Yeah exactly. I don't know why people would use Gemini when fees are so high for both makers and takers. The only reason would be that someone wants to get money in and out of bitcoin quickly but other than that, the fee schedule is outrageous.

Haven't used Gemini before, but the new fees would mean at least 4-5x more than other exchanges.

This presents absolutely no advantages whatsoever to use Gemini. If you're going to get verified anyways, just use Kraken/Binance/a bunch of other exchanges which all have more competitive rates than Gemini.

Really makes you wonder just how many spam transactions there were during the time where it was costing $20-$25 to send bitcoin’s.

]Bcash has nothing to do with BTC. Its just a fork. And to be exactly, a pretty bad one.
IMO bcash already is doomed to fail. 8mb blocks are not (and never will be) an answer to the scaling 'issue'.

Breadwallet get precisely ZERO profit from any fees you pay for a BTC transaction... in fact, NO wallet gets any "profit" from any fees paid. (NOTE: I am excluding Exchanges that charge outrageous "withdraw" fees).

You need to understand that wallets don't "charge" fees... you are including a "fee" on your transaction to incentivise miners to include your transaction in a block... ALL fee's go to the miners, the wallets get nothing... and assuming your wallet is halfway decent, it should allow you to set custom transaction fees, so you can set whatever you like... just don't expect miners to include the transaction if you set a ridiculously low fee when average fees are super high. Currently, not so much of an issue given that the mempool is empty and transactions with 1 sat/byte fees are getting confirmed.


It'st thinking like that that leads to risky behaviour. Do not think you've safe because you use ... ALL OSes are vulnerable... anyone that thinks different is kidding themselves.

https://www.google.com/search?q=mac+osx+virus


Quite possibly connections and/or transactions from Bitcoin Cash Nodes that utilise the same ports etc... or someone is attempting to propagate a transaction that your Node is refusing to relay (ie. zero fee or some other non-standard transaction)... it's perfectly normal and you don't really need to worry about it.


Unless you specifically chose "Bitcoin -> SegWit"... and got a "3" type address from your Ledger HW wallet... it won't be a SegWit address.

Breadwallet get precisely ZERO profit from any fees you pay for a BTC transaction... in fact, NO wallet gets any "profit" from any fees paid. (NOTE: I am excluding Exchanges that charge outrageous "withdraw" fees).

You need to understand that wallets don't "charge" fees... you are including a "fee" on your transaction to incentivise miners to include your transaction in a block... ALL fee's go to the miners, the wallets get nothing... and assuming your wallet is halfway decent, it should allow you to set custom transaction fees, so you can set whatever you like... just don't expect miners to include the transaction if you set a ridiculously low fee when average fees are super high. Currently, not so much of an issue given that the mempool is empty and transactions with 1 sat/byte fees are getting confirmed.


It'st thinking like that that leads to risky behaviour. Do not think you've safe because you use ... ALL OSes are vulnerable... anyone that thinks different is kidding themselves.

https://www.google.com/search?q=mac+osx+virus


Quite possibly connections and/or transactions from Bitcoin Cash Nodes that utilise the same ports etc... or someone is attempting to propagate a transaction that your Node is refusing to relay (ie. zero fee or some other non-standard transaction)... it's perfectly normal and you don't really need to worry about it.


Unless you specifically chose "Bitcoin -> SegWit"... and got a "3" type address from your Ledger HW wallet... it won't be a SegWit address.

It's fine to use your Ledger for regular transactions due to security reasons mentioned above, but I (and many other people) agree that it's always good to have a hot wallet with funds you plan on using for convenience. I occasionally send funds from my SegWit Ledger to my Blockchain wallet for use online, and it works just fine for regular use. I've had this setup for three years now (though I only got the Ledger Nano a year ago, I previously used an airgapped computer for cold storage), and I haven't been hacked or compromised yet.

As a reminder, fees are extremely low right now. It wouldn't be a bad idea to combine low/dust inputs and consolidate them right now for lower fees in the long run, and perhaps start a SegWit address if you haven't already to reduce fees in the long run in the future if things change.

If you have an incoming connection, then your node is probably configured properly to accept incoming connections. Can you go to canyouseeme.org and key in port 8333. If it shows that its open, then it isn't much of a concern.

Have you adjusted any of the connection parameters (i.e. ports and maximum number of connection count)?

Please read before you post. But I'll repeat and rephrase.

Even if Segwit enables reductions in fees by 30-70%, this does not solve the problem with Bitcoin's fees having killed the entire ecosystem of transactions in the 0.01-$100.00 price range.

However, should Segwit enable more transactions and hence fees tend downward, strong evidence exists that a huge latent demand would enter in and simply push the fees back up. The resulting equilibrium would be something like double the activity with fee levels the maximum that would be tolerated by an open market in such conditions.

LN does seem to address this issue because people are "able to transact with bitcoin at low fees and huge volume." Although they are not interacting with the blockchain, end users don't care. The nerdy crypto nerds want to go in and buy their coffee with Bitcoin.

It's actually exactly my point, currently they don't and they should !

 
My simple point is to decentralized the mining pool - the simple fact is that if there are more private miners, the lesser mining groups will control bitcoin blockchain.  It's happening now, miners are pick and choose which tx are worth while for them to mine...and yes, I'm talking about people whose has larger investment are at stake - and they better do something to protect their investment

Pro - it's not a scam, you will get your miner.
Con - you have to wait 3 months for your miner, and you can only pay in BCash.
Pro - Bitmain have a warranty on their miners
Con - it requires sending it back to China to use that warranty
Pro - the APW3++ PSU is in stock and reasonably priced, and it's a nice efficient PSU
Con - shipping fees are high and you have to pay import duty ($50-75 per miner)
Pro - if Bitmain say they are in stock, they are in stock, no chance of your order being cancelled 2-3 months later because "oops we oversold sorry" (MinerWarez scam)
Con - you need to constantly watch Bitmaintech on Twitter or refresh their site all the time to actually catch them in stock, they sell out very quickly (ofter under an hour). You need to make sure you have the BCash on hand they will cancel your order if you do not pay within one hour of submitting.

Overall, I wouldnt buy from anywhere except Bitmain, but it is neither cheap nor fast, and having to use BCash is a pain in the butt.

I'm not in the US, but in Finland.

I've got one reliable advice for you--> https://shop.bitmain.com/antminer_s9_asic_bitcoin_miner.htm

Because people are on FOMO at the moment and are ready to pay crazy prices for mining hardware.

Actually, the latest batch sales price was 2320 USD and it was sold very quickly.

Bitmain official webshop: https://shop.bitmain.com/main.htm?lang=en

^ This is the only official Bitmain webshop.

As far as I know the latest S9 batch price was 2320 USD.

@Anarc Senior
Can you post the link to the product page where you saw it for the 1995 USD price?

If you buy from bitmain directly, it should be safe.

However, there are some things that might explain the price difference:
- if you buy locally, you won't have to pay import duties and import tax
- if you buy locally, you won't have to wait for weeks (or longer)
- if you buy from a local vendor, you *might* have extended warrantee (i don't know if this is the case within the US)
- if you buy from a local vendor, other things *might* be included (like a PSU, network cables, power cables,...)

Do be carefull when you don't buy from bitmain directly: there are a lot of scammers out there!

I see on antminer web site that I could pay one antminer S9 directly from their website for only $1995 free shipping.  Why is listed so much higher on the US websites - can somebody explain why ??

$2,000? Probably not. Getting hard to find any in the US less than $4,000. Most sellers locally are going for $5,500-$6,000 no PSU, most sell within 2minutes here less than $5,000.

Just use your best judgement, its probably too good to be true.

Because people are on FOMO at the moment and are ready to pay crazy prices for mining hardware.

Actually, the latest batch sales price was 2320 USD and it was sold very quickly.

Bitmain official webshop: https://shop.bitmain.com/main.htm?lang=en

^ This is the only official Bitmain webshop.