block size for true adoption?
If you start increasing it, you start getting other issues. Hash rate will go down, due to less profitability. Decentralization will decrease, due to higher hardware/network requirements to run a node.
AND you will still eventually need to move to a Layer 2/3 anyway, because onboarding the entire world for small daily transactions on Layer 1 would require massively large block sizes that will certainly centralize the system into a few massive super-nodes.
If we would need to build layers eventually anyway, why not do it now, and not make any tradeoffs that would compromise the base layer?
Look, I'm seriously concerned about this issue for BTC and I have a lot of sympathy for the things you are saying. You aren't wrong. But I also feel like you haven't thought this out completely. I don't know how to fix this, but I know a block size increase isn't the magic bullet that big-blockers think it is.
The big blockers were doomed to fail, not necessarily because of the arguments quoted above, but because they tried to push the change as a hardfork, which is impossible* for any change that is even the slightest bit controversial.
*They forked off, but the fork is not Bitcoin.
reply
How profitable can mining be long run?
Fastvpn through name change offers 88 cent a month vpn plan then 7.99 after first month or 12.99 a year. No logs. Tcp, ikev2, udp, and wire guard with over 60 locations worldwide. Super fast and multiple ports as.well with a scramble feature. And you can pay with crypto.
Liquid network brings a new way to manage high fee environment, along with swap in and out of channels with sideswap and so on. Spammers will only drain themselves, must be quite lucrative to own a huge mining facility now with ordinal people throwing money on worthless stuff on BTC network. Free money and big bucks for the miners though
This is why Lightning network is the alternative. If you want to make on chain transaction then let it be above $5000 worth so that you wouldn't fee the transaction fee
stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.
deleted by author
reply
Thank you for saying this. I've been thinking about this alot lately. I view Lightning as a failure. I've given it so many chances and I just don't wanna deal with it anymore. I either deal on-chain or I don't. It's all good.
reply
deleted by author
reply
A "small amount" could be like 12 months worth of groceries and expenses, and a "big amount" could be your life savings of 20 years. Would that still be reasonable?
reply
No, that would not be reasonable. How would that work in a bitcoin circular economy? I just collect my wages for twelve months before deciding to spend them via lightning?
reply
I would store all your wages in LN and at the end of the year move the excess money on-chain once per year as long-term retirement savings. If you expect to make some bigger purchases in the upcoming months, you could also keep that on-hand. Hopefully over time, your long-term savings is much bigger than what you keep for daily expenses.
reply
All of this requires liquidity management and thus on-chain fees.
reply
Sure, but I think people are realizing how valuable the hardest money in the universe actually is and what a premium it is to be able to store your money on it really is. The security of it is that good. If you can compromise on that, you can save money in exchange for risk. For example, using Liquid or some other side chain system. I'm not saying Liquid is as good as on-chain BTC.
But it's like telling someone that it's probably healthier to eat this $50 grass fed steak rather than the $2 soybean veggie patty. It doesn't help if they can't afford such premium food and can only afford $2. So, you make do with what you can afford. I don't know if that's a sign of a broken system, but maybe just a sign of the reality of the highest level of security in the universe. And maybe we ALL don't need it, but certainly it's pretty damn awesome that we can get a piece of that security today.
So keep your liquid funds in something, and if you're literally broke AF, and even Liquid fees are killing you, then you might have to go custodial. But work your way towards something non-custodial. And I don't think you really have to go non-custodial. I think there will always be some weird but viable and properly running side chain you can use. Not a fan of those side chains, but they are better than custodial crap.
Agreed. And soon they will be telling to just use custodial accounts. Sometimes it feels like lots of bitcoiners are just operating off blind faith
reply
It's already happening, and it's ridiculous. It needs to end.
This goes against the Bitcoin ethos and for all the bitcoin maximalism out there, I fail to see how that is reasonable.
I go on Nostr and see "bio: Bitcoin maximalist! Live or die on this hill!" "Ln address: @getalby.com"
Hum... Now don't get me wrong, I know you xan keep only what you immediately spend on a custodial wallet but a) it sets a precadent. On fact, it already has. b) if they have their own node, might as well use it, no reason not to.
reply
deleted by author
reply
Yeah, I don't see how we're going to get this into the average Joe's head, either.
"Money of the people" but only for the ones able to out-bid others when transacting.
reply
deleted by author
deleted by author
reply
Fully agree
reply
In 2021 and 2022, I mostly only had on chain transactions in my store. This year it was almost entirely lightning. Merchants will adapt, and maybe even need an incentive (saving on fees).
reply
deleted by author
reply
deleted by author
reply
Exactly, like the internet bitcoin scales in layers, from strong quasi immutable layer 1 (on chain) to layer 2 (LND/CLN) and layer 3 is already coming (Fedimint, Cashu), each layer providing its own set of trade-offs when it comes to cost, speed and privacy. Painful moments ahead during the transition but all part of the process. Remember videos from Andreas Antonopoulos about ten years ago and saying that the internet kept failing to scale
reply