Almost $1 Billion Worth of Bitcoins Stuck in Transaction Backlog
An incredible sum of more than 900,000 bitcoins, worth almost a billion dollars, was stuck at one point last night, waiting to move, due to limited transaction capacity. At the time of writing, more than 300,000 bitcoins remain stuck. Luke-Jr, a developer of the Bitcoin Core client and a Blockstream contractor, publicly responded to the backlog by stating “[j]ust pay a $5 fee and it’ll go through every time.” Jameson Lopp, a BitGo engineer, publicly stated yesterday that if bitcoin’s price hits $10,000 without an increase in transaction capacity, fees will be $400 based on current data.....
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Following the re-adjustment of bitcoin’s network difficulty after a sudden increase, a massive transaction backlog began developing yesterday, leading to a torrent of complaints. An incredible sum of 278,872.21 bitcoins, worth around a quarter of a billion dollars, is currently in limbo, stuck in the ether, unable to move. In response, angry users have littered public spaces to vent their frustration at the situation. One of them is a representative from Vaultoro, a bitcoin and gold exchange, who publicly stated: “[W]e paid 0.0005 fee (45 cents) to get a client their withdrawal and it took....
Luke-jr, developer of the Bitcoin Core client and Blockstream contractor, has recommended in a developers’ mailing list Bitcoin Improvement Proposal announcement an instant 70% reduction of bitcoin’s transaction capacity to 300kb, followed by a yearly increase of around 17%, reaching the current transaction capacity of 1MB in 2024. Thereafter, it is intended to continue increasing by 17%, reaching a maximum capacity of 31MB in around half a century. The proposal to reduce transaction capacity that Luke-jr says he can “immediately recommend… for adoption,” is made no more than two days....
For the first time ever, bitcoin has been running above capacity for more than a week as transaction backlogs are now becoming a common experience with no indication of any solution in the near future. Bitcoin is Currently Operating Under a Constant Backlog For the First Time. On the 4th of February 2017, almost $1billion worth of bitcoin was stuck. It gradually went down, but never cleared, with around 300,000 bitcoins waiting to move. Yesterday, that went up again to almost 900,000. The mempool is usually full and the network now runs at around 3-4 txs per second when it can only handle....
Almost 100,000 bitcoin transactions are currently stuck, waiting to move, with around $30,000 in fees queued for miners to pick up. The mempool backlog is above 56MB. The network is running above capacity, usually operating at more than 4 txs/s. Users are once more complaining. Price appears resilient and even going higher due to many other factors, primarily the much-anticipated ETF decision. As far as the protocol is concerned, the tape is stuck on repeat, the debate is on endless loop, the community is paralyzed, a solution is nowhere in sight. Miners appear to be preferring neither....
The only viable way to bypass this backlog is for users to spend a higher transaction fee. However, that is not the "pushy" direction in which Bitcoin should evolve by any means. The past 24 hours have been somewhat turbulent for the Bitcoin ecosystem. With the number of unconfirmed transactions surpassing the 43,500 mark just over a day ago, things weren’t looking great. But it looks like the mempool is showing signs of a desperately needed decline in unconfirmed transfers. Another stark warning that the scalability of Bitcoin needs to be addressed today rather than tomorrow. It....