Bitcoin's Fee now down to more "reasonable" levels.
The Bitcoin daily transaction fee hit all time highs just a few months ago.
On December 23rd, the average daily transaction fee was north of $34 per transaction.
That is absurd!
Unfortunately this happened at a time when all eyes were on bitcoin, it also happened as bitcoin was reaching all time highs around $20k per coin.
Which is also one of the reasons why the fees got so high in the first place.
What's the fee like today?
As of yesterday, the daily transaction fee on bitcoin was down to about $.79 per transaction.
A dramatic 98% drop from the highs seen just a few months prior.
This also marked the lowest transaction fee on bitcoin seen in the last 6 months.
Below is a graph of the median transaction fee over the past 6 months:
(Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/02/bitcoins-transaction-fee-crisis-is-over-for-now/)
What this means going forward?
It is good news, but it is likely short lived if the price of bitcoin again makes another surge higher like some are anticipating later this year.
Currently there are several new technologies being worked on to help eleviate the problem of high fees.
The first being SegWit, and the second being the Lightning Network.
The second is the most exciting in my opinion as a bitcoin owner as it could possibly take over the entire crypto payments industry.
Implementing the lightning network would offer nearly instant transactions and fees would likely cost fractions of cents.
For now, it looks like those wanting to use cryptocurrency for payment are mostly using better alternatives.
Litcoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash are some of the more popular options.
We need to get steem mentioned in there as well so that it can solidify itself as a payment option before bitcoin eventually makes the necessary upgrades to work for payments.
The good news is that it will likely take many months before Lightning is ready and then several more months before it is fully implemented across the network.
Which means...
Steem still has some time to get its foot in the door. :)
Stay informed my friends.
Follow me: @jrcornel
I never considered how much the fee changes. Wow the fee changes faster then the price of bitcoin does.
This is great news. I once heard someone said when people start using bitcoin for transactions then they will see how high the fees are. When I went to buy steem I got the picture. The fees are really high. When you buy from coinbase, you pay $1.99 for the transaction and then when you transfer it to buy steem you pay again. I have paid as high as $13.99. So my steem purchases have all been higher than the purchasing price of steem. Excited the fess are going down.
dont buy anything on coinbase. fees are outrageous.
use the same account userid and password, and trade on gdax.com
Lightning network has been tested and it has many security flaws. So it will take a lot of time to come in existence in the real world. Steem is far ahead right now, it just needs promotion and awareness. Steem can change the whole transaction system in cryptos.
Not as strong a proof of security on STEEM network, as on BTC. Not sure I'd want to trust STEEM as a primary currency for daily purchases.
STEEM is gaining a lot of traction in my country. People are starting to get to know STEEM because of the SteemIT platform and ofcourse the 0% TXN fee and the instant transfer speed.
May the gods bless Dan for the STEEM blockchain 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾
And the only reason it is even showing $0.79 is because many wallets are still locked in at 1000 satoshi/byte so if you were to take those out we are down to $0.01-$0.05
Yes good point. I had seen some transactions in the $.05 range yesterday. Amazing how quickly the fees came down.
STEEM as a currency for exchange is unlikely, without support from steemit leadership that this is a direction they intend to support and move.
Damn, down 98% to 79ct, nice! And then Lightning Network is still to come, great times ahead :-)
I hope BTC will absorb the full market cap of Ripple and render it useless (while it already is exactly that, but people don't seem to get that) ;-)
Haha it just might. That is the thing, there is no guarantee who the winners will be in the space. I originally thought it might be a winner take all, but the more I think about it I think there is room for several different coins in different niches.
True, like almost anywhere in the world we'll very likely see oligopolies in a lot of specific niches :-)
Bout time it came down to a reasonable level. High transaction costs/delays are severely counterproductive.
Yes they are. It was unfortunate they didn't have a better solution in place when bitcoin had its time in the spotlight late last year. Oh well, it will again.
Agreed. Looking forward to that!
This is why i wish there was more Steem pairs so i can circumnavigate these fees, only time will tell how long these BTC fees will stay as low as they are...
Some Reddit and Twitter users had pretty convincing suggestions that Coinbase was responsible for much of the high fees with their unbatched, high volume transactions:
https://twitter.com/JordanTuwiner/status/951698069967589376
Thanks to the ccommunity putting pressure on Coinbase to move to Segwit, this should keep bitcoin fees down for a while.
Can't wait for lightning.
I hadn't seen this yet. Thanks for sharing! That is interesting indeed. It should also mean that on the next run up, fees shouldn't get nearly as high.