1. How long did it take for a transaction to be confirmed?
I was in to bitcoin when it was at sub $700. Transactions were super quick, with pretty much almost-free fees. Transactions so fast and so so cheap that I was playing around with some sats(that I've collected using faucets), moving them between multiple wallets multiple times without even caring about the transaction fees.
Transaction times haven't slowed down compared to how fast they are currently. Bitcoin is designed to have a new block found once every 10 minutes. With transaction volume today being where it was in 2015/2016 usually the mempool can get cleaned out in one single block. Because of this transaction times arepretty much the same.
True. But comparing the speed in conjunction with the fees in the past? That's a different story. Bitcoin transactions are definitely a lot cheaper now compared to fees last December, but the fees are still significantly more expensive now compared to the fees before(though also taking note that bitcoin was also significantly cheaper back then)
bitcoin fees in early days were something like 0.01000000
BTC at some point. nowadays you are paying 0.00000180
BTC for the same transaction.
in USD terms it was pretty much the same considering the price of early days was very low.
and since we are talking about bitcoin i'd say the fees were super expensive back then.
This:
...since we are talking about bitcoin I'd say the fees were super expensive back then.
Seems logical since fees are somewhat pegged to the USD value (in a way) and not actual percentages of bitcoin transacted or the number of bitcoin transactions performed per time. I think it has something to do with the difficulty.
Not sure about this, but anyone with a critical but explicit explanation should help out. My thoughts are:
So relatively, fees should be like tolls and not relative to the number of traffic. However, when BTC started its bull run in fall of 2017 through early 2018, fees were also increased and this was due to traffic. I think it was just an unusual anomaly. But is there a specific calculation for fees?