Quote from: nullius on December 19, 2017, 08:34:53 AM

Quote from: AmazonStuff on December 19, 2017, 08:10:32 AM

Bitcoin is already too expensive and definitely a giant bubble, not question about that. I'm looking at Mycelium wallet and just can't believe that "normal" transaction fee is 16.89 USD/byte?! Add in/out fees (for example ATM fees 6%+, LocalBitcoin premium approx. 7%, bank wire at exchanges approx. min $20) When I started using BTC it was free to send them, after that it was symbolic, now... it's not even competitive to classic payment systems.

How are fees relevant to the question of whether or not Bitcoins valuation is in a bubble? Do you know how Bitcoin works? Also, Bitcoin fees are not denominated in USD/byte.

Leaving aside spam attacks for the moment, fees are a proxy for network demandin turn, a reasonable proxy for estimating demand for Bitcoin. Transactions used to be free or cheap, because Bitcoin itself was widely considered to be a worthless toy. This meant that blocks were almost empty. What you are really complaining about is that Bitcoin is now valuablenot some supposition that it be falsely valued. Blocks being full and fees being bid up are data points indicating the opposite of a bubble.

Also, what is the relevance of fees from other services (ATMs, LBC, bank fees (!))? How can you blame Bitcoin for your banks wire transfer fees?

Fees are more than relevant, they are a clear indicator of Bitcoin technical limitation, as you said blocks are full, cost to mine a block is too high, Bitcoin is unable to scale, I don't see LN as a solution. Fees are showing that BTC has become more expensive than other payment methods. If you want a mass adoption of BTC and you want BTC to become more valuable, you must be aware that masses receive they salary in national currency, unfortunately this won't change in the near future. Plus, masses want to transfer money as cheap as possible. Person A is interested to transfer money to transfer B in the fastest and cheapest way possible. How would you convince them to use BTC for this purpose? Would you send $50 through BTC network or you would use a bank transfer or other conventional payment system?

Just imagine person A receives salary in USD and he wants to send $50 to his friend person B. In order to use Bitcoin network, he needs to buy bitcoin, should he make a deposit to Bitfinex and pay min $20? No. Maybe use Localbitcoins and pay premium 7% + plus underlying payment system fees? No. Maybe, he should just use ATM and pay 6% fees? This sounds like a cheapest and most elegant way so far. He could maybe try to meet someone in person, but I don't think that average user has that much time or wants to risk being robbed my some guy.

OK, so far so good, only 6%, next step send BTC to person B, wallet shows that he must pay 16,89$ worth of BTC for this transaction. OK, this should not be this fast, let's try with the lowest possible priority which will confirm and not get stuck for the infinitive time, this is approx... 106 sat/byte approx $4.46.

Next step, person B needs to sell BTC in order to use this value in his national currency, because we still don't use BTC to pay in stores around us, let's use ATM again, another 6%, plus probably 16,89$, if you want to receive money while you are still around ATM.

Conclusion, if person A wants to send $50 to person B through BTC network, it would cost him $83.84 in total and $33.84 for fees (approx. 40%) or let's rephrase if you want to send $50 you must pay $33.84 which means 68% fees. Slow and expensive. I think that they would rather use cheaper conventional method.

For me, it's all about usability, mass adoption and scaling, if it's not usable, you will have less users, if you can't scale, you will have even less users, less users, lower fees, less users lower BTC price, current 379sat/byte "normal" miners fee would me much cheaper probably $3 and more competitive to other payment methods. If you compare $3 with current $15.79 for the 379sat/byte, expect BTC to crash 5x of it's current value, probably BTC price would stabilize at $4000...