Quote from: nikauforest on December 25, 2017, 03:04:08 AM

Quote from: bones261 on December 25, 2017, 02:58:25 AM

Quote from: Peter R on December 25, 2017, 02:40:53 AM

Quote from: bones261 on December 25, 2017, 02:27:34 AM

First of all, there is no perfect competition. Some businesses will always gain an edge. As happens over and over again, an oligarchy is eventually formed. If left unchecked, a cartel is then formed. Then the cartel can charge whatever price the market will bear. For some products and services, this price is quite high indeed. As can be seen from the current tx market with Bitcoin, the cost people are willing to expend on a transaction is quite high. Pennies is not going to be that price. It will be magnitudes of orders higher.

This is actually a good point. TX fees are extremely high right now because BS/Core has formed a cartel in order to limit the production of block space. What is confusing (and ironic) is that the miners (those who one would naively suspect to attempt to form a cartel) want the production quota lifted! So, yes, experience is showing that Bitcoin is somewhat susceptible to cartel formation (it's just surprising that it's cartels of developers rather than cartels of miners).

Oh yes, this recent growth in the mempool is totally organic. Roll Eyes

Or do you think Bitcoin Core may be deliberately spamming the network even though AFAIK, it would have no benefit to them? Seems like a pretty pricey demonstration for them to demonstrate why LN is needed. Cheesy

Of course, Saint Jihan Wu and friends would never consider stuffing the mempool with lower fee transactions so they can collect the higher transactions piling on top of that. We all know Saint Jihan Wu is much too altruistic to even consider doing something like that. Roll Eyes

Does it matter the reason who or why transaction fees are high? To me the high fees are a weakness which is being attacked. It is completely predictable.
Bitcoin Cash sees an opportunity and it is attacking Bitcoin . (a predictable result)
the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself. ( Core's high fees)
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
tags: defeat, enemy, opportunity, strategy, war

Even if Bitcoin Cash was never launched, this would have been exploited for profit. However, Blockstream is developing an alternate method, which would give an alternative to this cash cow. No longer would you ultimately need a mining node to cash in. Also, the cost of entry for someone to set up a lightning network hub to profit will be lower than the set up cost for a mining/SPV node to handle unlimited block size, which is the ultimate goal of Bitcoin Cash. Always remember, a miner has the power to include or exclude any transaction from the block they are trying to mine. Even with unlimited blocksize, a mining node can elect to exclude any transaction using any criteria. The criteria most likely to be used is a certain "small fee." Add on top of this the "small monthly SPV service fee." I hear the cash registers ringing for Jihan Wu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpbbuaIA3Ds