Bitcoin Conference Stops Accepting BTC Due To High Fees (bitcoin.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Next week the popular cryptocurrency event, The North American Bitcoin Conference (TNABC) will be hosted in downtown Miami at the James L Knight Center, January 18-19. However, bitcoin proponents got some unfortunate news this week as the event organizers have announced they have stopped accepting bitcoin payments for conference tickets due to network fees and congestion. Bitcoin settlement times, and the fee market associated with transactions, have become a hot topic these days as on-chain fees have risen to $30-60 per transaction. These issues have made it extremely difficult for businesses to operate, and many merchants have stopped accepting bitcoin for services and goods altogether.

Comments

$30+ fees?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to buy a stick of gum? How is this supposed to be progress?

Oh, you are surprised I want to use Bitcoin as a currency, not as a speculation instrument?

Re:$30+ fees?

[jfdavis668]

Yes, Bitcoin has turned into more of an investment strategy than an actual currency. Unless the system is designed to drive down transaction fees, it will never be a viable currency.

Re:$30+ fees?

[lucaiaco]

Speculation. I buy bitcoins because I know some other idiots will buy bitcoins with the hope that they will keep on growing in prize.

Re:$30+ fees?

[vivian]

With a fixed number of transactions per block, and a limited block frequency, the transaction fees must by necessity increase as trading volume increases. Increasing volume will only push up competition for the limited number of transaction slots available, which with a 1 MB block is 3.3 to 7 transactions per second. That's a hard limit of 400k to 600k transactions per day.
Right now, the biggest peak has been 498000 transactions per day - on Fri 15 Dec, right before the peak value on 17 Dec.

Wait till the bubble really pops - the transaction fees are going to be massive as there is a mad scrabble for people desperate to get their money out.
The miners are going to make an absolute killing when bitcoin plummets. Unfortunately for them, it's going to be a fortune in bitcoin.

As a currency, it's useless.
As a store of value, it's also questionable - you'd be better off putting your money into something that there is actually a use for in the economy - natural resources or investments in productive capital.

Re:$30+ fees?

[TheRaven64]

Gold is a good conductor and doesn't corrode in air. These two things mean that there is a real demand for gold for electrical connectors and jewellery. It's relatively scarce, so the demand is high in proportion to the supply. If gold were cheaper, then we'd plate a lot more things in gold (e.g. pretty much every electrical connector - gold isn't quite as good a conductor as copper, but it's a much better conductor than copper oxide). That gives a lower bound on the price of gold: if it were plentiful then we'd use it for a lot more and its price would drop to close to that of copper or aluminium, but not to zero.

Salt hasn't been a viable currency for quite a long time, but that doesn't mean that people don't still trade salt in futures markets.

Re:Ironic

[burtosis]

I am personally betting against bitcoin having long term crypto currency market dominance for this exact reason. The liquidity issue will only make runs far worse and there are more efficient ways of handling transactions if you could start over. Moore's law may help lessen this but can bitcoin keep on top that long?

That's some serious irony right there

[sjbe]

Bitcoin settlement times, and the fee market associated with transactions, have become a hot topic these days as on-chain fees have risen to $30-60 per transaction.

Also ironic given that the initial justification for bitcoin was to minimize transaction fees. It's why I've been arguing that the notion that bitcoin has an economic advantage is a false economy.

Re:Ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

Once a currency becomes unusable as a payment method, it becomes a useless currency, and that is left is pure speculation... when people realize that, its market value is going to drop to zero.

Re:Greater Fool Theory

[TheRaven64]

It can take a long time though, and while you're riding the upwards curve and selling slowly you can make a lot of money. The thing that people always forget when they read about the tulip bubble and he wall street crash is that as many people became rich as went bankrupt. It's a zero-sum game, so every dollar someone loses will be won by someone else. In many ways, it resembles a poker game where both players are bluffing. Eventually either one will fold or they'll call and whoever has the higher card will win.

I have not speculated on bitcoin, because I don't have any confidence that I can predict the inflection point well enough to find a greater fool before it does.