There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions • Hacker News Board

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#141

Post by A3mercury » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 3:16 PM UTC

etr-strike wrote: post #68

johanols wrote: post #38

That's why I use Litecoin. Transactions fee are one of the lowest in all of crypto and it's transactions speeds are acceptable. Always within a couple of minutes.

Litecoin is essentially the same as bitcoin with slightly different chosen constants. Bitcoin is optimizing for decentralization, Litecoin is not. If people actually used litecoin it’d have the same exact problems.

I think this is what people don't fully understand. Bitcoin is not the exception, it's just the first to hit this wall. Even if Bitcoin Cash were to take over with larger block sizes, we'll see the same problem just further down the line.

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#142

Post by vorotato » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 6:42 PM UTC

kindfellow92 wrote: post #7

vorotato wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think something that consistently deflates is already an absurdly flawed currency. It's not exactly an exchange medium if it's better to hold on to it than do something meaningful with it.

It’s not a currency. It’s digital gold. Gold isn’t easy to exchange and it’s deflationary but it’s a good place to store your money for the long term, especially if you live in an unstable country. What makes bitcoin valuable is that it’s gold without any of the downsides of gold. Hop in an airplane with the equivalent of millions of dollars in your pocket without having to trust or ask permission from anyone.

I think everyone downvoted this because it is advertised as currency, but I think this person actually hit the nail on the head. Bitcoin does have value, but not as a currency because it doesn't actually inflate enough to make it bad to hoard. Instead its value (dubious, but I'll allow it) is essentially as a commodity, with all the rollercoaster that a commodity is. This is much more honest I think.

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#143

Post by tinus_hn » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 10:16 PM UTC

Buonaparte wrote: post #64

I've had a couple of thousand dollars "stuck" across several bitcoin transactions for over four days now (106 hours+), due to low fees suggested by my wallet/exchange. Something needs to change, because it's currently unusable.

Yes, your wallet/exchange needs to change because it's giving you incorrect suggestions.

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#144

Post by taejo » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 9:54 AM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #102

prawn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an example, wasn't there an $80m transaction the other day, where the fee was $20? I wonder what banks would charge to facilitate that?

As far as I know, even for very big payments, most banks charge either no fee or a flat fee for SEPA. My bank charges nothing for normal SEPA transfers or 20 euro for expedited ones (or it did a couple of years ago; I think there’s some new regulation reducing max times for transfers, making expedited less relevant). No upper limit mentioned on the forms. Of course, that’s only relevant within the EU.

To clarify for non-Eurozoners: SEPA is the Single European Payment Area. All bank transfers denominated in euros within the EU, EEA, San Marino and Monaco must cost the same regardless of destination bank or country. In the eurozone that cost is usually zero.

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#145

Post by blunte » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 10:57 AM UTC

tehlike wrote: post #140

blunte wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said it couldn't be :). But with bitcoin's significant transaction fees, it's much less useful as a medium of transaction (for small value transactions). Remember just a year or two ago when it was cool to buy your coffee at a shop that took bitcoin? You wouldn't do that now, since your coffee would cost the equivalent of $20 ($4 for the coffee, $16 for the transaction fee). It's also painful to realize how m…

Sure but hopefully if all this nonsense ends with couple stable currencies, the price will stabilize and younwill be able tobuy your coffee with bitcoins again or moneroj, or hell if i know.

I think it will. The internet has been around for 20 years, and we're only just figuring out some of the good things to do with it (and stumbling over a million crappy ways to use it).

I see bitcoin as a proof of concept that was much needed, so it grew legs and became a "real thing". Something better will replace it (and I wish I knew for sure which it would be so I could "bet" on it now! ;) ).

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#146

Post by blunte » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 11:03 AM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #102

prawn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an example, wasn't there an $80m transaction the other day, where the fee was $20? I wonder what banks would charge to facilitate that?

As far as I know, even for very big payments, most banks charge either no fee or a flat fee for SEPA. My bank charges nothing for normal SEPA transfers or 20 euro for expedited ones (or it did a couple of years ago; I think there’s some new regulation reducing max times for transfers, making expedited less relevant). No upper limit mentioned on the forms. Of course, that’s only relevant within the EU.

EU is WAY ahead of the US in many areas. I daresay that's because corporate monopolies have a bit less power here (Europe).

The older folks in the US (the same group who put the US in the situation it's in now) are still writing paper checks, putting them in envelopes, and sending them through the postal service. Sure, you can send a bank wire, but the sender will pay $15-30 for the privilege, and the receiver often has to pay $15 or more as well. Oh, and it can take 1-2 business days; and the receiving bank may decide, based on whatever reason, to hold the funds for 10 business days.

Things are slowly changing with US banking, becoming slightly more modern; but it's still the dark ages.

I'm amused when I visit family in the US and hear local people expressing superiority over the rest of the world, while Kenya has been doing mobile banking for 10 years.

Anyway, until you've lived in the US, you don't know how sucky banking is. Any extra-bank financial system in the US is better than what they have now!

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#147

Post by gomox » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 12:41 PM UTC

tromp wrote: post #53

gomox wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you just naively did that, you would risk the funds being spent twice if both transactions are included in the block (unlikely, but possible). There is an implementation of essentially the same concept that you are describing called "replace by fee". I haven't seen it implemented in any wallet software, but apparently it's in Bitcoin Core. I think the tricky part is getting nodes to relay transactions that…

It's not possible for a valid block to include multiple transactions spending the same input. All full nodes will reject such a block as invalid.

Thanks, I didn't know that.

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#148

Post by lobo_tuerto » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 5:08 PM UTC

And more increasing by the second... will it ever catch up?

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#149

Post by Glendoe » Sun, Dec 24, 2017, 8:42 AM UTC

The miners are greedy bastards. They will be the ones to run this thing into the ground and Kill the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg.

ShapeShift.io is charging an unprecedented 0.003 per transaction. The Coinomi Android wallet is listing their minimum transaction fee (the "LOW" fee) at 0.002 as of last week. The Mycelium Android wallet is trying to scavenge about 0.0025 per transaction at the high end.

And the reason for the high fees IS NOT because of the network congestion: It's because so far the greedy bastard miners are finding where they can get away with it. Probably in fact they purposely slowing down the network to cause the congestion as a ruse in claiming it for an excuse to charge exorbitant fees. This is also an age-old trick that union workers use to get more money for doing nothing on the job by just purposely slowing down the work pace.

Right now anyway, I've seen where the average Bitcoin ATM machines are quite busy with greenhorns who are shoving their cash bills into the machines for a little dab of Bitcoin here and there. Most of those people are buying it to hold it for awhile with the idea in mind of selling it back to the same ATM machine they bought it from and turn a profit. So about the time more and more and more people begin to understand that they are being fleeced for exorbitant transaction fees that dramatically cut into any gains they would have made off of typically small investments, then they will STOP buying Bitcoin from the ATM machines.

Bitcoin will be all washed up within a couple years if for no other reason than these greedy bastard miners who are going to find out that although they made more money in a shorter period of time with their greed, they WOULD have ended up making more money over the long term if they hadn't been the greedy bastards that they are.

Greedy bastards. All of them. Greedy bastards.