BTC fees

Kim Dotcom Insists ‘Bitcoin Cash Will Serve the Mass Market,’ Criticizes BTC Fees, Elon Musk Responds

25/03/2021 by Idelto Editor

On Wednesday, the digital entrepreneur Kim Dotcom took to Twitter and talked an awful lot about the stark differences between bitcoin fees and bitcoin cash fees. While tagging Tesla’s Elon Musk in the thread, Dotcom explained that more than half the payments in the world are under $10 and the Bitcoin Cash network is “serving the mass market, [and] not just the 1%.”

Kim Dotcom: Bitcoin Cash Serves the Mass Market

On March 24, the cryptocurrency community was ecstatic to hear about Tesla accepting bitcoin (BTC) for payments. Following the announcement from Tesla’s Elon Musk, the founder of the now-defunct file hosting service Megaupload, Kim Dotcom took to Twitter to discuss the situation.

Dotcom has recently been promoting bitcoin cash (BCH) a great deal, as he believes the crypto asset offers a sustainable peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Bitcoin.com’s newsdesk interviewed Dotcom in mid-January and he told us his plans to “accelerate” BCH adoption. After the interview, Dotcom published a descriptive website that shows the benefits of leveraging BCH.

After the Tesla announcement, Dotcom explained how fees on the BTC network are both unreliable and unsustainable for certain payments. “Try and buy a Soda with bitcoin,” Dotcom said. “[The] median fee $8.92 [and the] bitcoin cash median fee is $0.001. Over half of all cash payments worldwide are under $10. BCH is serving the mass market, not just the 1%,” Dotcom said, while also tagging Tesla’s Elon Musk in the post.

Of course, a number of BTC maximalists disliked Dotcom’s statement, like the owner of bitcoin.org, Cobra who insisted that an $8.92 fee is negligible when you’re buying a car. However, the BCH proponent David Bond quickly responded to Cobra reminding him that BTC fees are always changing.

“$9 today, $1,000 tomorrow,” David Bond tweeted in response to the owner of bitcoin.org’s statement. In 2017, bitcoin (BTC) fees jumped over the $50 per transaction handle during the last bull run.

Elon Musk Responds to Dotcom’s Criticism, ‘Fair Point’ the Tesla Exec Replied

Dotcom also did not just tweet and leave his statement to the critics, as he has been very responsive throughout his entire thread. Furthermore, Tesla’s Elon Musk replied to Dotcom’s statement and said “Fair point.” When critics of Dotcom’s statement asked about the alleged scaling solution, the Lightning Network, the creator of the content monetization application called K.im responded further.

“Satoshi didn’t envision bitcoin as a new class of bank controlled by the same corrupt power structures as our current financial system,” Dotcom said. “Custodial solutions like Lightning are not changing our broken system. Users must control the keys to their digital money, not third parties.”

Dotcom added:

Transaction fees, transaction speed, and security matter most to vendors and users. That’s why I prefer Bitcoin Cash. It can be both a store of value and electronic cash as envisioned by Satoshi.

The digital entrepreneur responded to a number of people, and he wholeheartedly believes that BCH can serve both medium exchange fans and store of value fans. Moreover, Dotcom has plans to leverage bitcoin cash (BCH) in his upcoming content monetization application K.im. Dotcom also noted that the platform K.im was just one of the myriad of killer apps coming to the BCH network.

“Bitcoin Cash is growing into mass adoption with new killer apps and large vendor networks,” Dotcom insisted. “That’s why [the Bitcoin Cash network] is already doing more transactions per day than Bitcoin,” he added. Today’s stats on the web portal bitcoinfees.cash shows current BTC fees to get into the next block is over $9 per transaction.

What do you think about Kim Dotcom’s recent statements about bitcoin and bitcoin cash? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

ETH Fees Surge to All Time High After the Crypto Passed the $1,000 Mark

10/01/2021 by Idelto Editor

After the ether token surged past the $1,000 mark on January 3, the average transaction fee on the network similarly soared to a new all-time high (ATH) of $17.41, some 24 hours later. Although the average fee has since retreated, data on January 8 shows that the latest average fee at $9.79. This figure still well above the $3.56 seen on the first day of the new year.

Resurgent ETH fees

Before the new ATH, the Ethereum network’s previous highest average fee of $12.54 was recorded on September 1, 2020. At that time, some crypto enthusiasts attributed this surge to the decentralized finance (defi) hype. However, as the defi mania began to dissipate, ETH transaction fees gradually dropped.

However, as recent data shows, the network’s transaction fees, which averaged less than $5 for much of Q4 of 2020, have now stayed above $9 for all but two days of January 2021. This return of high fees on the network comes more than a month after ETH’s migration to a proof of stake (POS) consensus mechanism.

Meanwhile, the latest data shows that at the current fee levels, it now costs the same or even less to transact on the BTC network than on the ETH network. To illustrate, in the period during which ETH fees surged to the new ATH, transaction fees on the BTC have remained within the same range. For instance, during the entire Q4 period, fees on the BTC network have only peaked at $13.41 on October 31.

For much of Q4 of 2020, the fees on the Bitcoin network have fluctuated between the October 31 high of $13.41 and $1.44 the lowest average in that period. Similarly, on the BCH network, whose crypto is up by more than 100% since October 1, fees remain less than $0.01 per transaction.

Upgrade to Fix Problem of High Fees

Meanwhile, Kamil Brejcha, Founder at Dexfin offers the possible reason why ETH fees have spiked and how ongoing updates will fix this. Brejcha explains:

“We face high ETH fees because the Ethereum network still relies on miners to be block producers. The current update is called the Beacon chain, which allows depositing Ethereum for staking nodes. These nodes run on their own blockchain, which is not yet part of the mainnet.”

The Dexfin founder also details the upgrading process which starts with the Beacon chain. In 2021, the next Shard chain will follow before the merging of the two in the year 2022 or later. After that, the “transaction speed should improve more, also cutting the gas fee.”

What do you think is causing the fees on the ETH network to go up? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below.

Mempool Clog: Bitcoin Hashrate Drops 40%, Backlog Shows Over 100K Unconfirmed Transactions

29/10/2020 by Idelto Editor

The Bitcoin network hashrate has dropped significantly over the last four days sliding from a high of 161 exahash per second (EH/s) to 90 EH/s on October 27. Today, the Bitcoin hashrate has improved a hair as the network’s security is currently hovering around 100 EH/s. However, the mempool log of unconfirmed transactions has spiked to levels not seen since the 2017 highs.

On Wednesday, October 28, 2020, the Bitcoin (BTC) hashrate is trying to regain what was lost during the last four days. According to statistics, since the October 27 high of 161 EH/s, the network hashrate is down -37.88% at 100 EH/s today. The overall SHA256 hashrate lost more than 40% between the highest point to the lowest metric recorded.

Analysts assume the drop was due to the end of the rainy season in Sichuan China and its been said that miners have been migrating to different regions in the country. The significant drop follows the network’s all-time high when the hashrate spiked to 174 EH/s on October 14, 2020.

The executive from the mining organization Hashr8, Thomas Heller, spoke about the hashrate drop on Twitter on October 26.

“Looking at the top 10 pools, we can see approx 22 EH/s left the Bitcoin network,” Heller tweeted. “Not a precise measure of course, but overlaid with the number of blocks mined per day, we can get a rough idea of the hashrate change. This coming difficulty adjustment is one to look forward to,” the executive added.

Not too long ago, BTC’s mining difficulty dropped from the highest point ever at 19.69T to today’s range of 18.60T. With the hashrate so low, miners may see the difficulty drop even lower making it easier to mine bitcoins.

The next expected difficulty change however is still five days away scheduled for on or around November 2, 2020. Today there are 17 mining pools pointing their hash at the BTC chain. The top mining operation today is F2pool with 17.93 EH/s under the hood. F2pool is followed by Poolin, Btc.com, Antpool, and Binance Pool.

Data from bitcoinfees.cash recorded at 12:00 p.m. (EST) on October 28, 2020.

Now because the hashrate dropped and it has coincided with the price of bitcoin (BTC) rising, network fees have jumped considerably. Stats from bitcoinfees.cash indicates the next BTC block fee $8.26 and the current median fee is $5.10 per transaction.

Data from the mempool shows there’s 121,000+ unconfirmed transactions waiting to be confirmed. Of course, the wait times have pushed the transaction fee market up because people are paying higher fees to get their BTC transactions confirmed.

For now, miners will have to be patient and wait out the five days in order for the difficulty to drop lower. It is uncertain how much migration is happening in China right now as far as Sichuan operations are concerned, but most of the hashrate losses stemmed from China-based mining pools.

What do you think about the big hashrate drop during the last four days? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

The post Mempool Clog: Bitcoin Hashrate Drops 40%, Backlog Shows Over 100K Unconfirmed Transactions appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Privacy-Focused Brave Users Can Now Purchase Bitcoin Cash Through Bitcoin.com

25/10/2020 by Idelto Editor

The privacy-centric web browser Brave has partnered with Bitcoin.com in order to give users access to cryptocurrencies like bitcoin cash from directly inside their browser. The newly added Bitcoin.com widget has been added to the latest Brave software and is now available to users in various countries.

The latest version of the privacy-oriented Brave browser now has a Bitcoin.com widget that allows people to purchase cryptocurrencies like bitcoin cash (BCH). The widget is available to users in select regions such as the EU, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Russia.
Bitcoin.com’s founder Roger Ver tweeted about the recent partnership on October 21. “Bitcoin.com has partnered with Brave to allow users to buy Bitcoin Cash directly inside their privacy-centric browser,” Ver stated.
According to recent statistics, the privacy-centric Browser has roughly 19.6 million monthly users and around 6.6 million active on a daily basis. Brave’s Bitcoin.com widget follows a number of other popular exchange widgets hosted on the browser.
The new widget announcement was extremely popular on the Reddit forum r/btc, as a great number of BCH fans were pleased with the added accessibility. “This is great news,” explained one BCH proponent. “Been using Brave for almost a year now. I think I’ve made about $50 and have tipped a lot of journalists with it.”

“A lot of people love BCH, and the Bitcoin.com service,” Jonathan Sampson, Senior Developer Relations at Brave said on Twitter. “We want these people to be safe, and secure when they’re using Brave. For this reason, a widget helps to protect their transactions,” he added.
Bitcoin cash (BCH) transactions are lightning-fast and fees are always negligible. According to data on Saturday, Oct. 24, 2020, the next block fee for BCH is $0.0014 and the current median fee is $0.0012. In comparison, bitcoin’s (BTC) next block fee is $4.64 and the current median fee is $2.35.

What do you think about Bitcoin.com’s integration with the privacy-centric Brave browser? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

The post Privacy-Focused Brave Users Can Now Purchase Bitcoin Cash Through Bitcoin.com appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Cumulative Ethereum Transaction Fees in 2020 Supersede Bitcoin’s by a Long Shot

30/09/2020 by Idelto Editor

This week the research and analysis team Coin Metrics published a report on how decentralized finance (defi) is “fueling Ethereum’s growth.” Meanwhile, the researchers also highlighted that Ethereum’s cumulative transaction fees in 2020 are now over $350 million and more than double the aggregated total of Bitcoin’s network fees.

Coin Metrics researchers and Nate Maddrey published a new report that discusses Ethereum’s defi evolution and the growth the blockchain has seen this year. However, with the new demand Coin Metrics highlights that ETH fees have “changed dramatically” and the authors note “high gas prices are becoming the new norm.”

A few defi project launches contributed to the dramatic rise in network fees including UNI, SUSHI, YAM, and YFI. The trading of the new tokens has been more prevalent on decentralized exchange (dex) platforms and because swaps are onchain this created a fee market. “This can lead to escalating transaction fees as users compete to be first in line for a trade,” the report emphasizes.

“ETH median transaction fee hit a new all-time high of $8.25 on September 2nd following the launch of SUSHI,” the study’s author adds.

On Twitter, the Coin Metric’s team published a chart that shows Ethereum network fees this year are double the size of BTC’s 2020 fees. “Ethereum Total Transaction Fees during 2020 are now over $350m and more than twice Bitcoin’s,” the team’s Twitter account wrote. “By comparison, this time last year, cumulative Bitcoin Transaction Fees were $135M and Ethereum Transaction Fees were $27M,” the researchers added.

The report says that distributed ledger network fees are a “double-edged sword.” Essentially users are paying higher fees but miners are gathering all the revenue and in turn, the hashrate has increased exponentially. “As a result, Ethereum’s hash rate is climbing towards all-time highs— This is a good sign for Ethereum, as network security is critical for the long-term health and success of the blockchain.”

Although, the researchers underline that higher gas fees can make the ETH chain “prohibitively expensive” for a certain fraction of users. This can tip the scales for Ethereum whales who can swap large sums of tokens while smaller players could face a barrier to entry. “Ethereum’s median transfer value has increased to hundreds of dollars since the rise of defi, signalling that the network is shifting towards larger players,” the report points out.

What do you think about Ethereum fees growing double the size of Bitcoin’s network fees in 2020? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

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