Let me start by saying that I am by no means a blockchain whiz or crypto technical juggernaut. I do not pretend to know the inner workings of of these systems. I do have some common sense and the ability to research things. I do understand human nature and peoples ability and desire to manipulate systems for power and money, which is what i believe is what might be going on here. I encourage all comments and criticism. I am open to hearing anyone's ideas about what i write, good or bad. These are just some thoughts based on some facts. Please dont forget to upvote
About three days ago, the transaction over the BTC network spiked to an all time high. The massive increase in traffic caused a massive increase in network fees. At one point it was $16 to send BTC. If sending anything less than a thousand dollars worth of BTC, $16 is a ridiculous fee. The fees are necessary to ensure that your transaction is processed in a timely manner. Transactions waiting to be processed go to the mempool. The bigger the mempool is the higher transaction fees get. I read a few theories that the BTC mempool was attacked with a spam attack consisting of thousands and thousands of one satoshi transactions purposely clogging up the network. If that is true then i must ask the question, Who benefits. Some other cryptocoins might benefit from BTC's high network fees because people like me wont pay it. I will buy LTC and send it for a whopping 6 cents and then exchange it for BTC or ETH to buy whatever coin i'm interested in. the small trade commission is nothing compared to the BTC network fee. I don't think the people at LTC attacked the BTC network though. I find it more possible that a miner or group of miners might have done this to increase their profits for mining. If so this is a MAJOR problem. For a decentralized system, more and more power is becoming concentrated in the hands of the miners. Technically anyone can mine BTC with the right equipment. However ,it isn't really feasible. That is why mining pools came about. These mining pools have grown dramatically and with that so has their influence over the network. The miners have a lot of say in what happens with the network. I believe the miners are the reason that the segwit2x fork didn't happen. They weren't giving it any support so it couldn't be implemented. I'm sure that a few other issues were involved but i know the lack of miner support was one.
So the miners have become a kind of defacto ruling class of the BTC network. The network fees are through the roof to the point that some websites and platforms that have accepted BTC as payment from the very beginning have stopped accepting it because of transaction fees. For a business that has over 90% of its customers purchases being under $100, a $16 network fee is utterly crippling. The customer has to spend an extra $16 to send it and the business is losing almost 1/5th of that payment when they want to move it internally from a payment receiving wallet to a longer term storage wallet, or whatever they want to do with it. So to not lose all this money they just stop accepting BTC and accept ETH LTC Dash and whatever else and save over 99% on network fees.
I do not think that this alone will completely destroy BTC but it will definitely give good reason for its eventual dethroning as king crypto. I have always believed that the cryptocurrency that will bring mass adoption hasn't been designed/invented yet. In five or ten years, a lot of today's popular coins might not even be around anymore. Bitcoin could be one of those if it isn't careful.
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This was a very interesting read thank you for the information, I also just posted something regarding bitcoin transaction fees and how that is going to affect the sustainability in the future. I would love if you check it out, you got yourself a follow!
Thanks for reading my post and giving me a follow Thomas. I will definitely check out your post too. Growing transaction fees and sustainability of bitcoin is a highly interesting topic to me and we should all be concerned about it. Great stuff Thomas
100% with you that the next google or amazon as far as cryptocurrency is concerned is either just getting started or hasn't even been launched yet!
I suspect Bitcoin will just about always have some sort of seat at the table, but like you said, the insane fees and confirmation times puts that in jeopardy...
Thanks for taking the time to read my post stnwllstrtgc. Its good to know im not the only one thinking this way. Bitcoin is a great foundation for others to expand upon. just like litecoin was adapted from BTC. Feathercoin (FTC)was born from the best parts of BTC and LTC and they developed Neoscript. These technologies will keep growing and advancing , morphing and adapting to strengthen weaknesses and improve upon themselves. If they dont ,someone else will. Groestlecoin(GRS) has a policy of updating software and technology every six months to stay competitive. I own FTC and GRS, I bought the about six months ago and watched them double and triple in value. I bought them because i read their websites and whitepapers and I knew that if they could follow through on their visions that they would be successful. There are a bunch of coins out there doing big things. I think we are lucky to see what the future is going to be before most people. Im glad im in on the ground floor and i will sit back and watch all my investments grow as everyone wakes up to whats going on and starts getting involved too.
I've been trying to find some coins that are well outside the top 50 or even top 100, then doing some research, reading the whitepaper checking out their roadmaps etc. and then taking small positions in those I think have potential for short-term growth and/or longterm growth.
I haven't heard of Feathercoin, but Litecoin is one of the cryptos I believe will have long term staying power and a coin that expands on LTC that is worth a look in my book!
I like how you think. I think along the same lines. I spend a lot of time on coinmarketcap looking at 100 to 300 trying to find the up and comers that i can get in at a great price before everyone else gets in and drives the price up. another thing i do is , when the market cap decreases, almost every coin goes red. find the few in the green and watch them. thats how i first found two of my favorite coins. I found them before the segwit2x fiasco when all altcoins were down they were green and they have over tripled since.
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Good posting