(IIRC) the hashing power increased by ~20% in the last few weeks, lower transaction volume and the mempool is empty again[1].
P.S: That's a good time to move your funds to a Segwit address. Do it!
[1] https://dedi.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#24h
P.S: That's a good time to move your funds to a Segwit address. Do it!
[1] https://dedi.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#24h
I actually witnessed same thing and I was surprised when I was about to login into blockchain, I didn't get the normal notification of the network is full at this moment and the likes. Then I tried sending to my surprise 1.75$ equivalent in BTC was the amount to be paid as fees for the regular option which is really surprising but I thought I was only one not knowing s lot of people want answers.
I agree this is just the best time to move to SegWit as suggested by you because we don't know what might happen to the pool by next week then people use that as an excuse not to move to SegWit. This is hope that it can only get better moving to SegWit then lightning network.
I would like to ask one question more: why has the hashing power increased in the past weeks?
Hash power is always increasing as more ASICs are manufactured. The supply of ASICS is the limiting factor as at today's prices mining Bitcoin will be profitable.
https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate?timespan=2years
The balancing factor is the difficulty. This adjustment occurs every 2016 blocks and the most recent one has just hapenned. The result of this is that blocks will now be found a little more slowly and fees will probably increase again over the next few days.
This is another discouraging news it means there is no time to waste.
do you see the spikes on the graph?
starting around August and going through October,November,December 2017 and happening every now and then quite consistently?
this is when Bitcoin Cash mining is way more profitable than mining bitcoins
so lot of hash power is diverted towards mining BCH,thus creating a sudden drop in the hashrate for bitcoin and longer times between the blocks
cause of this the mempool is slowly clogging up and transactions are becoming more and more expensive
it has been better lately with the bitcoin price not so volatile and bitcoin cash dropping price,but this is a factor to consider still