Fees

Covid-19 Stimulus: Banks Will Gain $18 Billion in Fees for Processing PPP Relief Loans

15/07/2020 by Idelto Editor

The world’s banking cartel will gather $18 billion in fees for facilitating the settlement of small business Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) relief loans leveraged during the Covid-19 pandemic. The $640 billion in PPP relief loans stem from the CARES Act and allegedly there’s only $130 billion left for Americans looking for funds.

The Banks Will Acquire $18 Billion from Fees Simply by Processing PPP Loans

A recent report from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth details that financial institutions will gather close to 3% of the aggregate total of $640 billion in PPP relief loans just for processing the funds. The Washington Center for Equitable Growth’s (WCEG) policy director, Amanda Fischer said that banks stand to make $18 billion from the CARES Act from standard processing fees. “If we did it through a public institution, there would be [more than] $140 billion left,” Fischer stressed on Tuesday.

Fischer said that traditionally banks use the fees to cover the cost of risk provided that some of the loans turn out to be fraudulent. However, PPP loans stem from the government and the possibility of them accepting funky PPP loans is extremely low. “Basically it’s free money,” Fischer highlighted in her interview. Fischer also had shown that the fee processing is a nice lump sum of revenue for certain banks like JP Morgan Chase, which could acquire $864 million and New Jersey-based Cross River Bank stands to rake in $163 million.

The CARES Act: The Perfect Example of the American Government’s Corruption During Times of Crisis

The CARES Act has been controversial even before the bill was signed by Donald Trump when U.S. representative, Thomas Massie, told the public the stimulus bill bolsters a shroud of secrecy surrounding the Federal Reserve. The stimulus plan has also been under fire for incentivizing hospitals, as many hospitals, long term care centers, and nursing homes were facing budget issues well before the Covid-19 outbreak. A number of skeptics have accused hospitals and nursing homes of inflating the coronavirus death numbers.

Not only do people blame the government for giving banks the opportunity to rake in $18 billion from processing fees alone, but many Americans also blame the government for overreacting during the coronavirus outbreak. The American government was responsible for closing down a number of small businesses nationwide, but also chose a number of monopolies like Walmart to remain open. Because the government chose favorites by deeming some businesses ‘essential’ and others ‘nonessential,’ a tidal wave of small American businesses are starting to fail or will go bankrupt in the near future and never return.

‘A Failure of Preparedness’

The bitcoiner Andrew D (@bitcoingoup) on Twitter explained the situation quite well on Tuesday. “Jeff Bezos is $75 billion dollars richer this year,” Andrew D tweeted. “Your local comic book shop owner just declared bankruptcy and permanently closed his business after 13 years in the community. Neither event was the result of free market activity; both the result of our government’s meddling.” He further added:

We can no longer tolerate an expansionary monetary policy that benefits only the elite and continues to oppress the common man. We need to end the Fed. Enough is enough.

A number of analysts believe the controversial CARES Act and the $18 billion raked in from fees will bolster cryptocurrencies and transform the “bank business model in the post-Covid-19 world.” Americans and citizens from all around the world are getting fed up with the poor central planning that aims to keep the elite in power. Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) believes that financial inclusion is being ignored by the traditional banking system, and a form of inclusion stemming from digital financial services will be a game-changer.

Amanda Fischer from WCEG noted during the end of her interview, the fact that banks have been allowed to reap $18 billion from relief programs means that central planners have no reliable infrastructure for people looking for quick access to money during times of crisis. “We should have invested in better systems,” Fischer said. “[It is] a failure of preparedness.”

The Small Business Association (SBA), the entity that handles PPP relief programs, has been under fire for a long time for not being willing to change the infrastructure when it comes to accessing disaster relief funds. The banks making revenue off simply processing the PPP settlement are likely not complaining about the lack of changes.

What do you think about banks standing to make $18 billion from processing PPP relief loans? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

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Ethereum Network Fees Jump Above Bitcoin Transaction Fees for Two Weeks Straight

23/06/2020 by Idelto Editor

This week digital currency enthusiasts have been discussing network fees, specifically transaction fees associated with the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains. Last Sunday on June 21, one Ethereum proponent noted that during the last 16 days, Ethereum users have paid more to leverage the network than Bitcoin users.

Digital currencies like bitcoin, ethereum, bitcoin cash, and litecoin all have a network or miner fee associated with sending each and every transaction. This means in order to send a fraction of bitcoin (BTC), there must be enough BTC in the wallet to also cover the sending fee.

At the time of publication, the data site bitinfocharts.com shows the average BTC network fee was $1.14 per transaction on June 22. Ethereum (ETH) network fees show the average fee on that day was around $0.62 per send. Bitcoin cash (BCH) has an average fee of $0.006 per transaction or six-tenths of a U.S. penny. Now not all BTC fee recording websites are exactly the same as there are many different averages depending on the site used.

According to the fee calculation website offered by billfodl.com, the next block fee required to have your transaction mined on the next block (10 minutes) is $0.87 today. Similarly, for June 23, the average fee for getting into the next three blocks is the same price. If an individual paid $0.73 per BTC fee, the transaction would possibly confirm within six blocks (1 hour).

The six-block fee would bring ETH transaction fees much closer to current BTC fees which bitinfocharts.com shows is $0.62. Coin Metrics charts show that ETH transaction fees have been consecutively higher than BTC’s fees in June. The well known ETH proponent on Twitter Eric.eth (Eric Conner – @econoar) told his 15,000 followers on Sunday:

For 16 straight days, Ethereum users have paid more to use the network than Bitcoin users.

Since the tweet, Ethereum transaction fees have dropped according to Coin Metrics data. The web portal ethgasstation.info, a website that provides ether gas price recommendations, notes that ETH fees are much lower than BTC’s average as far as stats on billfodl.com is concerned.

All the fees measured in gwei highlight that the gas amount it takes to send an ETH transaction and ERC20 token as well, is $0.26 for the fastest transaction confirmation time. Every tier lower is only a U.S. penny cheaper for standard and safe but low fee transactions.

Now during the last few years and especially since 2017, we know that when the price of ETH or BTC rises and is used more often, fees grow much larger. At the height of 2017, BTC fees jumped higher than $50 per transaction on December 22, 2017. On that same day, ETH fees were around $1.40 per ETH transaction.

Now, this occurrence doesn’t happen with bitcoin cash (BCH) since the block size has increased to 32MB. Before the block size upgrade, on that same day in mid-December 2017, the average BCH fee did rise to $0.31 per transaction. However, during the September 2018 stress tests, after confirming over 2.4 million transactions per day outshining BTC’s best day by 5x, the average BCH transaction (txn) fee was $0.003 per txn.

Since then BCH fees have not risen past the $0.008 txn fee naturally and have been consistently under a U.S. penny per transaction for the last two years. According to Coin Dance stats it is currently 815.51x more expensive to transact on Bitcoin (BTC) on June 23, 2020.

Transacting on the Bitcoin Cash chain is also much cheaper than transacting in ETH as it is 8,566.66% more expensive to transact in ETH than it is to leverage bitcoin cash. This data is all publicly available by leveraging sources like ethgasstation.info, bitinfocharts.com, Coin Metrics data, and billfodl.com.

What do you think about the difference in transaction fees between ETH and BTC lately? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

The post Ethereum Network Fees Jump Above Bitcoin Transaction Fees for Two Weeks Straight appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Nightmare Come True: User Pays $2.6 Million in Transaction Fees to Send $134 of Ether

10/06/2020 by Idelto Editor

Nightmare Come True: User Pays $2.6 Million Transaction Fees to Send $134 of Ether

A record ethereum transaction fee has been paid today: $2.6 million to transfer $134.

The user probably mixed up the fields on the value of the transfer and the fee, eventually paying 10,668 ETH in fees, or $2.6 million, on a transaction mined by Sparkpool.

A nightmare come true, the customer sent 0.55 ether, worth $133.95, according to a record of transactions broadcast on the Ethereum (ETH) network. The money was sent to an address on the South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb.

The funds may be lost forever. Most blockchains are built to prevent transactions from being reversed once the sender confirms it.

Moreover, the fee may have since been distributed to the different miners under Sparkpool as a reward for processing transactions.

Sparkpool said in a tweet on June 10: “We are further investigating the incident of unusually high tx fee…There will be a solution in the end.”

The Chinese miner has previously repaid a user half of the 2,100 ETH accidentally paid as fees in a 0.1 ether transfer.

There is suspicion of underhand dealing, with some members of the Ethereum community alleging manipulation of the transaction by Sparkpool, or that it was an attempt at evading tax, or money laundering.

In general, the average ETH transaction fee is up more than 637% since January, as the network became congested due to a high number of transactions passing through it.

Transactional errors are not uncommon in the crypto industry, but they don’t often come as big as the latest ether gaffe. In 2017, someone paid 50 bitcoin (BTC) in transaction fees to send just under 10 BTC.

Some analysts suggest that blockchain networks should be able to reject transactions if the fee exceeds the average highest fees of the previous 10 blocks mined, just in the same way, say, the Bitcoin blockchain rejects fees that are too low.

What do you think about errors in cryptocurrency transactions? Let us know in the comments section below.

The post Nightmare Come True: User Pays $2.6 Million in Transaction Fees to Send $134 of Ether appeared first on Bitcoin News.

A Number of Hong Kong Vending Machines Support Bitcoin Cash Payments Over BTC

04/06/2020 by Idelto Editor

Just recently, cryptocurrency evangelist Roger Ver shared a video on Twitter that shows a number of vending machines in Hong Kong that accept bitcoin cash and ethereum, but not bitcoin. A bunch of people got upset at the Tweet, including the crypto-pundit Tone Vays because they couldn’t deal with the fact that onchain bitcoin transactions could not provide such services. The reason bitcoin cash is supported by these vending machines in Hong Kong is because bitcoin transaction fees are 1,931x more expensive than bitcoin cash transactions.

Hong Kong Vending Machines Choose Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash

For years now the concept of leveraging cryptocurrencies with vending machines has been a popular trend because the two ideas go hand in hand. In the early days, when bitcoin (BTC) fees were cheaper, vending machines that utilized BTC were gathering steam. News.Bitcoin.com reported on the subject back in 2016, just before BTC fees skyrocketed to $50+ per transaction at the end of 2017. The network clog and higher fees have made it so bitcoin vending machines are not realistic if they are powered by BTC transactions. There have been a few Lightning Network-powered vending and candy machines, but the Lightning Network is riddled with issues like failed transactions and a myriad of other vulnerabilities. Hardcore BTC maximalists don’t like to admit it, but in a much shorter period of time, the Ethereum blockchain handles more BTC-based offchain transactions by a long shot.

Why do these HK vending machines accept #BitcoinCash and #Ethereum but not #Bitcoin? pic.twitter.com/NosqL8ZVgP

— Roger Ver (@rogerkver) May 29, 2020

Just recently, the well known digital currency investor, Roger Ver, tweeted about a few vending machines in Hong Kong that only accept ETH and BCH. “Why do these Hong Kong vending machines accept bitcoin cash and ethereum but not bitcoin?” Ver asked his Twitter followers. The reason why cryptocurrency vending machines cannot use BTC is because it is currently 1,931.56x more expensive to transact on Bitcoin (BTC) in USD,” according to Coin Dance statistics. So let’s just say a candy bar or can of soda in the machine costs $1, and according to Billfodl’s BTC fees web portal the average transaction will cost a user between $1.23 or $1.72 per transaction. So that dollar soda would cost a person a minimum of $2.23 for an 8oz can of cola, and anyone with some brain cells knows that’s not sustainable for vending machine operations.

Maximalists Dismiss Facts, Bitcoin Network Fees Crippled a Number of Concepts

Despite the facts, the Youtuber and crypto-pundit Tone Vays busted out a logical fallacy and said: “Because you probably paid for that feature of the machine.” Vays then switched goalposts, and said that the real question was “how many transactions have they processed since that demo.” Vays didn’t get into the fact that leveraging BTC is not sustainable to run a vending machine with dynamic and unreliable transaction fees. Vays forgot to mention that vending machines are not the only projects BTC’s high fees have neutered. Bitcoin cash fees are always low and less than a U.S. penny per transaction. BCH fees even remained that way in September 2018, when the BCH chain processed 2.4 million transactions in 24-hours.

Vays and the other people who decided to dismiss simple facts, didn’t mention that coin tumbling and coinjoin applications are much harder when BTC fees are so high. A number of mixers and tumbling services that operated in the early days are hardly used these days because of BTC high network fees. On the other hand, BCH fees are super low and have allowed for projects like Cashshuffle and Cashfusion to thrive. Both of these applications continue to allow people to shuffle millions of dollars because of low transaction fees. Let’s not forget that BCH developers pioneered Cashfusion and even BTC proponents are beginning to understand it offers more privacy than traditional coinjoin practices.

The Replace-by-Fee Vulnerability and No One Wants to Use Bitcoin for Color Coin Projects These Days

Critics of Ver’s tweet forgot to mention all the great companies that dropped BTC because of expensive and unreliable transactions. Well known companies like Fiverr, Expedia, Reddit, Steam, Stripe, Paypal, and Dell all dropped BTC support over the last few years. People on the vending machine thread on Twitter did discuss zero-confirmation transactions and how BCH benefits from them. Of course, maximalists claim that zero-confirmation transactions are “unsafe,” but the chances of them being unsafe are extremely minimal. However, as far as BTC is concerned the software called replace-by-fee (RBF) is not safe for zero-confirmation transactions and double spending can happen with any amount of funds on the BTC network using RBF.

Unfortunately, people forget that even color coins (tokens) were eclipsed from the BTC chain too for the most part because of fees. This reasoning alone is likely why Tether has moved most USDT over to other blockchains instead of relying on Omni. Ethereum is BTC’s sidechain because projects like Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) have outperformed the Lightning Network.

High transaction fees and network congestion has done a lot of damage to certain ideas like micropayments as well. If you cannot purchase a $1 soda in a reasonable manner, sending micropayments of $0.10 to $0.25 is even worse. The real reason the vending machines in Hong Kong accept bitcoin cash and ethereum is because it is not sustainable to run a vending operation with BTC’s expensive and unreliable transaction fees. No more no less.

What do you think about the response to Roger Ver’s tweet? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Digifinex Live AMA Hosts Bitcoin.com Chairman – Roger Ver Talks Stimulus, Useful Cryptocurrencies, Coronavirus

14/05/2020 by Idelto Editor

On May 14, Bitcoin.com Executive Chairman Roger Ver sat down with Digifinex cofounder, Kiana Shek, for an ask-me-anything (AMA) session about the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Ver explained what he thinks about the central banks printing unlimited money, the government-induced lockdowns, and his opinions about certain cryptocurrencies like BTC, BCH, XRP, ETH, and more.

Bitcoin.com Executive Chairman Roger Ver Discusses the Crypto Ecosystem on Digifinex Live

On Thursday, Digifinex cofounder Kiana Shek during an AMA at 8 a.m. ET, asked Ver about the economic crisis and massive amounts if stimulus central banks have created during the last two months.

Bitcoin.com Executive Chairman Roger Ver: The pandemic is a real disease and a real problem. But the reaction to it so far, seems to be much much worse than the disease itself. You see governments all over the world doing these economic stimulus packages. If printing money and just giving everybody some of it will make it so people never have to work again, why didn’t we do that for the last 100 years?

The fact of the matter is we need production, printing money, and giving people a bunch of checks doesn’t do anything. That’s not real economic progress. You actually have to have people building the businesses and building the goods and supplying the goods that people actually need in their lives. It’s not going to take long to realize that if you pay everyone to stay home and not work we are going to start running out of the things people need. So if anything, the exact opposite needs to be done. We need to have people go back to work and start producing the things the world needs.

Bitcoin.com Executive Chairman Roger Ver (left) and Digifinex cofounder, Kiana Shek.

The Digifinex cofounder then asked Ver about his stance toward supporting Bitcoin Cash and why his position had changed.

Roger Ver: To be clear, I didn’t change anything and I’ve been promoting the exact same thing for almost ten years now and that’s peer-to-peer electronic cash for the entire world. And sadly what everyone is calling bitcoin (BTC) today, that project got hijacked. It’s goal is no longer to be peer-to-peer cash for the world, which is the very title of the white paper. In fact, it got hijacked so badly that the people who run Bitcoin.org were talking about how to get rid of the white paper altogether because it was confusing people. Individuals who read the Bitcoin white paper and it’s clearly not talking about what everyone is calling Bitcoin. The Bitcoin white paper is talking about something much closer to Bitcoin Cash.

I am a fan of anything that works and puts people in charge of their own money. So they can send and receive money with anyone, anywhere, anytime without needing permission from anyone.

Are you interested in reading the Bitcoin white paper? Check it out here.

I think the cryptocurrency that has the best chance of doing that, for the most people is bitcoin cash. So from my point of view, I didn’t change anything at all, the original bitcoin project now just happens to be called Bitcoin Cash. The thing that everyone is calling bitcoin today in the media, it doesn’t have a white paper, it doesn’t have the same roadmap. They managed to hijack the bitcoin brand name, recognition, and network effect and all of the infrastructure built in the early days by people like myself. If you look at it before that split happened, pretty much every single business that was supporting people actually using bitcoin as money, supported bitcoin being able to scale so it could be money for the whole world. We had businesses like Coinbase, Blockchain.com, Bitpay, and on and on. The problem became so big that even Bitcoin.com could no longer support the thing called bitcoin.

The short answer is I didn’t change anything and what people are calling bitcoin today changed.

Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash for the Entire World

Kiana Shek then asked Ver about his thoughts on a price target for BCH in the future.

Roger Ver: If you look at it, Bitcoin Cash is trying to be money for the whole world. To have people using it all across the globe and even if it is a little bit successful in that, the price of bitcoin cash could easily go up 1000X where it is today. $230 dollars per coin could easily go up to $230,000 dollars. BTC is never going up a 1,000X more than it is today. It’s $10,000 already it’s not going to go up 1,000X, it’s just not going to happen. Because it’s not trying to be money for the world, and if it continued on the path of trying to be money for the world then it could have done that.

BTC transaction fees for May 14, 2020, are between $3.37 to $3.61.

In order for someone to use something it has to be useful and bitcoin with its slow transaction times, high network fees, and unreliable payments is not something that is useful. The reason it is still going up right now is because it has the bitcoin brand name and recognition. And everyone sees that the price is almost $10K and if they try and use it for anything other than speculation, they’re gonna have a bad user experience.

There’s a whole bunch of other cryptocurrencies that have a much better user experience.

Kiana Shek also asked about some of the infrastructure Ver was excited about.

Roger Ver: There’s actually more physical shops accepting bitcoin cash than those accepting bitcoin at this point. We have this fantastic tool called the Bitcoin Cash Register app that anyone can download for an iPhone or Android device and anyone can accept BCH at their business in like 30 seconds. You don’t have to give your name, you don’t have to give an email address, you don’t have to give a tax ID number, it just works and works in every country in the world. That’s something that used to be possible with bitcoin but its not with the high fees and network congestion. So if you haven’t seen the Bitcoin Cash Register app yet, check that out.

Check out the Bitcoin Cash Register app here. Start accepting BCH today in as little as thirty seconds.

We are seeing a lot of activity in China with our peer-to-peer marketplace Local.Bitcoin.com where people can buy or sell bitcoin cash using any payment method from any country. We’re seeing a significant amount of Chinese buying and selling bitcoin cash using the platform with a noncustodial escrow system. Another thing that is not possible using bitcoin (BTC) today, so its really great to see all the innovation happening within the BCH ecosystem. And tokens too and in fact, if we have time for it we can even make a Kiana Shek token this morning. It would take about 30 seconds. You can put your face as the image of the token and you can send and receive those tokens with anyone all over the world.

The Digifinex cofounder told Ver he would be welcomed to visit Asia soon to discuss his opinions again.

Roger Ver: I would love to get back to Asia soon but I am currently in St Kitts in the Caribbean and because of the coronavirus here there not allowing any flights in or out of the country. So I’ll be here for the foreseeable future.

Kiana Shek also asked Ver to name a few projects he was most proud of.

Roger Ver: There’s quite a few like a lot of people who don’t realize it but I was actually the second person ever involved in Ripple (XRP). XRP is one of the biggest cryptocurrencies in the world. I put in some seed money to start that and obviously it was incredibly successful. Also Blockchain.com, I was the second person ever involved in that project and I contacted the founder and offered to help. There’s been a bunch of different things like that where I was basically one of the very first people to get involved. Those are probably two of the most well known; Blockchain.com and Ripple. And of course, Bitcoin.com has been a huge success too. We’ve seen over 11 million wallets created on that platform now and users can spread peer-to-peer cash all over the world.

Kiana Shek asked what types of future projects Ver is looking forward to seeing developed as well.

Roger Ver: I think that you have to look at projects that are useful and if it’s not useful no one is going to want to use it. Something that I like is going to be different than something that some else likes so we have to look at what everyone wants to use. An example of that is the app Tik Tok. I don’t have any interest in Tik Tok whatsoever, but other people love Tik Tok. So Tik Tok is very successful because of that even though I personally don’t have any interest in Tik Tok.

Interested in minting your own Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP) tokens, check out Mint.Bitcoin.com here.

The same thing is true for cryptocurrency apps, like Crypto Kitties. I had zero interest in Crypto Kitties myself but other people seemed to love that sort of thing. I think people are going to love making their own token, with their own picture and they’ll be able to swap the tokens. And that’s so easy to do at Mint.Bitcoin.com.

People interested in watching the remainder of the interview can join the Digifinex AMA chat room on Telegram and a full version of the video will soon be published, according to Digifinex. During the rest of the conversation, Ver discusses being a smart investor, his thoughts on USDT and stablecoins, and SLP-based tokenization as well.

What do you think about the AMA with Bitcoin.com’s Executive Chairman Roger Ver? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Digifinex Live AMA Hosts Bitcoin.com Chairman – Roger Ver Talks Stimulus, Useful Cryptocurrencies, Coronavirus appeared first on Bitcoin News.