Something strange is going on within the Bitcoin ecosystem, as it has become all but impossible to send transactions to other people by paying a low or standard fee these days. Trouble started brewing when someone figured out how all mined blocks on February 29th were completely full ,leaving no room for additional transactions. Addressing the Bitcoin block size debate will have to happen very soon, before things – and transaction fees – get out of hand even more. Bitcoin Transaction Gets Stuck For Hours
Whenever somebody sends a Bitcoin transaction with a lower than normal fee , it only makes sense to face a slight delay. The way Bitcoin mining works is by prioritizing transactions based on the transaction fees paid. Low to no transaction fees will usually lead to a delay when waiting for network confirmations, although things never got out of hand as much as they do now.
These days, it is not just the low fee transactions which are faced with network confirmation delays, but the regular fee is no longer sufficient either. This creates a very awkward situation in the Bitcoin world, as the 0.001 BTC fee – worth US$0.43 at the time of writing – is no longer sufficient to get guaranteed confirmations from the next few blocks on the Bitcoin network.
But it is not just the transaction fees that are creating this backlog, as the network blocks mined on February 29th could not take in more transactions. All of the mined blocks were completely full, a strong indication as to how the block size needs to be increased much sooner than people anticipated. As a result, only high priority fees will get transactions confirmed these days, a cost currently sitting at 0.0044 BTC or US$1.90.
With the transaction fees increasing spectacularly to move […]
